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Article Writing: How To Grab Google’s Attention
0Even though you’ve started article marketing to boost your search engine rankings and get more website traffic, you still need to write firstly with your human readers in mind and then secondly for search engines.
It may seem like a narrow tightrope to walk, since humans respond to emotion, irony, humor and imagery, and whereas search engines are simply looking at keywords on a web page.
You CAN write for both search engines and humans though, and when you follow these tips it’s actually not that hard:
FOCUS ON YOUR TITLE
Your article title should:
=> Tell what your article is about
=> Be interesting to readers, making them want to read your article
=> Have your keywords towards the beginning of your title, preferably in the first 3 words
Seriously put some thought into your title, and experiment with different keyword placements.
USE LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS AS ARTICLE TOPICS
Your basic keyphrases will consist of 1-2 words, but your long-tail keyphrases are 3-5 words long.
For example:
Keyword: running shoes
Long-tail keywords: off trail running shoes
The basic keyword ‘running shoes’ is competitive–there are many people doing searches on that term, and there are also many website owners who are targeting those keyword terms.
The long-tail keyword ‘off trail running shoes’ is more unique. There are not as many people doing searches on that term, and therefore not as many website owners who are targeting those terms.
By writing some articles to satisfy the searches for ‘off trail running shoes’, the website owner can more easily rank highly for that search term.
Build up a list of long tail keywords for your own niche, and write articles to satisfy those searches. Use the keywords in the title and in the article body.
Before you know it you will have created a library of very niche specific content that covers all types of specific searches that your target readers are doing.
USE KEYWORDS IN YOUR HTML RESOURCE BOX
The HTLM resource allows you to hyperlink anchor text to form a link to your website, and your anchor text should be your keywords.
Supposedly Google pays special attention to hyperlinked words, so using an HTML resource box can be an effective attention grabber for a search engine.
But be careful: Do not use the same keywords every article, but vary the keywords you target in your resource box. If you use the same keywords all the time, it could be interpreted as trying to be manipulative, and Google doesn’t appreciate that!
USE YOUR KEYWORDS WISELY
Your articles are a communication with your target readers, a way to provide them with useful information, show them your expertise, and build trust. Please don’t think of your articles as merely a vehicle for keywords.
As you’re writing, remember that your first job is to appeal to your human readers. Your writing should sound natural and be easy to read and understand. It’s a good idea to limit your keyword density to no more than 3%–that will help keep your article from sounding contrived or written solely for a search engine.
CONCLUSION
It IS possible to write articles that are appealing to people and to Google. Figure out what your keywords are, and include long-tail keywords in your list as well. Write educational articles around those topics, and you’ll likely find that your keywords are naturally popping up in your articles.
Spend extra time on your title and your HTML resource box, and use your keywords strategically in both of those spots.
If you will focus on those 3 areas: Title, Topics, and HTML Resource box, you can create an article that grabs the attention of Google and human readers.
Advantage Of Online Article Marketing In Making Money Online
0There are many internet marketing tactics but one that really stands out is online article marketing. This is mainly due to the fact that the internet world is all about content. Therefore, if you launch a website or blog today, the best method of attracting traffic is posting information. Business people in a hurry to make quick money online, rush to promote their products and in the process loss their visitors to other informative sites.
The other aim of online article marketing is building inbound links. This increases the chances on getting high ranking on search engines thus generating organic traffic. Inbound links are generated every time publishers pick your articles and post them on their websites. Since they have to include your blog link you end up getting back links and more traffic. To make sure that your articles are picked, make sure you post insightful and educative content.
Online article marketing increases your credibility in that as you post educative articles people tend to research more about you. Therefore, when they search for your details on Google search and discover that you have written more educative articles they build confidence in you. With this you can be guaranteed that anytime they need to buy a product they will do so from your website.
Online money making is not just about generating traffic alone, but that traffic needs to be targeted. You will find that a site that has less traffic making more money than a site with thousands of visitors. The main advantage of online article marketing is that for someone to decide to visit your blog after reading your article, he/she must be interested to learn more. This kind of targeted traffic most of the time turns out to be potential online customer.
There is still more to learn about Online Article Marketing. Follow the links below to read more insightful and helpful topics.
5 Dramatically Different Reasons Why You Should Submit Your Articles to Ezine Editors
0Many times with article marketing people get link building tunnel vision and think that the only reason for doing article marketing is to collect links so that they can increase their search engine ranking.
Link building is one of the big perks of article marketing, but don’t think that Google is the only path to success.
The reason why you want to be ranked high in Google is to attract your target market to your website, but if your article is included in an ezine, it is actually taking a more direct and targeted path to your potential customers.
Some of my biggest traffic surges have come from having one of my articles picked up for publication in an ezine. True, a backlink from an email newsletter doesn’t contribute to your search engine ranking, but it does help bring your website exposure to a very targeted audience.
Imagine a small ezine with only 100 subscribers receiving your well-written, educational article directly in their inbox. Would you turn down a chance to talk directly to 100 people from your target market?
Of course not!
Imagine if your article is included in a big ezine, with 10,000 or 50,000 subscribers – would you turn down a chance to talk directly to tens of thousands of your target market?
No way!
Here are 5 big reasons why you should submit your articles to ezine editors:
1) Ezines are niche oriented.
Think about all the ezines that you subscribe to. Chances are, all of them are tightly focused on a particular niche. An ezine is an email magazine, and just like in the real world where magazines are usually about a particular topic, so are ezines.
2) Ezines *deliver* your articles to your target market.
You know how we are always wanting to be in Google’s good graces and appear high in the searches engine results? The reason why we want to appear high in Google is because we want to come before the eyes of our target market.
But what if you could turn things around, and instead of waiting passively for folks from your target market to do searches, you could meet your target market on their home turf, in their own inbox?
This is the beauty of being published in an ezine. You do not have to wait for a potential customer to Google anything–*you* are being delivered to *them*; they do not have to search for you.
3) Ezines are very targeted in the content they deliver. The ezine editor knows his readership and can hand pick articles that would appeal to them.
How much does it take to get a person to give up their email address?
Personally speaking, I’ll only sign up for an ezine when I’m convinced that the ezine editor has good judgement and knows what I might be interested in.
Moreso than a website owner who has lots of different people showing up to his website every day, an ezine editor is communicating with a specific community of readers, and he can anticipate the types of articles that his subscriber base would find helpful.
If your article is chosen to appear in an ezine, it is being placed before a captive and targeted audience that has a great chance of finding value in what you’ve written.
4) Ezines publish a limited amount of content.
If your article gets picked up by an ezine, it doesn’t have to compete against hundreds of other articles for attention. Ezines are of limited length, and usually they’ll share just one, two or maybe three articles, contrasting with the hundreds of articles that a reader would find in an article directory or through a Google search.
How do you like those odds?
5) Ezine subscribers have a relationship with the person whose ezine they’re subscribing to and trust and value his opinion.
The relationship that an ezine editor has with his audience is much more intimate than a website owner has with his visitors. Remember, these subscribers have given away information about themselves–their name, their email, and also given the ezine editor the privilege of sending them communications at his discretion.
This is the difference between going up to a stranger and trying to get them to open up to you, and being introduced to someone you want to know through a mutual friend. When you’re introduced through a mutual friend, there is a much greater level of comfort and trust from the get-go.
Are you convinced yet? Having your article picked up for publication by an ezine can make a dramatically different type of impact on your website’s success than simply getting a higher search engine ranking.
It’s time start submitting your articles to some ezine editors today!
Article Marketing: the Small Business Owner’s Secret Weapon
0Whether you have a brick and mortar business with a website or a virtual business that is 100% online, you know that getting traffic to your website is essential to your business’ success.
But if you’re not an SEO junkie or a technologically advanced person, if you’re just a “regular” small business person with an average amount of internet savvy, how in the world do you bridge the gap between where you are right now and a thriving, bustling website?
The thought of learning how to “drive traffic to a website” or “ranking higher in Google” is daunting for most folks, but please rest assured that you don’t need to be an internet mastermind to have a successful website.
Business owners with a moderate understanding of how the internet works can market their websites effectively with the help of the simple and entirely approachable online marketing tool called Article Marketing.
What is Article Marketing?
Article Marketing is when you write educational articles on your area of expertise, and then submit those articles to article directories.
When your article is published on an article directory, it can be seen by a limitless number of people who may decide to reprint your article on their own website.
The idea with article marketing is to get your article reprinted on as many websites as possible, because each article that you send out into the big wide world of the internet is like a virtual sales person who is mingling about the net trying to draw people back to your website.
How do articles draw people back to your website?
Along with each article that you submit, you will include an author resource box, which is a short author bio that also includes a link back to your website. That link back to your website is paramount – after seeing and reading your article on a website, the visitor clicks this link and is sent to your website.
When someone clicks the link in your resource box and then reaches your website, you are building “targeted traffic”.
Targeted traffic simply means that the people who are visiting your website are actually interested in your services or products. These are not random visitors–they are people who were motivated enough to read your article, who found value in it, and who read your resource box and felt compelled to click the link and see what other value you offered at your website.
When you’re trying to get visitors to your website, you are going for targeted traffic, and article marketing is a widely known favorite marketing tool for effectively building targeted traffic over the long term.
We just talked about how your website can receive targeted traffic when readers click the link in your resource box, but there is another way that your website can receive targeted traffic–through Google.
Imagine a potential customer going to Google and searching for information on your area of expertise.
They type their query into Google, and a list of results pops up, listing websites that Google deems will have the greatest chance of satisfying the searcher.
What if someone did a search for your area of business and your website popped up as the top result in the list?
You would have a much greater chance of that searcher clicking through to your website and becoming a new customer!
When your articles are reprinted all over the internet with the precious link in your resource box going back to your website, it sends Google a message that your website is important, and you have a greater chance of ranking higher in the search results.
Additionally, when you do article marketing your articles themselves may start turning up in the search results in Google. Once a person has clicked through to one of your helpful articles, they can click the link in your resource leading them back to your website.
We’ve just talked about 3 ways that article marketing can help drive targeted traffic to your website:
1) When someone reads one of your articles and then clicks the link to your website in your resource box.
2) When your website ranks higher in the search engines (like Google)
3) When a person does a Google search and your articles appear in the search results
By doing article marketing, it’s like you’re sending out sales representatives who keep popping up in the places where your potential customers are likely to be hanging out.
Article marketing is a trusted and effective method for marketing a website, and to top if off, it’s easy! You don’t have to be an internet mastermind–just start writing and submitting articles, and you’re well on your way!
Article Marketing: How Small Business Owners Drive Traffic to Their Websites
0You’ve just started your business and have taken pains to create a website that is useful, informative and a pleasure to look at. You’re ready for the crowds of visitors to come pouring in, so you expectantly wait for the mad rush.
And you wait, and wait and wait.
We’ve all been there at that stage wondering, “Alright, now what do I do? How do I get people to come my site?”
Rest easy–you don’t have to be an internet mastermind or SEO genius to have a successful website.
Even website owners who have little knowledge of how the internet technically works are able to transform their website from a deserted island to a bustling metropolis by simply writing and submitting educational articles with article marketing.
Here are the 3 big reason why small business owners choose article marketing as a main marketing tool for their websites:
1) Article marketing drives traffic to a website by increasing the inbound links.
Links are at the heart of driving traffic to a website.
Links are basically doorways to your website that your potential customers can walk through. Technically, a link is a piece of text or a URL that a reader can click to reach your website.
When you’re submitting articles for article marketing, you will also include an author resource box, which has a brief author bio and a link back to your website. Each time your article is picked up for publication, your resource box is published also.
The more publishers pick up your article for publication, the more precious inbound links you garner. These links send a message to Google that your website has value, and this impacts Google’s ranking of your website in search engine results.
So, an increase in inbound links to your website helps your website appear higher in the search results, which is what you’re going for!
Additionally, people may reach your website without even doing a Google search, by finding your article on a website and clicking the link in your resource box.
So you build traffic in two ways–directly through folks who find your article on a website, and indirectly, by finding your website or articles via a Google search.
2) To bring worldwide exposure to their website and business while building up long term targeted traffic.
Article marketing is widely known for having a long term impact on targeted traffic when done consistently.
What is targeted traffic?
Targeted traffic is when the people who visit your website are in your target market and are likely to be interested in whatever services or products you’re offering on your website.
So, you don’t want just any type of random traffic to your site–you want targeted traffic.
By writing articles on your area of expertise and then having these articles appear on bunches of websites all over the internet, your articles are increasing the reach of your marketing efforts, because they are being seen by more people on more websites.
Every time your article is seen on a website, there is the chance of that person clicking through to your website, which increases your chances of making sales and gaining new customers.
3) To establish themselves as an expert in their niche.
Remember, your articles are like virtual sales representatives that you send out into the big wide world of the internet to introduce potential customers to your business.
The way you lure readers in is by providing them with helpful information in your article (your resource box is the only place where you can talk about your website and products). If the reader found your article helpful, then they will likely click through to your website to see what else you have to offer.
Also, sometimes a potential customer will Google your name or your business name before deciding to work with you. If you’ve been doing article marketing, a list of your articles will pop up in the search results.
As the person reads your articles and sees that you know your stuff, they start to think, “He really helped me understand some things I was unsure of–I think he can help me.” By demonstrating your expertise in your articles, you’re building customer confidence in yourself and your business, which goes a long way toward increasing sales.
If you’ve heard about article marketing before, but weren’t quite sure why you should be doing it or how it could benefit your business, now you know!
It isn’t enough to have a website–you need a web presence.
Small business owners use article marketing to demonstrate expertise in their field and build customer confidence, increase their search engine rankings, and generate targeted traffic to their website.
These 3 objectives are HUGE when it comes to marketing a small business online.
Article Marketing: 3 Ways to Inspire Customer Confidence Through Your Articles
0Usually with article marketing the main attractions are the amazing SEO benefits–article marketing is a great way to drive traffic to a website by increasing your search engine ranking.
But one often overlooked perk is the ability to build credibility and trust with your potential customers through your articles.
Why would you want to build trust and inspire confidence in your customers?
That’s an easy one–the more belief that a customer has that what you tell them is true and that you’ll not let them down once they purchase your product, the more likely you are to make the sale.
Who a customer buys from is not solely determined by who is ranking #1 in Google–lots of times customers are found through personal referral, or someone shares one of your useful articles with them, and they find your website via your resource box.
If a person is interested in your product, they will likely do some additional research on you to try to get a feel for who you are. Can they trust you? Are you a reputable business person?
Your articles are a great way to break the ice in a trust building relationship, possibly the first step in showing a customer that you’re a person of integrity who is knowledgeable in your topic.
Here are a few areas of opportunity to concentrate on if you’d like to build reader trust through your articles:
1) Write to meet the needs of your target market.
That may sound obvious, but many times an author will get so focused on the SEO benefits of article marketing that they will forget that there will be humans reading their article too!
You should make every article you write an educational article, one that is more about enlightening the people in your target market than it is about promoting your own business.
Your article should not talk about your own business, website or products–that makes the article look like a sales letter and like you’re trying to get something from your audience (which only makes them put up their guard).
Don’t write to make a sale–write to offer valuable information on a topic that would benefit your readers.
The appropriate place to talk about your own business and website is in your resource box, which is the author bio area that sits beneath your article.
2) Don’t stuff your article with keywords.
As far as keywords go–if you write in a natural way about the topic of your website, your keywords will naturally pop up throughout your article without seeming contrived.
There is no need to try to outwit Google–believe it or not, an article that would appeal to your target marketing is one that would also appeal to Google.
When a search engine evaluates a website’s value, they are doing so because they want to most appropriately rank the web pages that appear in their results listings.
Google’s main desire is to have a search customer type in their search terms (which are hopefully your keywords) and to then be greeted by a list of results where the web pages at the top of the list are most likely to meet their needs.
So, Google and your potential customers both want the same thing–they both want to meet the needs of a human target market. By writing articles with your potential customers in mind, you will consequently please Google too.
3) Go the extra mile with the information you offer in your article.
A good rule of thumb with this is to aim for 700-800 words of quality content in your article. Yes, it’s true that a lot of publishers will accept 400 words or less, but why not exceed expectations?
Why not put forth more effort than is required?
When your article doesn’t skimp on the value it provides, that sends a message to the reader that you are the type of person who goes above and beyond expectations, and that reflects well on your business.
There are lots of ways to build credibility through your articles (be sure to put your name in your resource box, submit articles consistently over time, etc), but these are the 3 biggies.
If you’ll focus on being a teacher to your potential customers rather than a salesperson, write for your human audience rather than the search engines, and provide information that goes beyond what is expected, you’ll be well on your way to establishing healthy customer relationships filled with trust.
Article Marketing: 5 Reasons Why Your Next Article Should be a ‘howto’
0The most frequent question I get from authors is “What should I write about?”
When you’re doing article marketing, that question is easily answered–write a ‘How To’ article!
The ‘How To’ article is the perfect medium for an article that teaches readers, pleases publishers, and appeals to Google.
Here are 5 of the best reasons why you should make your next article a ‘How To’:
1) How To articles are educational articles.
Probably the most “popular” reason for an article being declined is what publisher’s call “promotional” or “self-serving” content. That means that the article toots the horn of the author rather than providing objective and useful information to the reader.
This is something that you want to avoid!
The trick to writing educational articles is to save your promotional information for your resource box and focus on writing ‘How To’ articles.
It’s very difficult to turn a “How To’ article into a self-serving one because typically your energy is focused on teaching your reader something that will benefit them rather than you.
The bright spot is that in writing for your readers (rather than to make a sale) you receive benefits as well!
2) ‘How To’ articles show readers that you’re an expert.
When you’re writing a ‘How To’ article, you have specialized knowledge that the reader wants and needs. In writing an instructional article that readers find easy to understand and implement, you build the reader’s confidence in your knowledge and abilities.
The more a reader believes that you are capable and knowledgeable, the greater chance that they will think of you when they need services or products like yours (and they can tell what your services are from looking at your resource box).
3) ‘How To’ articles are easy to read.
Most of the time instructional articles are written in list form.
When you’re writing a ‘How To’ you’ll break your instructions down into a sequential series of steps and just seeing Step 1, Step 2, etc helps a reader follow your train of thought.
It’s much easier to skim and glean information from a list, and ‘How To’ articles make perfect list articles. The easier your article is to read and understand, the more benefit it will be to your readers.
4) ‘How To’ articles are easy to write.
When your article is in a list, you can start by writing down the major steps you want to cover and then use that as an outline for your article.
Writing a ‘How To’ article as a list (Step 1, Step 2, etc.) gives you a head start and helps get the creative wheels of your brain moving. Our brains find it easiest to think in sequential, rational steps anyway (first do this, then do this, thirdly do this), so a ‘How To’ article very neatly conforms to our desire for order and makes the article easier to write.
5) Your customers are looking for ‘How To’ articles.
Let me ask you–when you do a Google search, what types of information are you looking for?
Most of the time we’re looking for information on how to do something–how to wallpaper a bathroom, how to write a novel, how to start a business, etc.
We hop on the internet in search of information on how to do things, and when your customers are doing searches on Google, they’re looking for instructional content too.
Website owners are always trying to figure out how to lure Google to their websites and sometimes think that they need to be very technically minded to do so, but I tell you, the easiest way to lure Google to your website and rank higher in the search engines is to write articles on topics that interest your target market.
Your target market wants instructional information, so write a ‘How To’ article and tell them how to do something!
When you’re doing article marketing, the first few articles may come easily to you, but after a while you have to really get creative when coming up with topics on which to write.
‘How To’ articles can be your bread and butter when you’re doing article marketing–once you start writing reader-centric articles that teach your readers how to do something specific, you’ll find that writing is easier and that you’re producing content that Google and publishers love.
Why Online Term Papers Are Not a Good Source For Educational Articles
0When you’re a newbie at search engine optimization, you are told that content is “king.” If you want to succeed at Internet marketing, you must have keyword-enriched information in the form of educational articles… the type of content Internet users are looking for. However, some people get mislead at the term “educational article.” Thinking that the content must be formal or academic, they may turn to an inappropriate source for their information… essay mills.
What are essay mills? Essay mills are sites that try to pass off college term papers as educational articles. These papers are often written by college students desperate to make money. However, things get shady because the content is meant to be used for dishonest purposes.
Yet, if you receive all of the rights associated with a term paper, why can’t it be used as an educational article on your site? Well, first off, essay mills are not organizations that can be trusted. And even though there are students that submit their own papers, there are others that try to game the system. They submit plagiarized content from other sources, such as websites, books or magazine articles. From there they try to piece together an ‘educational article’ that is original. But once your site is up, Google will know differently because of its duplicate content penalty.
With Google’s duplicate content penalty, sites that have content similar to another get a black mark with Google’s bots. This means they will be indexed lastly, even if the site is worthwhile in other ways. And, if it is found out that all of the sites educational articles are plagiarized, it’s possible the site could get blacklisted. When this happens, the site will not get indexed at all, even if it had been listed previously.
So, if essay mills are not an appropriate place to find your content, where can you find educational articles for your site? Well, if you don’t have time to write them yourself, you could consider getting educational articles from article directories. You will have to include the URL of the author, but in return, you receive high-quality content that should rank well in Google. Just make sure you use content that has the least number of visits, so you limit the possibility of the duplicate content penalty.
Another option could involve buying educational articles from sites that sell private label content. With this arrangement, you own the rights to the article, so you are not obligated to post any of the author’s original information. You can even put your name on the material if you wish. The only downside is if the content is distributed to a large group of people, you lose your SEO advantage. That’s why you will want to try to buy plr content where you are the sole owner. In the plr world, this arrangement is known as “exclusive rights.”
In conclusion, don’t get your educational articles from essay mills. It’s not worth risking your site’s reputation. Instead, use article directories, buy plr content or even better, write your own.