As an article marketer, I appreciate the article directories. They serve as a intermediary to put my articles in an easy to access place where others can find them to read and to republish.
From a technical point of view this used to be a complicated thing to set up, but now due to the continuing improvements to Word Press and the availability of excellent plug in’s the creation and management of an article directory is easy to do.
I recently acquired rights to a great set of videos that walk you step by step through the process. The best thing about managing a directory site is that other people create the content for you. Instead of you having to rack your brain day in and day out to generate new content, you get others to post their content with you.
This brings the search engines to you and builds your sites authority ranking. You continue to put your own article on your site, and others do as well. Over time, it takes on a life of its own, and you monetize the site by way of ads you post on the site. Ads that Google determines are relevant to the content in your categories. It’s a great formula, and now one you can duplicate.
What’s even better is that you won’t need to invest an arm and a leg to get this going. In fact I bet you are blown away at how inexpensive this set of video are.
Do Your Internet Marketing Articles Meet this 5 Question Test?
If you ignore the five essentials to effective internet marketing article writing, you may as well not waste your time. Article writing is a powerful tool. When done well, it will attract a lot of eyes and back links to your web site. Do it poorly, and your results will be meager.
Ideally, it should let the “right” readers know the information in the article is for them, and it should intrigue them to at least take a look. The goal of a headline or title is to get the reader to read the first line. If they don’t, your article fails its purpose.
Specifically, you want to catch your ideal prospects attention. A too cute title may catch a lot of attention, but if the people attracted aren’t candidates for what you are selling, in the final analysis you are just wasting their time. So while you want to be provocative, focus on that which would be appropriate for your specific audience.
Once you have them reading your first line, make sure it’s powerful enough to carry them into the first whole paragraph and beyond.
A good internet marketing article is succinctly focused on one topic. That topic may have multiple parts, but they are all specifically tied to one idea. As internet marketers, that idea should be a single Keyword or Keyword Phrase.
People will search for articles in article directories by keyword, and so you want them to be able to find your article. When they publish your article, you want to get back links to your web site based on that keyword. Thus it is imperative that you decide specifically which keyword you are trying to rank for, before you write the first word.
It goes without saying that the keyword and the article should be directly related to the site you are referring people to, or again you would be wasting everyone’s time.
If possible you should include your keyword in your title. This will resonate with people who are searching for articles on your keyword. But don’t force it. Your primary objective is to get people to read your article. Including the keyword is a distinct plus, but not mandatory.
You want to use the keywords as often as possible within the article, but again don’t overdo it. Too many internet marketing articles are overstuffed with the keywords to the point that they don’t read well. So rather than trying to meet some artificial keyword density, concentrate on writing a readable article but do try to use your keywords wherever appropriate.
Provide your readers with value. If an internet marketing article is to get picked up and republished elsewhere, it will be because it caught an editor’s eye and delivered content worth sharing with their readers.
People respond well to facts, figures and statistics as long as they are not overwhelming. Anecdotes and stories that make a point enliven articles. Rather than adding a lot of adjectives to an article, focus on your verbs. Active verbs and a positive message are always welcome.
The goal of an internet marketing article is to drive people and robots to your website. Your resource box is therefore critical to the success of your article. If you are not allowed to include anchor text in the article itself, it is essential that you do so in the resource box. Repeat your keyword and link it to your target site. But do so creatively.
As much as possible, develop your resource box as a continuation of your article. If it flows as thought it were a continuation of the article above it, a larger portion of your readers will read it as well. And then be sure to include a call to action. Let your readers know what step you want them to take.
If you have been able to hold their attention from start to finish of the article, it is only logical that they will want to follow on to the next step, by visiting your web site, blog or take whatever additional step you desire.
If you write your internet marketing articles with these five questions in mind, you will be rewarded with lots of traffic and back links to your web sites.
—-
[Below is a sample of a resource box I will be testing when I post this article on the article directories.]
Article Marketing as it has evolved on the internet is a classic win-win-win-win institution that has become one of the backbones of the internet. There are four essential players in the article marketing game, all of whom benefit, each in their own way.
Like any market, article marketing is a business of supply and demand. There are end users, who get material from their local vendor who in turn gets material from their wholesaler, who in turns gets material from individual producers.
Unlike most markets, the transfer of goods in the article marketing arena is largely free. The end user wants free access to information. The magic of the article marketing model is that it has created economic incentives to all the parties to meet that demand.
There are many places online for people to get information. These include static web sites, blogs, forums, ezines, ebooks, etc. The producers of these sites, blogs etc are frequently monetizing their efforts with products and services they sell directly or on behalf of others or by various forms of advertising revenue.
Several of these, blogs and ezines in particular require a constant source of new material to keep their site fresh and to attract information seekers with the expectation that a certain percentage of them will also take a revenue producing action. The challenge for these venues is coming up with new material on a regular basis.
Their options are to write it themselves, hire it out or find a free resource of relevance to their specific niche of readers.
Article Directories have emerged to fill that role. They are the wholesalers of articles across a vast array of topics and specialties. They recruit article submissions from individual writers and group them in easy to search categories for the blog writer to search.
Most offer this service free of charge to the blog writers and anyone else who just wants to research a given topic. They make their money the same way most of the blog and ezine writers do. They usually have Google Adsense ads on their site as well as other advertising. They sometimes offer additional premium services for article writers and users as well, but these vary widely.
To be successful, article directories have found it necessary to be editors. They want their customers on both ends to benefit from the equation. To assure this they develop specific rules for the type of material they host on their site and editorial guidelines. These vary by individual article directory. Article writers must meet these standards to be accepted into the directory. This in turn assures a quality product for the blogger and their readers.
One of the most frequent editorial restraints is to contain blatant advertising. Most article directories have strict rules that prohibit advertising except in a section added to the end of the article called the Resource Box.
So who produces all this free editorially up to snuff material? What’s in it for them?
There are three primary motivators for the authors. Some are born writers who just need to write to express themselves. Or perhaps they are motivated to establish themselves as an expert in a given arena or niche.
Another major group are individual business people who seek to inform prospective customers about their product or service. In some cases they may share the desire to brand themselves as experts.
The motivation for most businesses lies in the utilization of the resource box. Most article directories allow authors to include two or more hyperlinks in this appendix to their article. These offer two major benefits to the submitting business. They can send people to your web site, called “traffic” in internet circles. They can also serve as back links to a specific page on their web site. These back links are helpful in getting attention from search engines and serve to help increase the targeted web sites ranking
As articles get picked up more and more bloggers and ezines these back links appear in more and more places increasing the relevance of the site in the eyes of the search engines. They are in some sense votes for the targeted web sites.
As importantly for many businesses is the traffic they bring as more and more people read the articles and go to the sites where a certain percentage will buy products or take other desired actions.
This entire arrangement is interdependent on each of the elements. The fact that is has evolved as an essentially free service for the most part is one of the marvels of the internet. The end user gets information, the blogger gets readers, the article directory traffic that they convert to revenue through ads, and the authors who get recognitions, traffic and search engine ranking. A win-win-win-win situation.
Today, we start a series on the most important way to build links and traffic to your web site, article marketing.
I will explain how Article Marketing works tomorrow, and then in subsequent posts explain the four things all articles must have, how to create an outline for your articles, easy ways to get your creative juices flowing, what to do before submitting to article directories, and some red hot tips on how to get your articles read, and perhaps most importantly, how to write a resource box that makes people click. I may even offer suggestions on what to do if you hate to write.
Article writing requires a bit of work and it’s like slow feed fertilizer. The results of article marketing take time to build. The plus of article marketing is that it does ultimately flourish and will generate an exponential growth in the number of back links to your site. And as we have demonstrated, back links matter. They matter even more when they are coming from a wide variety of places and grow over time.
The essential mathematics of article marketing comes from posting a single article with an article directory service. Once it is accepted there, you have a back link to your site from a generally high ranking resource. But even better, as first a couple and then many more people find your article and post it on their blogs, newsletters etc, you start getting back links from many different places. So instead of having one back link, you may now have six or sixty.
There are thousands of article directories, some of which are very large. You can post the same article to more than one directory, multiplying again the number of potential backlinks you can create for your self with one half hour of writing. Since these articles stay on the directories indefinitely, it’s possible that an article you write today could be published off and on over the next five or ten years.
A disciplined approach of writing an article a day or even an article a week can over a period of a year or two lead to thousands and tens of thousands of back links. That level of backlinks could put most people on the top of their respective niche even in highly competitive niches. And put them there to stay.
The best part of article writing is that it is essentially a free way of building your standings. Although as we will learn, there are some worthwhile paid services that can be real time savers.
One last tidbit for today. You don’t need to be a great writer to effectively use article marketing. So if the thought of writing scares you, don’t despair. The power of article writing is too significant to allow your lack of skills or fears to get in the way. We will discuss some options that will allow you to be successful without writing a single word.
Prices are accurate as of May 17, 2012 1:51 am. Product prices and available are subject to change. Any price and availablility information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of any products.
Certain content that appears on this site comes from Amazon Services LLC. This content is provided 'AS IS' and is subject to change or removal at any time.
Not Confident of Your Grammar?
Don't let concerns over Grammar hold you back. Learn a handful of key rules and solve 95% of your Grammar Concerns. Click below to see how easy it can be.
Doug Champigny
Lonnie Minton
Luca Di Nicola
Joel Osborne
Brett McEllhiney
Fred Lotgering
