Article Marketing - Discover 7 Secrets To A Prospect & Profit Pulling Resource Box For Your Articles

Article marketing, to be successful, requires the ability to create a prospect and profit pulling resource box. You can write an incredible article and if you blow the resource box you have wasted your efforts.

So here are seven secrets for creating a prospect and profit pulling resource box.

Secret 1 - NAY - NAY stand for Not About You. The Resource Box is not about you. So do not cram all your credentials and the fact that your mother really likes you into the resource box. This is not the place for a "virtual ego wall" where you get to display all of your accomplishments.

Secret 2 - It's all about the reader - The Resource Box is all about the reader and what they need next. They have read your article looking for information and/or a solution to a problem. Think in terms of what the reader might need next. And then provide them a way to get it.

Secret 3 - It's invitation time - you want to ask the reader to take an action that leads them to your website or blog to get the free bonus you are offering. In marketing circles this is called a call to action. I like to think of it as an invitation. An invitation has a nicer sound to it, and I even use that language in my resource box. For example - "for more tips and tools on how to write a great quality article I invite you to visit" and then you give your website address. You are not hard selling here, you are simply extending a kind invitation. It's a kind invitation for the reader to take the action you want them to take.

Secret 4 - Offer them good stuff - you want to offer the reader something of value for free. The days of offering a free newsletter and having people jump all over it are long gone. Nowadays you almost have to write a sales letter to get someone to subscribe to the free newsletter. So instead offer the reader something tangible, of high perceived value, then they can get right away. For example - "I'd like to offer you free access to two of my article writing templates. You can download them by going to and then you give the website link.

Secret 5 - At least one complete URL - a complete URL would be something like this (http://www.yourwebsite.com (). While it's nice to have anchor text because it looks cool you must assume that the website, blog, or newsletter owner that uses your article may not know how to use the html necessary to create anchor text. So by using a complete URL you are assured of having a clickable link in your resource box.

Secret 6 - Keep it short - It's really hard to believe that someone would do this, but I've actually seen a resource box or two that were almost as long as the article. Keep it short and sweet. Give your invitation remind them who is from and get out of there.

Secret 7 - At the end - I usually only mention my name at the end of the resource box, and then only to make sure my name and brand is linked in the mind of the reader to the good stuff they are going to get when they click through. It will usually look something like this - "From Jeff Herring - The Article Guy and GreatArticleMarketing.com" - Notice I said to just mention your name. This is not the place to attempt to prove you are the expert. If you have not proven you are the expert in your article, its way to late to try to do so in the Resource Box. In fact, if you have not demonstrated that you are the expert in the article, the reader probably will probably never make it to the resource box anyway.

I invite you to use these resource box secrets to strengthen your article marketing.

And now I would like to offer you free access to 2 of my Instant Article Templates when you subscribe to my free Article Marketing Minute, a 52 week audio/video newsletter on Article Marketing. You can get your instant access at http://www.ArticleMarketingMinute.com

From Jeff Herring - The Internet Article Guy & the Great Article Marketing Network

Dabbling in SEO Artistry

On July 14th 2006, on a whim, I decided to enter a SEO contest. At the time I really had no idea what this would involve.

The Ambatchdotcom Seocontest is 2 months old and surprisingly, at least to me, I'm doing fairly well.

The object of the SEO contest is to create a web site, or a page, optimized for the search phrase ‘ambatchdotcom seocontest' and to achieve the top ranking in Google for that phrase. The contest ends on October 20th 2006

On July 14th a search for ambatchdotcom seocontest returned no results. Today, the same search will show 941,000 results. Today, you can find my ambatchdotcom seocontest entry on page 1 in the third position. Not too shabby for someone just dabbling.

In my opinion, SEO is part science, part art, part luck and a lot of instinct.

After working for the first time at targeting a specific key word I have formed some opinions on best practices for SEO.

1. Know your topic. When it comes to a contest of this type, it's impossible to know your topic because the key word or key phrase for a contest is usually a meaningless term but that creates a challenge to provide content. Very similar to someone attempting to build a site around a subject when they have no real knowledge of the topic.
2. Once you know which topic you are going to cover, pick your target keywords. Do your research and look for niche keywords. There are many online services that offer keyword suggestions.
3. Determine your main target keyword and attempt to get it in your domain name. While having your keyword or key phrase in your domain name does not guarantee top search engine placement, it certainly holds an advantage.
4. Use meta tags effectively. Use the title, keyword and description meta tags to your advantage. Use your keywords in the title tag and description but avoid keyword stuffing as it can get you banned by some search engines.
5. Build content for visitors. Write your content for the people you are targeting first. Then go back over and tweak it with some appropriate keywords.
6. Fresh content. The search engines like fresh content so it's not enough to build a site and forget it. It's a perpetual job to keep your site dynamic and fresh.
7. Get backlinks. Organically, backlinks happen when other sites find your site to be a valuable resource and voluntarily link to it but with the sheer volume of sites on the internet, it's a hard climb to get those organic links. Submit to directories, exchange links with relevant sites and submit articles to get your site name out there and visible.

Personally I think that any webmaster doing their own SEO should attempt a SEO Contest at some point. I think it can be a valuable learning tool in really discovering what works and what doesn't on a level playing field. There aren't many other opportunities to target a keyword that has no competition.

Lisa Campbell is a participant in the currently running Ambatchdotcom Seocontest - you can see her entry at http://ambatch-dotcom-seocontest.com

How To Write Content

Content is everything if you are making a presence on the internet. Your most important content is your written word. Your written word tells who you are and what you are about. It is necessary in portraying you to your audience.

You will use your written word on your web sites, in your newsletters, in the articles you write and post, and not only on your sites, but on others as well. As you submit to ezines and article directories, blogs and other written word related publications, remember 1 thing - You are promoting yourself above all. Keep it professional and keep it real.

You can have other professionals write for you, yet, they are not you. You can professionally do it yourself by following the steps below.

1. Your opening is going to tell the purpose of your article. What are you conveying? What do you want your audience to think about, to learn or to perceive? Why are you writing this article? Are you telling a story? If so, break it down into small bits and provide your story. Are you addressing a problem that you can solve? explain how your article will solve the issue and then break it down into pieces.

2. Draft your article first. When you first start out, you want to really do the research, and know your stuff, so you can present your article accurately. Once your points are outlined, you can then fill in the content with your written word. You will find that your article will flow if you write in this style.

3. Remember, you are talking to other people. These people are all different. Keep you writing self explanatory and keep it simple.

4. Keep your paragraphs short. People tend to keep a better attention span when they are reading small blocks of content rather than large blocks. You want to keep your audiences attention.

5. Give yourself in your article. Tell your audience all in your article writing. Yes, the more you give in your article, the more your audience will want. it's called creating demand. It's called setting yourself up as the expert.

6. Be personal in your articles, give examples, personal and non personal. Like, I used to be scared to death of writing anything. That is true. Then someone showed me how to do it. Now I am not so scared any more. The same could be with you. There is nothing to be scared of and you definitely have something to give. Just reach inside and bring it out. See step 2.

7. Promote your articles benefits. What is this article going to do for someone else? That someone else is your audience. Let them know how you can help.

8. Resources are another thing you can give away in your writing efforts, and should. Show your audience where to go. You may send them to your web sites or others people web sites. Don't worry about giving away your audience. If they like you they will come back. Give them what they need and you are helping them.

9. Lay your article out with your most important content in the beginning. Then you can summarize in the closing.

It doesn't matter if you are a beginner of an experienced writer, if you follow these simple guidelines, you will have the ability to create effective and useful content for your audience. In essence, you will be helping your audience. Writing articles and submitting articles to various pages on the internet could be the difference between your success or lack of it. Write Articles and write them often.

To you success,
Randy Wood

My name is Randy Wood. I learned many years ago that life is everything you make of it. It is not necessarily fair, it is not always fun, but it is most definately what you make of it. So with that said, we have to choose the roads we are going to walk. We have to choose how we are going to handle what life brings our way as we walk those roads. We can either embrace life, or we can let it run all over us. I choose to embrace life, I choose to be strong. I choose to be happy and to learn and grow form my life experiences. I choose to: Live life with purpose and experience it.

Visit me at http://www.jrandallsweb.com and http://www.articlebayhome.com

Powerful Article Marketing - 4 Effective Methods to Accelerate Your Article Marketing

Article marketing, as millions of webmasters would agree, is currently the best website promotional tool that aims to drive huge, quality traffic to your website without the need to spend a single dime. As this marketing tool is easy to use and proven to deliver great results, it is currently the most used traffic-generating and advertising tool in the internet today.

Here are the 4 effective methods to accelerate your article marketing:

1. Quality. This is the most important element in your article marketing campaign. You have to make sure that all your articles are of high quality and well-written to increase your clickthrough rate and convince more people to widely distribute your articles online. As you know, the more people publishing your articles, the more inbound links you will be able to obtain for your website.

2. Title. Most new marketers ignore this element as they think that the quality of their articles is enough to stir attention online. This is but plain wrong and could be deadly for your marketing strategy. You need to understand that even before online users can check on your content, they would consider your titles first. If they are not intriguing and attention-grabbing, there is no way that your articles will be opened and read.

3. Optimize. Make your articles search engine-friendly so they will become highly searchable online. Download a reliable keyword suggestion tool to figure out which keywords are usually searched within you target niche and sprinkle them all throughout your content. Don't forget to include your main keyword on your titles too.

4. Publishing sites. Consider the page ranking and quality of traffic of article submission sites before you post your articles. Do not waste your time on sites that are not even indexed by Google as these cannot help you realize your article marketing goals.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Seven Excellent Tips To Generate More Web Traffic

Here is a list of seven tactics that you can employ to improve you search engine rankings. By way of example, a business that sells red Swingline staplers will be used for this article.

Find the right key words The most important factor in getting quality web traffic is to optimise your web pages for the correct key words. Getting the most sales is often a balance between search volume for key words and level of competition. Interestingly, the search term office space stapler ranks as well as red swingline stapler. Interestingly, the term red swingline stapler office space is a very popular search term with very little competition. The best strategy here would be to have a different page optimised for each of these terms. Use the Overture keyword tool and Google Adwords tool to research and identify your best key word phrases. It also pays to see what key words your successful competitors are optimising for.

Put your key word phrase in your title tag Forget about putting your company name in the title tag (unless it is a valuable part of the key words), it's a waste of words and will not help you rank in the search engines. The first three of four words in your title tag should be the key word phrase you are trying to optimise for.

Write a compelling description tag Title tags are for search engines, description tags are for humans. Spend time crafting a description tag that compels the reader to click on your listing. Come up with a great offer, use action words. Example: Get your own genuine red Swingline stapler here. Great prices, fast delivery, 12 month guarantee. 1000's sold around the world. As seen in the movie Office Space.

Use H1 tags An often neglected search engine optimisation technique is to put your key words in H1 tags on your page. This tip alone can drastically improve your search engine rankings. Similarly, the use of bold and strong html tags can emphasise a key word phrase withing the paragraph text where it may not be appropriate to use H1 or H2 tags.

Get quality one-way incoming links through article marketing As far as Google is concerned, link exchanges are just about dead. They can help to get you site spidered and indexed more quickly, but these day they add very little in terms of search engine rankings. A far better approach is to write interesting and informative articles and submit them to article directories. Make sure that you use the author bio/resource box to maximum advantage by using your key word phrase in the link anchor text, AND, by pointing the anchor text to the correct page. You home page may not be the best choice of pages for your selected key phrase. This will also ensure that more pages than just your home page gets indexed.

Get a decent key word ratio Aim for a keyword density of around 3-5% of the page contents. Try to weave your key word phrase into the page so that it reads naturally. Use headings and sub-headings that include your key words.

Use alt tags and description tags on images Key words used image file names, alt tags and description tags add to the key word density of any web page. They doesn't make a huge difference, but every little bit helps. In some product classes a Google image search may lead web surfers to your web site.

John Hacking is Marketing Manager for a Brisbane web design company

and Product Manager for a Brisbane SEO company. He now conducts Brisbane search engine optimisation training courses for web masters and small business owners.

Bum Marketing 101

Every once in a while, a marketing system comes along that is rather revolutionary. For people who are able to get in on the ground floor of these marketing systems, they can make a lot of money while they are still very lucrative. Eventually, these systems tend to get over saturated with people, especially if these methods are particularly easy to implement. There are times, however, when a type of marketing is available that will be around for a very long time. Bum marketing is one of these systems.

Perhaps you are somewhat familiar with bum marketing and you realize that it is something that you are going to be able to do for yourself. Even if you know the basics, you may still not be able to realize the level of success that some people have without implementing a few techniques. These particular techniques are not necessarily talked about in the open, simply because they work well and nobody wants them to be saturated. There are a few simple things that you can do, however, to really make your bum marketing efforts pay off.

Before we get into the tricks of the trade, so to speak, let me give a quick run down on what bum marketing is. It is actually a marketing technique in which articles are written in such a way that they rank well in the search engines for certain keywords. The keywords that they write for are typically known as long-tail keywords, a term which basically means a keyword phrase of three or more words. Because there is not as much competition for these long-tail keyword phrases, it is usually an easy thing for you to get an article listed at the top of the search engines if they contain those phrases. That's really all that there is to it.

The real secrets lie in the type of things that you can do to further promote your articles and to get them to the top of the search engine listings. Some of these things would include getting links back into the specific articles or even to a directory of your articles from well respected websites. Google absolutely loves Web 2.0 websites such as Squidoo, and digg.com. Although it may take some time to implement, the rewards are well worth the effort. All it takes is a specific game plan and a little inside knowledge of how to get this done.

If you are really interested in taking your bum marketing efforts to the next level, you certainly will want to find out all that there is to know about this amazing way of marketing articles. Just as with anything, continued growth of your knowledge is an important part in making sure that you stay ahead of the learning curve. As more and more people come onto the scene and try their hand at bum marketing, it will be more difficult for you to rank well for your articles. Don't allow their efforts to spoil your own. Continue to learn and stay ahead of the pack and you will continue to earn.

Check out the best Bum Marketing system ever developed at http://www.wikimanager.info