The Importance of Article Submission

Many website owners find the task of creating a website and then promoting that website a daunting prospect. This is especially true for anyone who is creating their own website for the first time. Although they may have great knowledge about their website niche, this is not enough when it comes to generating traffic to the site to get the information read. Unless a website owner is creating a site on an obscure topic, the likelihood is that there will be millions (or sometimes billions!) of websites to compete against for search engine traffic. This means that the site needs to generate the all important backlinks that play a significant part in many of the top search engines algorithms for high search engine placement. This is where writing and submitting articles to article directories can be very rewarding, but this is not the only benefit that article writing possesses:

- Aswell as the backlinks that are provided to a website, an article also provides an opportunity for an author to display their expertise in a particular field. The hope is that readers would then be encouraged to find more of your articles and to visit your website for further information that would be of interest to them.

- In all probability the visitor to the article directory who has decided that an article is of interest to them is reading the article because the article topic interests them. This means that any visitor that chooses to then visit a website in the resource box can be described as a highly-targeted visitor. It’s one thing getting a visitor to a site, it’s another getting a targeted visitor - they are already interested in the topic your website represents!

The level of success that one can achieve from article submission is largely dependant on the article quality and the value of the information it contains for the reader. The article topic will also determine the success and readership of that particular article. For example, it is likely that there is a greater audience for marketing related topics than there is for a niche like coin collecting. This is certainly not to say that an author cannot reap great benefits by submitting such an article. In fact it could be argued that an article written about a topic such as coin collecting has less competition within the article directory sites, allowing the possibility for a potential targeted reader to find it easily.

Article writing and submission holds benefits for all authors, no matter the topic of the article. Concentrating on the quality of an article and how informative it is for a prospective reader is important, but sitting down and actually giving article writing a go is essential for all webmasters in order to drive targeted traffic to a website.

Article submission should not be underestimated - it is one of the best promotional tools a website owner possesses.

Happy Writing!

The Importance Of Article Marketing

When most people think of advertising and promotion, they think about the expenses involved and how, for most new business owners, there isn't a large amount of cash sitting around for use in an aggressive marketing campaign. Luckily for online entrepreneurs, there are plenty of ways to gain free publicity for new websites. One such way is through article marketing. While this new method is steadily rising in popularity, many are still unaware of it's many benefits. But, the truth is that thousands of website operators, business owners and Internet traffic specialists have found article marketing to be a very valuable tool in their success.

If you've ever read an article on a website and noticed a brief paragraph, located at the bottom of the article, detailing the author's name and website, then you have already experienced the success of an article marketing. An entrepreneur prepares an article, which is centered around their niche and submits it to an article marketing submission directory. Other webmasters are constantly in search of new material for their website, so they often visit an article marketing submission directory for information. They may see an article and decide to add it to their site with the condition that the author is given full credit at the bottom of the feature. The credit will likely include the author's name, brief bio and link to their website.

For each individual who reads these types of articles, there is added potential for new customers. If they weren't interested in the noted specialty, they wouldn't be reading the article. So, the author has already reached someone who has a direct interest in their product or niche. Once they are finished reading the article, they are likely to visit the noted website if they found the information to be valuable. In addition, they may tell friends and family about the new informative website.

Article marketing submission services are free to writers, as well as webmasters. Consider that you are opening an Internet clothing store and need to gain interest, spread the word and find customers for your new business. Well, you are obviously a clothing expert since that's your chosen business, so write about it. Start by choosing a topic, write a brief feature, offer advice and submit the final copy to an article marketing directory. At the bottom of the article, always be sure to include a brief paragraph with your name, some information about your company and a link to your website. When other webmasters stop by the article marketing directory in search of news for their site, they may be inclined to use your work on their website. If they do, they will also include a link back to your site.

Article marketing directories offer website owners the possibility of increasing their traffic dramatically. Whether it's a new or already existent website, there is no better way to gain free publicity while gaining respect in your profession than with article marketing. If you are an expert in your field, it will show through in your work and people will be drawn into your site in search of even more useful information. Article marketing services are one of the most powerful new tools available to online entrepreneurs and, best of all - they are free!

Happy Writing!

The Four Elements Of A Nifty Marketing Article Like The Gurus Do It

You may think that the key to article marketing success is writing a good article. While this is true, there is much more to it than this. You will also need to consider your headline, your article description and your resource box. In many ways, these can be more important than the article itself.

The Headline

By far the most important part of your article is the headline. It is the first thing your reader or potential publisher will see. If you can grab their attention and get them to read your article you are on the road to success. Your headlines should only be between five and ten words, but these few words can be the difference between success and failure.

Write a few headlines, not just one. Also, once you have written a few headlines put them aside and come back to them later. You will then be able to better judge which is the best one.

There are a few tricks you can use to grab the reader's attention. One is to play to people's desires and offer a solution. Examples of this could be:

How to get rich in one month
How to retire before your 50

Headlines that offer to show a reader how to achieve something in easy steps also lead to a good click through rate. So, these could be something like:

10 top tips for getting rich quick
5 easy steps to early retirement

As you submit more and more articles, you will get a better idea of what is working for you both in terms of headlines and content.

The Description

Almost as important as the headline is the description. The description of your article will appear under your headline in the article directories. There is a temptation here to take your first paragraph and cut it into the description box when submitting to directories. This is a grave mistake.

While it is not as powerful as a headline, the description gives you another opportunity to sell your article so word it carefully. Describe what the article sets out to do, how it does it and hint at the great solution it is going to provide. A powerful introductory paragraph in the article may achieve all of this, but it is not always possible so generally you should write your description separately.

The Article

If you have grabbed the reader's attention with your headline and they are reading your article you are almost there. However, your work isn't done yet. The article has to be good, if not excellent. At least good enough to hold the reader's attention for its entirety.

In general, your article should either entertain or inform. Writing entertaining or funny articles is a skill most professional writers struggle at and is very hard to achieve, so you should aim to inform. Either tell the reader about something they want to know about, or tell them how to do something. Also, write about something you know about. "How to" articles are particularly popular. If you can show a reader how to complete a task in 500 or so words you are on to a winner.

When you are writing the article, keep it simple. There can be a temptation to use flowery language but this is a definite no-no. Keep your sentences short, your words simple, and avoid complex grammatical structures. One trick is to read the article aloud to yourself when you have finished. It it sounds good to the ear and flows smoothly it should also read well.

The Resource Box

Ah, the resource box. The forgotten child of article marketing. If you get someone to read your article it is a fair achievement. So do not scupper your efforts by writing a poor resource box, as so many people do. The whole point of the exercise is to get people to click through to your website, so your resource box content is key.

If you wrote a good article related to your website or product your reader will already be interested so you have a lot of the work done. The text in the resource box should include your name but for the most part should be about the reader, not about you.

You need to tell them why they want to buy your product and how it can help them. Remember, you are offering the solution to their problem. Also, be sure you can deliver on your promises. Do not offer something you can not provide. Finally, it can be a good idea to include a plain address for your website as well as a live link.

So, when you are next preparing a marketing article be sure to give each of the four steps the attention they deserve.


Happy Writing!

Target Your Advertising With Free Articles

You need to take advantage of targeted advertising, frequently to help make your online business profitable and successful. Targeted advertising means that you are advertising primarily to those who may actually purchase your product or service and those with a genuine interest in what you have to offer. You only want to advertise to those that may already be interested in what you have to offer instead of spending your advertising budgets on trying to reach everyone. One way to achieve targeted advertising is to use free reprint articles or custom written articles that will ultimately reach your targeted audience.

A lot of times when a new tv show comes out on tv there is a target market that the tv program is shooting for so they also search for advertisers who would fit with that audience. Also along with the target audience often times the show will be tested with the target audience and other audiences long before its even allowed to be shown on tv to make sure that they know what market to advertise to or that the show would even be successful. Also often times when the show has been on for a little while they will do studies to see who watches the show and advertising and then will adjust the show and marketing accordingly.

Why have advertisers been doing this for years? Because it is shown to be effective and cost efficient. Billboards have long shown to be very ineffective and expensive. A billboard advertises to everyone that drives by it instead of focusing on a target audience.  It would be silly to advertise products targeted towards women during cartoons, it would also not make sense to advertise children's toys during the overnight hours when most of the children are sleeping. Advertisers want to advertise to those who may actually have an interest in their product or service.

How all this can be applied to your online business? You need to start hitting your targeted audience with your advertising in order to find true success online and offline. One easy, effective, and inexpensive method of doing this is through free reprint articles. Free reprint articles are articles that you write and then have distributed in ezines and newsletters. You write the article offering information that the reader will find useful or entertaining, and the hope is that the reader will then use the author’s resource box at the bottom of the article to visit your website. A distribution service can help you get one of these free reprint articles placed into dozens of ezines and newsletters if the article is well written. You will include a small text box at the bottom that offers information about yourself and a link back to your website.

These free reprint articles will go out to all of these ezines and newsletters and the publisher of each of those will decide whether or not to use your article. This is where the targeted marketing comes into play. A publisher will determine if the article is relevant to his or her subscribers. If the publisher decides that it is relevant, the publisher will include it in their next publication. This is a very easy and effective way to reach your targeted audience. It is also relatively cheap considering that all you have to pay for is the distribution service if you write the article yourself.

Some people do not feel comfortable with their own writing or simply do not have the time or energy to do the writing. If you are one of these people there are always ghostwriters for hire who will do the work for you. You can then publish this work as your own, with your information in the resource box and the link back to your website. Ghostwriters know that you will be placing your name or a pen name in the article as the author, and they agree to surrender to their client's any and all copyrights to the article.

If you want to reach your targeted audience in an easy, inexpensive, and effective manner, then consider the use of the free reprint articles to reach your potential customers. Whether you write the articles yourself or pay a ghostwriter it will be a worthwhile investment. Even paying a ghostwriter and the distribution service, you will still be getting more bang for your buck than if you were to simply place an ad that is targeted to everyone. Remember, these ezines and newsletters that carry your articles will be going to people who are already interested in the topic that you deal with. Get started today and watch the new customers roll in.

Happy Writing!

The Future Of Article Marketing - What 2011 and 2012 Reserves For Article Marketing

Before I get into the future of article marketing, let me first talk about the past history of article marketing. In fact, let me go back even further. Over the last few years, as the internet has made many people millions of dollars each, people have tried to find easier and better ways of making that money. For example, when email marketing became popular, people began to abuse email marketing, sending millions of unsolicited emails daily, raking in large fortunes doing so. Now it is practically impossible to do that, and it is even more difficult to be an honest email marketer.

Next came advertising – when pop up and then pop under ads came out, many people made fortunes advertising using them, then they became overused and their effectiveness fell apart. The same thing has happened with the pay per click programs – my opinion on those right now is that the people making the most money with ppc programs are the ones who are selling templates for web sites!

Another area of incredible profits over the years has been search engine marketing – taking different measures to get your web site into the top ten for a particular keyword. The search engines have done an incredibly effective job of eliminating junk and computer generated content from the top ten results.

Now, people online are often looking for good, original content, since they cannot computer generate it and make it pass for search engine worthy content. Enter article marketing. Many web sites are willing to take your content, personally written by you, and use it as content for their web sites. Because this was an incredibly easy way to get around the content problem, article directories popped up like crazy over the years, with their peak proliferation in 2006. Literally hundreds of article directories popped up, trying to get people to submit content to them.

The result of that has been interesting. Most of the web sites that were created for that purpose, are in my opinion, only good for creating multiple back links to your own web sites. Of course, since that is highly important, the web sites continue to grow with original content. But what has happened is that a few article directories have kind of risen to the top of the article directory chain, achieving pageranks of 6 or 7, creating an interesting place in terms of search engine optimization techniques, and an easy way to get your own url listed on a pr 6 or 7 page. Even more important than that, I think, the opportunity to have your personal content on the top ten pages of search engines, due to the page ranks of the directories to which you submit. This means that, without any optimization on your own web pages, you can achieve top ten rankings for your own content, and of course you have links back to your own web page on each of these article pages.

Now, why do I think that this is so interesting for 2011 and 2012?  Because the article directories that have page rank 6 and 7 are somewhat careful about the content on their web pages.  What this means is that the only way for someone to play in this game is to write their own great content.  That means that you are on equal ground with everyone else out there, except perhaps the person who is willing to pay a team of people to write their content – but even this content would probably not be as effective as great personally written content.  You see, writing compelling copy is a skill that is learned, and I think that most internet marketers will not be willing to go through the process of teaching that skill to paid workers.

I think that another thing that is going to be very interesting for 2011 and 2012 in article marketing is that since article writing is such a laborious task and cannot be reasonably automated, that only the hardest workers of all will be involved in it.  This means, in my opinion, that it cannot become abused, at least not with the highly ranked article directories that are responsible for most of the profits derived from article marketing.

I think that for 2011 and 2012, if you are willing to work hard and write consistently for a few hours a day, you can achieve incredible wealth through article marketing. Now, the income itself will not come directly from the article marketing – it will come in whatever field of internet marketing that you are promoting and driving traffic to in your article marketing.

So, for example, you might be a list builder – I think you can grow huge lists online in 2011 and 2012 using article marketing. Maybe you are a pay per click marketer – I think that 2011 and 2012 are going to be great years to send traffic via article marketing to your ppc web sites, and I think article marketing can generate huge returns for you their. I think that anything you do online that requires traffic can be maximized in 2011 and 2012 using article marketing.

Happy Writing!

The Clash Of Titans: Article Directory Owners Vs. Automated Article Submission Services

Article marketing has been considered a useful method of promotion on the Internet, since the very early days of the Internet. By writing an informative article, writers have been able to get their sales message read by millions of online consumers, through their resource box that follows their articles. Until 2005, the whole point of article marketing was for the purpose of attracting huge numbers of readers as a result of the articles being published in ezines that had a large reader base.

A New Kind Of Article Marketing For Link Popularity

In 2005, Jason Bradley, owner of Article Dashboard, released his free article directory software. Websites that use his software are commonly referred to as AD sites.

During the same time frame, people began turning to article marketing in droves, based on its promise for building link popularity with Yahoo, MSN, and primarily Google. Most people who jumped on the bandwagon in 2005 to endorse article marketing for link popularity purposes promoted a very limited view of this promotional technique.

Their thoughts went along the lines of "the only purpose for article marketing is link popularity." There was no other role for article marketing, they said. And since one only needed to type enough words to get a link into an article directory, the most common recommendation was that articles should only be 300-400 words in length.

It was also commonly recommended that most article directory owners do not review the content submitted to them, so it was not important that the article made sense or pleased the article's readers. After all, the recommendation being made was not for the possibility of generating traffic from articles; it was only for the purposes of influencing the search engine algorithms, which are not capable of actually reading articles for grammar or understanding.

People flocked to this new kind of article marketing, and they were more concerned with "quantity than quality" – quantity of links that is.

Software Developers Rallied

With the mass deployment of websites under the Article Dashboard software, and others since, programmers jumped through hoops and developed new article distribution systems that relied on computers instead of people for the distribution process.

Soon, these programmers had systems in place to mass submit articles to the new breed of article directories. They told the new article directory owners that if they would add a simple script to their website, then the submission service would populate their directories with article content.

Hundreds of directory owners flocked to this new kind of article distribution system.  Early on, people who used article marketing to promote their businesses were elated. They were getting links all over the place.

The Realities Of Article Directory Management Sank In

In September of 2005, one company bought nearly 200 domains and installed the AD software on all of them. By May of 2006, their operation had never actually gained a foothold in the profit sector of the Internet, so they sold their domains to another company. In early 2006, I had documented a list of 180 websites owned by this operation. On a recent review, I was unable to locate a single one of these 180 AD sites still running the AD script, and most were offline completely.

In order to fully understand the job of the article directory manager, the manager must manually approve or reject every article submitted to an AD site. Many AD directory owners realized that the approval process was a long and tedious affair, especially when they were receiving hundreds of articles per day from these automated distribution systems. For testing purposes, I had set up my own AD site and subscribed to receive articles from these automated systems. I let go the approval process for one week and returned to find 800 articles waiting for approval. It does not take long to get overloaded with articles that require manual approval.

After only a few months of operation, many Dashboard sites stop approving articles for one of two reasons: 1) it took too much time to manage their article directory website, or 2) the amount of income generated from the process did not match the time requirements of the directory.

The Clash Of Titans

Things really began to change in the AD directory ownership game a few months into the project. Directory owners began to realize that in order for them to profit from their article directories, they must do something that brings readers to their websites and encourages loyalty from their site's visitors.

Since most article directories rely on advertising to drive their revenue stream, the directory owners had to do something that the other directory owners were not doing. They had to distinguish themselves from the masses.

The AD owners who have survived the early explosion of AD sites have generally taken the attitude that they should focus on "quality over quantity".

This one step has set the goals of the software developers' article distribution systems and their customers (quantity over quality) in conflict with the best interests of the article directory owners (quality over quantity).

Directory Managers Began To Implement New Submission Rules

Early on, many of those article directory owners who were intent on survival took actions to reduce the garbage flowing into their directories. Directory managers noticed trends in the articles that consistently failed to measure up to their new standards.

The owner of Invisible MBA, an educational article directory, told me that he had to review ten articles to find one he wanted to use. He also regularly complained about people who did not follow even the simplest instructions about appropriate content on his website. He eventually resorted to banning 70% of the people submitting articles to his website, including the automated article submission services, because they simply could not follow his category guidelines for submission.

His whole issue is a common complaint among the article directory managers. They insist that writers should take the time to appropriately categorize the articles they submit. Since it takes so long to approve articles manually and to select the correct category, directory managers have resorted to deleting articles instead of categorizing those articles for the writer.

Article Dashboard, Article Garden and many others have taken the step to prohibit the submission of articles that only point to affiliate websites. Article Express had gone one step further to prohibit affiliate links, even if the affiliate programs are advertised from the writer's domain.

Across the board, directory owners have stomped on Private Label Rights (PLR) articles. When article directory managers began to realize that their websites housed dozens of copies of a single article, each of which had been signed by different people as the stated author, they realized that they had a serious quality problem. They instinctively knew that those PLR articles created a trust problem with their readers. When one article has been claimed to have been written by twenty people, it makes one wonder how the website owner can claim to have a quality website. And if the trust factor has already been raised as an issue, why would the reader want to trust anything else on that website?

Lee Asher who owns Articles-Galore and a couple of other AD sites was one of the first to come down hard on software submissions to his website. His guidelines state in no uncertain terms that if someone uses software to send articles to his websites, the person will have all of their articles removed from his website.

Some AD site owners have implemented minimum word count guidelines as a measure to break some of the junk article peddlers. After all, the people focused on writing articles for link popularity are driven by the concept of 300-400 word articles. I have seen word count restrictions that include the minimum of 500, 600 and 700 words. 80% of what is submitted to my AD site does not even have the number of words I require.

Proper Category Placements Is A Consistent Issue For Article Directory Managers

Article directory owners want to impress their readers and the search engines. But, they need the properly categorize articles primarily for their human readers, who are looking for specific information on their website.

In order to help their website visitors, the directory managers frequently update their category arrangements. For example, on my AD site, I provide several well-defined subcategories for the health category. In the cancer subcategory, there is a wide range of cancers that needed their own child categories. Since the AD software only shows 30 articles per listing page, and since there is one writer who has written more than 400 articles just on the topic of mesothelioma, it made sense to subdivide my cancer category so that it was not an advertisement for only one writer.

One of the main problems with the auto-submission software is that the software does not accurately address the up-to-date category hierarchy for each article directory. This creates a real quality issue for the directory owner and managers. In order for the directory manager to stay true to the formatting of his or her directory, he or she must either complete the category selections for the auto-submitters or delete the articles submitted through them. Manual deletions take as much time as manual approvals, unless the manager has to choose the category for the article, then it takes longer.

Article Marketing Still Works For Those Who Care About Quality Over Quantity

If you still like article marketing for its ability to get your business seen by ezine readers, then it is as effective as it has always been. If you only like article marketing for its ability to influence your link popularity, it can still be effective, if you do it right.

It is true that those automated article distribution services can get your article to a lot of websites, but on a percentage basis, how many of those submissions are getting approved?

For my own use, I use my own article distribution service to reach ezine publishers. And for mass directory submission, I prefer to submit articles to the directories by hand, because hand submission permits me to get the category right every time, which in turn permits my articles to get approved more often.

In the end, it is a karma thing – if I treat the directory managers right, they will treat me right by approving more of my articles. Since it is not uncommon for me to spend six to seven hours to write an article like this one, it makes a lot more sense for me to spend the extra time to get a wider reach for my articles, by honoring the desires of the more substantial article directories.

Happy Writing!

The Best Ways For Writing A Great How-To Articles

There is no end to the subjects you can write about and you can use any style you wish. However, it has to be something that people will want to read. "How to" articles are very popular with both website owners and readers and can be a great way to get your article marketing campaign underway. Basically, the purpose of a 'how to' article is to explain to a reader how to do something.

If you are using article marketing to help drive traffic to your website you will need to come up with ideas for articles that people will want to publish and read. The quality of articles found on article directories can vary significantly so it is important that yours are among the best available for your article marketing campaign to be successful.

So let's get started. When you are writing a "how to" article remember that you are the teacher so write in an authoritative tone. You are sharing your expertise with someone who may have little knowledge of the subject at hand. So keep your writing style simple and your instructions clear.

Of course, you will have to have a good knowledge of how to do the task yourself before you can think about instructing anyone else how to do it, so stick to what you know. There are many possibilities. If you have experience in networking you could write a 'how to' article on how to set up a router at home, or if you love cars you could write an article on 'how to service your car'. There are endless possibilities for 'how to' articles, in fact you are reading one right now.

Also, you must start at the beginning and work through the task step by step. Sometimes it may be beneficial to use bullet points to help give the impression that it is a step by step process. Alternatively you can link the steps with words like 'next', 'and then' or 'now'. If you are new to writing the bullet points option might be best for you as it keeps things simple, and helps you avoid complex grammatical structures.

As you write, re-read your text every few paragraphs, and try to read it from the reader's point of view, assuming they know nothing about the task at hand. As an expert on the subject it can be too easy to make things over-complex because the task is second nature to you. Try to imagine you are doing it for the first time and instruct the reader accordingly. Going back to our previous example, will the reader actually know what an ethernet cable is, or what a router is for that matter?

If a particular stage in the task is complex you may want to repeat the instruction, or ask the reader to check their progress so they are sure they have followed your instructions successfully.

With longer articles it is important to do this regularly so the reader does not lose track. Summarize what they have done so far, tell them what should have already been achieved and ask them to check that everything is as it should be. If a reader finds that the project does not look like what you have described, they can then retrace the last few steps and see where they went wrong.

If you work through your article in this manner you should be left with a clear, concise 'how to' article that takes the reader through each step of the project to completion. Read it again, at least twice, to make sure that it is well written and that instructions are clear. Wrap up with a concluding paragraph congratulating the reader for a job well done.

And finally, the icing on the cake, the headline. This does not necessarily have to be done at the end. It can be done before you write the article but you may find that headline ideas will come to you as you write your content. Be sure to spend some time perfecting your headline as this can be the difference between the success and failure of your article.

Happy Writing!

The 3 Mistakes That People Do In Article Marketing

Here are 3 of the most common mistakes made in article marketing.

Mistake #1 is what I call marketing resistance. Some people hear that word ‘marketing’ and they just kind of pucker up. They get all tight inside. 

“I can’t market! Marketers are used car salesmen or people on the internet who say ‘Buy my new product today or your family will starve.’”

I don’t think I’ve seen anything exactly like that, but some of you are laughing out there or smiling because you’ve seen things that are close.


That’s not what I mean by marketing. Again, that definition of marketing that I titled the call with and started the call with is – Article marketing is simply getting your expertise in front of as many eyes as possible in as many consumable forms as possible.  Another way of defining marketing is seeing it as simply letting other people know what you do. That’s all it is!

Marketing is letting other people know what you do.

There are lots of ways to do that with class and integrity that can be congruent with who you are. You know the way I approach things in my programs is that not one size fits all. One of the things that I’ve been told I’m good at, and I think people are right, is that I’m pretty good at meeting people wherever they are in their business journey, in their internet journey – meeting them where they are and helping them move forward. So it’s not one size fits all.

Mistake #2 is believing there’s only one way to let people know about what you do. Some people who make that mistake get very very wed to how they see it, to how they do it, to their way, to ‘the’ way.  That’s understandable. People get territorial and invested in things and that’s ok. I’ve always thought there’s lots of ways to do things, so there’s lots of ways to market your articles to get your expertise in front of people.

Mistake #3 is inconsistency in marketing your articles or getting your expertise out there.

Most people, when it comes to marketing anything, do what I call ‘marketing a la carte.’ Marketing ala carte is waiting until things get bad, you’re feeling desperate, and you just grab something from the marketing menu and do it. You throw some money at it, hoping it will work.

No, no, no, no, no.

I’ve got a pop quiz for you tonight. What’s the most important piece of a jigsaw puzzle?

Now the answers I often get when I ask that question are things like ‘the straight pieces,’ ‘the corners,’ etc etc. ‘The solid colors.’

Now all of those are good answers, but they’re not the best answer because the most important piece of a jigsaw puzzle is the box top, because there is the blueprint. To be consistent you need a blueprint. You need something that you can do over and over again with success.

Inconsistency is part of being human. Back in graduate school and days after when I was playing racquetball two or three times a week, we had a little saying among us. “Consistency is the key.” You could go along and play well for a few minutes, and then play horrible for a minute.

So consistency in marketing, especially in article marketing, is to write regularly. If you’re going to be serious about this and really use article marketing to build your business, you want to write and submit two articles – “Oh my gosh, is he going to say a month? A week? A day? What?” – a week.

Two articles a week. That gets the fresh content out there and keeps you in the flow.

Happy Writing!

Smart Marketing - Submit Your Articles To Article Directories

There are a lot of benefits of submitting your own articles to article directories but before we go into the benefits, what actually are article directories?

Article directories are simply database websites that collect, compile, sort the articles to their own categories and make these articles available to the public. The public can then read these articles for free or reprint them based on certain guidelines.

There is countless number of article directories nowadays. Most of them are offering free membership to authors to submit their quality articles.

In short, this should be good news to webmasters too, who are looking for content to share with their mailing lists, as these article directories provide a great one-stop resource to deposit and find articles.

Now, if you are an author, you shouldn't just write articles and keep them to yourself if you want to get tons of readers to read them.

You want to get your articles distributed across the net. One great way to do it is by submitting your articles to various article directories.

Let's see why you should submit your articles to these article directories:

1. You will establish yourself as an expert in your area.

For example, if you are a doctor specializing in cancer treatment, you could write 500-word articles about mesothelioma or breast cancer and how to prevent them. The more you write, the more exposure you'll get and people will look at you as a knowledgeable person in your area.

Some article directories list top contributing authors and when people see your name among the top, indirectly and subconsciously, they'll have a perception that you know what you talk about.

2. You don't have to pay for advertising anymore.

Web publishers and ezine owners are hungry for fresh, quality contents. Simply give them what they want.

Where do these publishers look for articles? Many will find them from article directories.

If you write good articles, these publishers will be more than happy to forward your articles to their mailing lists. With a single article blast, you could potentially reach tens or hundreds of thousands of readers for free.

Article directory owners, at the same time, are also actively marketing their article directories. This means your articles go along with their marketing campaign as well.

3. Your articles can be your viral marketing tools.

There are article directory owners who partner with other webmasters to distribute articles to many other websites. You submit one article to a directory and that same article appears on many other websites at the same time. This technology is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). If you didn’t know yet, the power of RSS is simply amazing. Big websites will potentially pick up and post your articles on their sites.

Some webmasters will pick up your articles and forward them to others, who forward them to others again. Soon, you'll discover your same article has been published on hundreds of websites within days. It's that possible.

4. You can generate massive traffic to your website.

Search Engines love article directories due to their contents and, often, established directories receive massive hits from Google and Yahoo. You could piggyback the traffic received by these directories by depositing your articles on their databases. Those who visit these article directory websites will potentially read your submitted articles.

Just make sure you have a website to promote and you've already placed a link back to your website in your signature file at the end of all your articles.

5. You can generate sales even if you don't have a website.

If you are an expert in your area, people will read your articles and listen to you. Now, if you refer your readers to any product you recommend, your recommendation won't look like a sales pitch to them anymore. It simply is a solution to their problems, but be very careful with the way you recommend products in your articles. Most article directory owners don't like blatant advertisements in the articles.

Here's the best part. If you don't have a website, guess what? The article directories will be your websites. Your articles will be hosted on these article directory webservers for free.

To get website visitors to contact you, leave your phone number, email address or any special instructions to contact you in your signature file.

To sum up, the 5 reasons above are a few good ideas on why you should submit your articles to various article directories. You will discover more benefits once you get involved in article submission actively.

In case you are looking for websites to publish your articles, below are a few Online Article Directories you can visit.

www.BigArticleDirectory.com
ZapContent.com
www.EzineArticles.com
www.GoArticles.com
www.iSnare.com

Happy Writing to Smart Marketing!

Submit Article 101: Get Free Publicity With Article Marketing

If you are looking to gain exposure and increase traffic for your website, there's a terrific new way to spread the word about your new spot on the world wide web. A submit article directory is one of the best, free ways to promote your business. The bottom line is that not everyone has the advantage of being able to afford a large marketing campaign, print or television advertising.

If you've ever been browsing through a website and found an article with a brief paragraph at the end, which shows the author's name and a link to their website, then you have already experienced the success of how to submit an article in exchange for free publicity. An internet entrepreneur prepares an article, which is centered around their niche and submits it to a submit article directory. This process begins to work when other webmasters visit the submit article directory in search of articles for use on their own websites. Everyone wants interesting content for their website and this is a great way to find it. They may see this article and decide to add it to their site with the condition that the author is given full credit at the bottom of the feature. The credit will likely include the author's name, brief bio and link to their website.

For each individual who reads your article, there is added potential for new customers. If they weren't interested in your specialty, they wouldn't be reading the article in the first place. So, you've already reached someone who has a direct interest in your product or niche. Once they are finished reading the article, they are likely to visit your website if they found the information to be valuable.

Submit article directory services are completely free for writers, as well as webmasters. Consider that you are opening an internet collectibles store and need to gain interest, spread the word and find customers for your new business. Well, you are obviously a collectibles expert since that's your chosen business, so write about it. Select a topic, write a brief feature, offer advice and submit the final copy to a submit article directory. At the bottom, always be sure to include a brief paragraph with your name, some information about your new company and a link to your website. When other webmasters stop by the submit article directory in search of news for their site, they may be inclined to use your work on their website. If they do, they will also include a link back to your site.

Submit article directory services provide the potential for a large amount of increased traffic and exposure for a new, or existing, website. There is no better way to gain respect in your profession than by being knowledgeable about what you do. If you are, it will shine through in your work and people will be drawn into your site in search of even more information. Submit article directory services are one of the most powerful new promotional tools available to online entrepreneurs and, best of all - they don't cost a penny! It's true what they say - the best things in life really are free.

Stop Working for Google and Start Making Google Work for You

You need traffic, and Google can give you traffic. There are two ways that Google can send traffic to your site: an expensive way and a way to get traffic for free. I'm going to show you how to make Google give you traffic for free.

You don't want just any traffic, you want TARGETED traffic. For those not familiar with the terminology, targeted traffic refers to clicks to your website from people who are actually interested in the topic of your site.   Your marketing will be much more effective if your clicks are targeted.   Here is an example of targeted marketing. Imagine a salesman who is trying to sell dental chairs.  He puts together a flyer describing the great benefits of his particular brand of chair, and he decides to give the flyers to people.   Which group of people do you think will respond better to his flyer - a group women at a scrapbooking convention, or a group of dentists at an American Dental Association meeting?   It's a no brainer!   But better yet, what if he went to a seminar called, "How To Start Your First Dental Practice From Scratch." These guys are already in the mindset to buy dental chairs. That’s targeted traffic.

When I started my first online business, I went straight to Google Adwords.   This is one of the fastest ways to get targeted traffic.   Basically, you pay Google to have your ad appear on the right side of the browser.   You do this by bidding on keywords.   When someone types your keywords into Google, the ad appears.   Just go to Google and type anything into the search box.   If you look on the right side of the screen, you will see little three-line ads.   You probably didn't even know these were ads.  Not only are they ads, but people are paying every time you click on those ads.  This is the perfect kind of targeted traffic because people are actually searching for your topic.

So when I started my first Adwords campaign, slowly but surely I developed a targeted marketing campaign that was sending 40 to 50 visitors to my site.  These people were ready to buy what I was selling.   And they did; but at what price!  I was spending $80 per day in advertising. Way too much! I was only making about $100 in sales per day (and not that each day), so after subtracting advertising costs, my net income was only $20 per day. If I could only get traffic without paying for it, my yearly income would increase from $7,300.00 per year ($20/day x 365 days) to $36,500 per year ($100/day x 365 days). By now you’re probably wondering how you get free targeted traffic – well I'm going to tell you in the next few paragraphs.

When I realized how much I was spending on advertising, I started to research methods of getting free targeted traffic; often referred to as search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. If your site appears on the first page of results for a Google search, then you get free traffic. Not only that, it is targeted traffic because someone has just typed in the phrase or keyword related to your site. So how do you get on the first page? In order to understand this, you need to know a little about how Google ranks their pages. It all comes down to one principle: Google wants to provide high quality search results, so they want to rank relevant links higher than irrelevant links. One of their methods of determining relevancy is to count how many other websites are linked to your site. These are called "back links." The assumption is that, the more links to your site, the more relevant your site must be.

Armed with this knowledge, I went out and bought some links. You may not know this, but there are actually companies that will allow you to buy a link on their web pages. I bought one link for $20 per month, another for $75 per month. It was much cheaper than Adwords, but it didn't get me ranked any higher, and it didn't get me much extra traffic. Two links was just not enough links to rank me higher on Google. What I needed was a way to get LOTS of back links. Then I heard about an intriguing idea: article marketing.

Article marketing is simple. You write an article, you put a link to your website at the bottom of the article (in the author information area). Then you post your article to an "article site." That's it. For every article that you post, you get a link to your site. And not only that, it's a targeted link because the content of your article will be related to the content of your website. It is best to post to as many article sites as you can. Every time Google sees a new targeted link to your site, it will rank you a little higher. There are literally hundreds of article sites and they are all looking for fresh content. Post your article to as many as you can find. Presto! Now you have tons of back links. That is article marketing. It's that simple. And it's free.

At first, I manually posted to about seven article sites. This was fairly time consuming. I immediately notice a few extra hits to my site. But in order for article marketing to be cost effective to me, I needed a way to post to hundreds of article sites quickly and easily. Then I heard about article submission software. Basically, this software has a list of article sites in it and it guides you through the process of mass posting your article to multiple sites. So I posted the article to about 200 sites. Bam! Now my site is ranked #2 for a certain keyword combination. This is effective search engine optimization. This is article marketing.

That's it. Now you know how to make Google work for you. You no longer have to work for Google by paying for Adwords. Plus you can contribute a helpful article to the internet and make tons of money doing it. Put article marketing to work for you today. Write an article, post it, make a link, and make more money!

Ten Benefits For Having Your Articles Published Through E-zines

1. You will be known as an expert on the topics you write about and this endears potential customers to you before they even visit your website. In fact, this is 700%-1000% times more effective than regular advertising. There is no better way to “pre-sell” your prospects than article marketing. This will also give you and your business extra credibility which will help you competes against your competitors.

2. You will build brand equity for you, your web site, your business and even your expertise by submitting articles to e-zines. Prospects and customers will begin to have in mind what you can do for them.

3. You get extra exposure if the e-zine publisher archives their e-zine on their site; especially blogging is so common today. People want to read the back issues before they make the decision to subscribe. The more ezines publish your articles, the wider your market is on the internet. Remember, there's no such thing as people just stop by in front of your online shop, in this case, your website.

4. You'll gain people's trust and increase your credibility. If they read your article and like it, they won't be as hesitant to buy your products and services or they will at least sign up your e-zines. Nothing is better than getting pre-sold traffics through your articles; this sure will increase your profits.

5. Create a free viral marketing for you by allowing e-zine publishers to publish your articles in their free e-books. Since people give them away, your author resource box at the end of the body of each of your articles acts as an advertisement for your business will multiply all over the internet.

6. Free ads barter trading by getting an article-exchange joint venture deal run your joint venture partner's articles in your own e-zine, and then they run yours in their e-zine as an exchange. This benefits both ways.

7. You could buy ads space in other e-zines that don't publish your articles and find customers that you may have not been able to reach before, every article being published in the e-zines is like casting a wider net to reach new customers and traffic that would have never found your articles or website before.

8. Your article might have chance to be placed on publisher's home page. If they publish each issue on their home page, this will build link popularity for your website. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) “Link Pop” strategy by definition, the more links your website has by other sites, the greater importance bestowed upon your website when major search engines rank your site. Having articles in publish in many e-zines help you build great link popularity; link popularity builds traffic to your website.

9. Build VSP (Virtual Sales Person) and place them in as many e-zines as you can submit to. Your articles act like your sales person who will sell and do marketing for you. To have a successful business, you have to leverage your work in your business.

10. Another great way to multiply your income is by getting paid by people who want to hire you to write articles and books for them, or even ask you to speak at seminars.

Should An Article Directory's Page Rank Concern You?

Everybody knows that Page Rank is important. It indicates the content volume of a site, and it also proves the site's popularity, or how many external links it has pointing to it.

We all strive for the highest Page Rank we can muster for good reason. Having a high ranking means traffic, and traffic means more sales potential.

Which is why we write and submit articles. Placing articles on your site increases its relative content volume, and submitting the articles with a bio box creates external links pointing to your site.

It's all about exposure! The more we have the more profit we make.

Simple!

But then the plot thickens . . .

Site Popularity doesn't come from having your links just anywhere. You see, there's a method to the madness that brings it all full circle.

To achieve a higher Page Rank through external links, you need to put your articles on sites that have an equal or higher Page Rank than yours does.

But does this apply to Article Directories?

If you're one who submits articles manually and are under time constraints, the quick answer would be yes, it does apply.

You have only so much time to get your articles into sites that will bring you the quickest exposure you can get.

However, when we look at Page Rank for Article Directories in these times of rapid fire article submission software, services and scripts it becomes hard to judge the validity of the every day statisics.

Some Article Directories of late have appeared out of nowhere one week, and the next have well over 1,000 articles already submitted to them. After a month's time, some have even reached the 5 to 10 thousand article mark.

Now considering that Google adjusts a site's Page Rank every three months, an Article Directory could show a big fat "0" Page Rank one day, and after Google makes their adjustments, could climb to a PR4 or PR5 the next.

So, thinking logically, the only time an Article Directory's Page Rank should concern you is the day after Google makes its adjustments.

And even then, that would still only matter if you're in a time rush to get quality links to your site and manually submit to 5 to 10 of the best known sites to do it.

So the answer is twofold . . .

For those who submit their articles manually, yes, current page Rank for Article Directories should concern you.

But for the rest of us, what should matter most is that, when you submit to every possible site you can, you're helping to establish more Article Directories with a higher Page Rank than ever before!

This can only bode well for everybody.

Six Reasons Why You Should Jump Into Article Marketing

If you are working to become a successful online entrepreneur then you have probably already tried to increase traffic and generate sales through search engine positioning and pay per click advertising. Have you also tried article marketing? Article marketing is the strategy of writing articles related to your business and publishing them on other websites and in the e-zines of complementary companies with a link back to your site. This form of online promotion is a very effective way to build traffic and boost sales. Below you will find the main ways that article marketing can benefit you.

1.  It is your best way to get known as an “expert” in your field. Why should someone buy from you and not from one of the thousands of your competitors that are also online? The few lines that you write in your “about us” section of your website may not be enough to set you apart from the others. However, if your potential customer sees your name on well-written and informative articles appearing on several websites around the Internet, then she will regard you as an expert in your field. The more you publish, the greater your recognition will be and the more your reputation will be enhanced.

2.  Informative articles build trust in your ability to provide a good product or service. If you are selling online your most important asset is to be seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy. When one of your articles is selected by another publisher and placed on a website or included in an e-zine, that publisher is in effect endorsing you. This kind of endorsement will impress the readers of those articles and they will feel more confident in doing business with you, especially if your article is published in an e-zine or on a website which they already respect.

3.  Your articles help to “pre-sell” your products and services. It is the quality of website traffic that counts, not necessarily the quantity. The best kind of traffic you can get is from people who have read one of your articles, and have liked what they have read. These web visitors come into your website with an eagerness to know more and are much more likely to buy something from you then someone who comes onto your site “cold” or without any introduction to your ideas.

4.  Article writing is a great way to generate content for your e-zines and your own website. Although you can look at article marketing as an outreach activity designed primarily for publication elsewhere, you can also use these articles in your own newsletters and on your own website. Keeping in touch with your customers and clients through a regular newsletter is an important part of doing business online. However, you need a steady flow of good material to really be successful. If your articles are good enough to be published on someone else’s website, then by all means publish them first in your own newsletters and on your website.

5.  Articles published on other sites help to build one-way links to your website. Link building is one of the keys to making a website successful, but, as with traffic, it is the quality of the links that matter, rather than the sheer number. Each time one of your articles is placed on another website, you will get a link back to your site. These are one-way links because you did not have to trade links to get them. Usually these links come from pages with fewer outbound links than the standard link pages where your link is usually placed when making a reciprocal arrangement. One-way links coming from pages with few outbound links help to build Page Rank more effectively than reciprocal links.

6.  You can generate a lot of money from articles that are published elsewhere. I am conducting an online business from one of the most unlikely locations on the Earth, Albania. Despite this handicap, I have had people call me up on the phone and go on to order thousands of dollars’ worth of services. All of this has been the result of articles about website promotion and search engine optimization which I have written and published over the past few years. If I can do it from Albania, think of what you can do from your place.

I hope this helps you in your Article Marketing Campaign

Reap Benefits When You Submit Articles For Niche Marketing

Niche markets are small specific markets. Individuals or businesses are grouped together for niche marketing if they share similar interests or needs. For instance, females who play golf can be considered a niche market. Reaching as many people in the same niche is necessary to making your small business work. However, if you are an online business start-up, finding your target audience may be challenging in the beginning.

One way to quickly finding your target audience is if you submit articles to article directories as a way of marketing. People reading your articles on a niche topic and who clicks through on the author’s resource box to your website are likely to be your targeted audience. If you are female but don’t play golf, you would probably not be reading an article that teaches on getting the perfect golf swing.

However, a female that does play golf is more likely to read one with a topic that says “How a Female Golfer Can Improve Her Distance”. As you can see, finding your prospective customers in this manner reaps much direct benefits. A good marketing strategy is one that involves focusing your articles on sharing information whilst your site (via a winning sales letter) does the job of converting the targeted audience to clients.

It is important, therefore, that when you submit an article, you should look for article directory sites that will be visited by your niche market. If the article directory site is a general one, then ensure that you submit your article to the appropriate category.

Writing articles entails some knowledge, but you do not have to be an expert writer. Your article should be focused on solving an issue or problem for your reader. For article topics, think of common questions that are likely to be asked regarding that niche business. Using keywords that are easily identifiable by your niche market within your articles will further ensure that your audience can easily find your writings.

Compared with other forms of marketing, writing articles is almost free. You may find some small fees associated with publishing, but they are nothing compared to the high cost of placing ads or doing mailing promotions. Thus, website promotion through articles is a good idea especially if you, as a small business owner, have a limited marketing budget to begin with.

Writing and submitting articles for niche marketing may seem a tedious exercise to first-timers. But after you get the hang of it, marketing via articles can be a really easy and effective way to promote your small niche business. What is also highly rewarding is that you can build your credibility through the content you share. Thereafter, as you submit more and more quality content articles for the same niche market, traffic to your site will steadily increase.

Questions And Answers About Article Marketing

The following article is one of a series of articles which focus on Article Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing. All of the articles are based on real experiences and research done over twenty years as a personal and business coach. They are also written in response to questions which I have been asked as well as address common challenges that people have with affiliate marketing, article marketing, internet marketing or running an online business in general. I sincerely hope that you find the following information of value. One idea, one tip, one clue can make all the difference.

Article Marketing - Your Answers To Questions On Article Marketing

Article marketing is probably the most effective list building and link building strategy in existence. Article directories allow you to include a resource box for every article you will submit. Inside this resource box, you could include a link to your website and specifically to your newsletter subscription form. If you submit just one article to 100 article directories, you'd immediately receive 100 back links to your website. There are thousands of article directories on the 'net today!

Now, let us say you submit, for example, 5 articles to a hundred directories, you'll get 500 back links easily! The best part about this strategy is that quite a number of article directories have high page ranks. We're talking about PR4, PR5, and on occasion, PR7 websites! Having a link to your own website in a website which has a high page rank would give a significant boost to your own pages' search engine standing!

All seems terrific with article marketing, but as with everything else, there are growing concerns as to its real value.

Let's take a look at five of the most common questions which are asked about article marketing...If I submit the same article to many article directories, won't it violate a search engine's policy against duplicate content?

No, it won't. Since we're dealing with high ranking websites, the search engines would assume that the submitted content is their original work. This is the reason why a lot of article directories are pretty confident about the articles they display. The problem that they encounter, really, is with regards to the credibility of their services.

They don't want to be known as a repository of junk content, that's why they have outlawed the posting of PLR articles as well as articles full of affiliate links.

If you always submit quality, informative content that readers are looking for, you will never have a cause for concern.

Does this mean that I could submit articles which I have already posted in my own web pages?

You need to take care here. The search engines will assume that the higher ranking websites are the originators of the content, your web pages would be distinguished as duplicates, and this could possibly lead to the de-indexing of your website or, at least, that particular article page. You wouldn't want this to happen.

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Affiliate, Article and Internet Marketing in general isn't as easy as many would have us believe. I fully understand (through my own experiences) that it is a lot easier said than done. However, you are here, right now, because you have a desire to improve your business, grow your business, and be more successful. These articles are here with the sole intention of helping you to make the whole process a lot easier.
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Can I submit as many articles as possible to as many article directories as possible?

Yes, you could! In fact, this is very much advised, to build up your link popularity and secure for your website a great page rank.

However, please bear in mind that search engines, and Google in particular, become quite wary about a website that suddenly experiences a great increase in the number of its back links. It is advised that from the outset, you decide how many articles you can submit and at what intervals, then stick to it. Consistency is the key here.

Does article marketing really work?

Yes, definitely, article marketing does work! If your article's page views remain in low levels, ask yourself 

• Is your article title compelling or intriguing enough to want to read the whole article?
• Is the actual content of your article interesting enough? Does it cater to a wide audience?
• Is your article informative enough to consider recommendation?
• Is your article readable enough to give your audience an easy time in digesting the information you want to share?

These are the factors that contribute to low page views. Doing some necessary editing to correct these problems will dramatically increase the number of times your article will be viewed.

Additionally, some article directories really attract a few visitors only. But the popular ones like www.ezinearticles.com , www.goarticles.com, www.articledashboard and www.isnare.com should give you hundreds of readers in a month's time.

How sure can I be that my article and resource box will be kept intact by people who will use it in their own websites or Ezines?

Unfortunately, you can never be sure. This is why you have to run your own check from time to time. Search for unique phrases in your article, and click on the results. Determine if the webmaster honored your resource box. If he or she did not, you could ask them to include the resource box, or you could file a complaint with the article directory so that they themselves could act on the matter. As always, Persistence and Vigilance are the k

Pointers When Aiming to Earn From Article Marketing

Article marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing and advertising these days. Through such an initiative, businesses and companies are able to convey messages better to intended customers. The effectiveness and usefulness of article marketing efforts these days cannot be really gauged. But for sure, it is quite obvious and very much apparent that writing articles with the aim of selling is very much yielding favourable results for businesses.

On the side of the companies, article marketing initiatives can really be useful and effective in the sense that such efforts are truly instrumental in bringing about more income and money. Consumers are likely to be persuaded better if they are able to read articles about products and services. The popularity of article marketing among firms has been constantly high, a clear indication that indeed, article marketing is truly working and is giving out ample amounts of earnings and income.

On the side of writers, article marketing is posting significant opportunity for earning more money. There is no wonder why there are thousands of copy writers from all around the world who are swooning to write article marketing outputs for paying clients and companies. There are also firms that are directly hiring writers as part of their marketing teams for such purposes, while most small business owners and individual entrepreneurs are opting to write article marketing pieces themselves.

If you are writing article marketing content, it would be helpful if you would be consider the following tips on how you can make your article marketing output truly effective and revenue generating.

• Make sure the article marketing outputs you are producing are fully packed with useful and interesting information. As always, readers, in both online and in traditional print media, are always looking out for copies that are interesting and are very much resourceful. If you would be able to disseminate or share still unknown or not overly emphasized data, the better. Across the Internet, readers are usually scouting for data that would be helpful and most advantageous to them. They are usually neglecting sites and articles that are not in any helpful and informative enough for them. When writing an article marketing output, be as concise, entertaining, interesting and informative as well so that readers would take heed and be persuaded to buy the product you are selling. 

• Bear in mind the difference between writing article marketing outputs for traditional print media and for online sites. Be reminded that what could be effective in conventional newspaper prints could never be as effective when directly adopted or used in online purposes. You might be wondering about the difference. To put it simply, online articles need to be written significantly shorter. However, no important details and information should be missed out. Make online article marketing copies as full packed but as short as possible. When writing online, always remember to be concise and straight to the point. Talk directly to consumers and avoid flowery and wordy explanations. Online readers do not always have enough time to spare reading very long articles so strategize to keep them engaged on your short articles.

• Create a really impressive and interesting article marketing title. Like in any forms of writing compositions, titles are the main summary and gist of the entire content. Titles are composed of a few words and phrases that are strategically put together to draw attention and orient the readers about the particular and specific form of content. Titles make or break articles. Good and effective titles are arousing readers' interest, while ineffective ones put even the best content to waste as readers would more likely ignore them.

• After writing the article marketing output, it would be advisable if you would strategically aim it to intended readers. You should adopt and implement schemes so that the articles would reach the readers to whom you have written the articles for. It would be beneficial to you if you would use article directories. To do so, you would have to submit your outputs to popular Internet-based article directories. There are many established and popular article directories operating online these days, including goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com. buzzle.com, web-source.net and articlealley.com. 

• Cross-reference your article marketing outputs. To do so, you would have to put and include links to other articles and sites within the article. Placing hyperlink that would automatically redirect readers upon clicking is most interesting and preferred by online readers. You can also redirect readers to your other articles and Websites. This is one way of effectively promoting your own articles. 

• Make an e-book of all your helpful and interesting articles. This procedure is just like compiling all your other articles into one folder. This is a great form of information dissemination especially if you intend to distribute such articles massively online.

Quality And Keywords: How To Strike The Perfect Article Balance

Writing the perfect article for submission to an article directory for marketing purposes is all about striking the right balance. You need to provide web publishers and readers with well-written, entertaining and informative content. However, you also need to be keyword savvy so that your articles will do well in searches in both the article directories and on the major search engines. But which is more important?

Without a doubt, good content should always take precedent and the major search engines are finding more and more ways to reward good content on the web, while penalizing keyword heavy content that holds little value for readers.

However, that is not to say keywords should be abandoned altogether. They are still vital for good search engine optimization and article marketing, but they should be used with carefully.
We have all run a search on Google or Yahoo! and clicked on a result only to be presented with a pointless, barely readable article that is stuffed with keywords. In 99.9 per cent of cases the immediate reaction is to click away from such a page as quickly as possible.

The point here is that whoever published this page effectively used keywords to get a high search engine page ranking and get visitors to the page. However, the poor quality of the page's content means that the visitors are lost immediately.

Therefore, the secret is to find a good balance. With a little work you can produce an article that reads well and has enough targeted keywords to help with SEO. In general, keywords should never go above a 2 per cent density. So, if your article is 500 words long, you shouldn't have more than 10 keywords.

Also, it is not about how many keywords you have, but where you place them. Above all, the keyword should appear in the headline, the description, the opening paragraph and the last paragraph. These are by far the most important. The remaining keywords can be interspersed with the main content at any points you choose and where it reads well. If this is done well, the reader won't even realize that there are keywords in the article.

So when you are writing article marketing content, you will first need to decide on a subject you wish to write about and the keywords and keyphrases you want to use. Researching these keywords well is vital and there are many tools available online to help you with this. In general, your keywords should match the words a potential reader who is interested in the subject of your article might type into a search engine.

Your first priority when writing an article is to create something that will keep readers attention and that flows well. For this reason you should forget entirely about keywords at the outset. Write your article but do not worry about where they will appear in the text. Although often they will find themselves into the text naturally as you write.

Once the article is written you should edit it to make sure it reads well and achieves the purpose you intended. In general, an article should be informative or entertaining. When you are happy with the article you can then worry about inserting the keywords. Sometimes you will find places where they will slot in naturally with the flow of the articles, while in the other cases you may have to change the wording a little. However, do not leave keywords interfere with the structure, meaning or readability of the content.

Look over your  article carefully at least once to make sure all is in order.  Ensure that there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Sometimes, as you reread your article you will often see more opportunities to subtly work in a few more keywords without disrupting the article.

Now, you have an article that will serve you on two fronts. It has the good content to get it noticed and published by web publishers and it has the keywords needed to draw the attention you need to both the article itself and your website.

There are no guarantees that your article will be appearing on the first pages of the search engines within days, or perhaps ever. However, if you maintain these methods over a period of time you will find that your articles will begin to bring the traffic you desire to your website.