“How to Have a Sales Agent Pound the Streets for You 24/7, Travelling the World Over and Never Ask for a Raise!”
“Make Article Marketing Work For You”
Way back in the good old day, in a galaxy far, far away, before the invention of personal computer, I wrote articles about graphic design and submitted them to local free papers. From those articles, I got calls from readers asking questions. Sometimes an avid reader would ask me to speak at their school or organization. I would always go to these speaking engagements armed with business cards or printed samples to hand to prospective clients. After a while, this became an entire business practice.
Today you can employ a similar approach with Article Marketing using the Worldwide Web. The biggest difference is that now you don’t have to wear out nearly as much shoe leather going from place to place handing out business brochures. You can let your articles do the walking for you!
Here’s how it works in the information age. You start by writing an article with quality information that your audience will find valuable. Begin by taking the time to do the proper marketing research as I outlined in my article on Keyword Research on June 29, 2007. With the collection keywords that you found, write your article with a well defined focus, i.e. a niche. This will help the search engines place you in the proper category. You then submit your article to quality Article Directories like EzineArticles.com (I will write a separate review later about the best Article Directories and by what criterion I chose them). When the articles are posted in the directories, the URL of your website, which you posted in the author’s bio section will be counted as a link back to your site. Links, if you are not familiar with search engine optimization is how the engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN determine your rank. High search engine ranks indicates that the search engines find your site relevant to a given field. Consequently, the higher your website ranks, the further the site will move up on the search page. The more webpages you have on the first page of the search pages, the more traffic your website will receive. And we all know that traffic equals sales. In a nutshell, that’s how Article Marketing works. However, there are a number of Gotchas that I’d like to point out to you before you go hog wild with this technique.
- Duplicate Content – the search engines are very sensitive to webmasters spamming the internet with the same content over and over again. Google in particular will penalize you for having too many duplicate content pointing back to your site. Therefore, it’s better to submit to only the best Article Directories and to have a variation of an article even if one paragraph is different. All this is a pain, I know, but fortunately software products such as Article Submitter that can handle some of the more repetitious tasks. Click Here if you’d like to learn ore about this program.
- Don’t forget the Resource Box – in all article directories, there is an entry at the end of the article called a Resource Box aka your Signature. You would be shocked to see how many people do not put in their names in this box. Also, you must positively, absolutely put in your Web Address with the proper URL form. For Example: http://www.name-of-your-website.com/. This URL is what will be used for your all important link back to your website. You will also be given about 3 sentences to describe your website. This will be a good opportunity to set yourself apart from the competition by stating your Unique Selling Proposition.
- Don’t Spam Article Directories – at the risk of sounding repetitious, don’t spam the directories, don’t spam the directories, don’t spam the directories! Submit only to the best directories. Other webmasters will also pick up your article for reprint on their site so don’t worry about not getting enough exposure. Here is a cursory list of directories to get you started:
- http://www.ezinearticles.com/
- http://goarticles.com/
- http://www.freewebarticles.com/
- http://www.ideamarketers.com/
- http://www.articledashboard.com/
The process of Article Marketing definitely demands a certain commitment of time. Fortunately there are software such as Article Submitter which will help you with this process. This computer based software will take the chore of submitting to multiple Article Directories and streamlines it into an automated business process. Tedious tasks such as:
- Logging into a directory with an ID and password is done for your with Article Submitters database
- Article Submitter intelligently finds he right field to input your entries even though they may not exactly the same in all directories.
- Article Submitter never forgets to put your vital information such as your name and URL in the resource box!
- The real sweet deal is that you get to try out the limited edition of this software for free! No string attached but you will definitely want to upgrade to the Gold version to submit your articles to teh premium sites
You should definitely check out Article Submitter . It’ll make Article Marketing a joy! As always keep writing and Posting.
Brad Masterson
Great tips Brad! As a writer, I’ve started to see that article marketing really works. I haven’t tried Article Submitter, but I’m going to check it out since it looks like it could save me some time. Thanks!
Writing articles is definitely the way to go for free or low-cost advertising. Article Submitter could certainly save some valuable time. Thanks!
Hi, Lillie, Thanks for the comment. I’m just seeing more and more conclusive evidence that the conventional methods that webmasters use for search engine optimization is not working very well i.e. directory submissions and reciprocal link exchange. In my experience as an SEO consultant, submitting articles to well respected directories such as EzineArticles is the way to go. Better yet if you can find an authority sites to publish your articles that is your best bet.
I’ll be talking more about Web 2.0 in the next article which is yet another great avenue indeed for article marketing. These are by far superior techniques to boost your SEO ranks and by far these are methods that search engines love! So what’s not to like!
i am always intrested in new software so a test drive would be nice.
Thanks:)
Dan