Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills.With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is

Getting traffic to your website or blog is the only way to make it pay, but not everyone who launches a website or blog has the money to spend on promotion. Good news. There's a promotional method that really works for attracting site or blog traffic and it's free, free, free. It's called article marketing and it is a sure way of raising a site's profile.

Step 1: Find An Article Directory

To get started, find a suitable article directory. Article directories are sites that have hundreds and thousands of articles and there are new ones emerging every day. Some are all-purpose, covering everything from family issues to healthcare, while others have a niche, such as computer advice or art. All of them are hungry for content.

With so many to pick from, choosing an article directory can be a minefield. To make it easier, look at the directory to see:

• how many authors there are - if only a handful, forget it and move on.
• how many articles there are - ditto; come back when they've got some content
• can the site be found on Google, Yahoo or MSN - if you can't find many links to the site, then no-one will find your articles either.

One of the best and most effective article directories I have used is EzineArticles.com. EzineArticles is easy to use and articles published on the site appear in the search engines very quickly.

Step 2: Start Writing

Once you've decided on the right article directory or directories, write an article. Bloggers will find that blog posts are a good starting point for a web article. If you're not a writer, there are plenty of writers who will whip up an article for a few dollars. Some will even help you get it published. The article you write or commission can be about almost anything related to the site, blog or business you are promoting. The ideal article should be short (say 300-600 words) and error-free, so remember to proofread and spell check.

Many article directories vet articles before publishing. Stick to the guidelines that are published on every site and approval should be a formality. Most article directories prohibit self-promotion in the body of the article. Direct promotion of a site, blog or business is reserved for the resource box.

Step 3: Work That Resource Box

The resource box is where article writers can put all the self-promotional information. Readers who have found the article useful are likely to click on the links to see what else a site, blog or business has to offer. Article directories typically allow up to three links in the resource box. A good resource box has the name of the writer or the person being promoted, the name of the business and the keywords that the site or business owner would like to promote. See the resource box at the end of this article for an example. Other resource boxes may link to a sales letter page (with the product name highlighted) and include a short elevator pitch and call to action.

Step 4: Submit Like Crazy

Once the article has been submitted to the directories the site owner has chosen, it's time to move the strategy to the next level. Article submission services extend the potential reach of an article, giving another opportunity to boost traffic. Like many article directories, article submission services allow people to upload articles for approval. Once the articles are approved, these services send them out to article directories, article groups, ezine publishers and website owners to be considered for publication. Two options for article submission are Article Marketer, which has free and paid options and Isnare, which is a paid service. There are also free and commercial programs to automate article submission.

Pros And Cons Of Article Marketing

The big question, of course, is whether submitting articles to hundreds of directories counts as duplicate content. It's hard to tell. Some of them end up in the sandbox after a while; others don't. Staggering submissions is a good way to avoid this. However, in my opinion, the advantages outweigh the potential disadvantages. With article marketing, sites can receive hundreds of inbound links in only a few days or weeks and thousands of people will be visiting the site that's being promoted. That can't be bad, can it?

Sharon Hurley Hall is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor, who has seen article marketing work for her. Sharon is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor who writes on freelance writing skills and writer promotion for InspiredAuthor.com. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit doublehdesign.com.

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Is your click through rate not impressive at all? Are you struggling to increase your conversation rate but can't seem to drive quality traffic to your website? Then, you need to energize your article marketing campaign. Here are the 3 huge secrets to help you do just that:

1. Improve your titles. If your articles are not being clicked on, there is a huge possibility that your titles are not that impressive because they are unable to stir attention from online users. To help you out, here are the elements of a great title: It must be keyword-rich, direct to the point, intriguing, and most importantly, it must communicate the benefits that it can offer to online users because people would like to know upfront what's in it for them.

2. Improve your content. If your click through rate is impressive but can't seem to convert readers to potential clients, I would say improve your content. They don't click on your resource box because they probably don't think that you are an expert on your field and have valuable information to share. Make your articles highly informative and targeted to the needs and demands of your online users. Make sure that your articles are well-written and your ideas must flow well so your readers can easily understand the points you are trying to get across.

3. Improve your resource box. To increase your conversation rate, make sure that your resource box is compelling, powerful, and extremely enticing. Make use of persuasive words that can easily move your readers to check on your website. Don't forget to include your name, your areas of interest, the problems you solve, and the link to your website. I also suggest using anchor texts instead of absolute URLs because they are far more effective.

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If you have tried writing articles and just didn't get the results you expected, add some of these high-performance tips for better results.

The first step in writing a high-performance article is writing a headline that captures the readers attention. Use words in your title that create curiosity and interest. I often use an online thesaurus for generating word ideas.

The next step is to keep your article's content consistent with title of article. One mistake article writer's often make is writing content that doesn't match the article title. If title of the article is about dog training tips and you then spend the article discussing the joys of having a dog, there is a good chance you will lose your reader before they finish the article. A key point is to stay focused on the main subject for your article.

I know it may sound silly but make sure you provide useful information. Often times I will start reading an article and quickly find the article isn't telling me anything useful and go on to the next article. It's important you provide useful information to your reader so they will continue to read the article.

Keep sentences short and clearly written. Hard to understand sentences will lose readers quickly. If in doubt, be sure to edit the sentence so it is easier to read.

Write personally. Use a personal tone when writing your article. Let your reader get to see your personality whenever possible. Just don't over do it.

Determine the goal for your article. As an article writer, you need to determine your purpose for the article. Is the goal to start building a relationship with your reader? Is is to have the reader sign-up for a newsletter? Determining the article's goal will help you craft your message in the article so you get a better end result.

In closing, I hope you find these high-performance tips useful. Article Marketing can be a powerful marketing tool if used correctly.

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Tyler Martin is a Internet business mentor who teaches people to build their online or offline business using Internet strategies.

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If you have a talent for writing, (and you do not have to be a Shakespeare), writing articles in order to spread the word about your product or service, or even an affiliate link can be an excellent method of promoting your online business.

Make sure the articles give out information which is relevant to the specific niche you are in, and are not just a blatant advertisement for your business. Indeed you will find that some article directories will not let you put in any links in the body of your article. The proper place to do that is in the resource box at the bottom of the article. This link refers back to your promotional web page which is again relevant to the subject of your article. Google does not like an article on dog training, for instance, linking back to a web page on cookery.

Articles are submitted to a variety of article directories, some of which will automatically publish an article, while others require a human review before acceptance. Submission can be done manually, one at a time, through an article submission program, or by using a paid submission service. I prefer this last method, as I can submit to a whole lot more article directories, and submitting them one by one takes up far too much time for me, time which would be better spent on business promotion.

Article submission is fine in itself, but it can become much more effective when it is combined with the proper use of an autoresponder.

This method starts with you loading up your article in your autoresponder, and each article must have its own unique autoresponder address, so you will need to be with an autoresponder service which allows this. You will find one service which does in my resource box at the bottom.

The next thing is to make a comprehensive list of all your articles together with those addresses. Use a spreadsheet to do this, as you can add the article description and a brief summary of the contents (or anything else) in as many columns as you require.

Put this list into your autoresponder, again giving it its own special address. Then you just use this address as your link on your website, or in your ezine, or even in forums. This way you only have to have one address in your advertising, but this address allows access to all your other articles, all of it running on autopilot.

Before you use this technique, make sure you try it out by logging in to the address yourself. You want any mistakes you have made to be picked up by you, not your customers.

Load up your own email address, and then try every possible thing you can think of that other people may also try. In other words, test the system thoroughly before you let it loose on to the general public.

Remember to use the autoresponder manual. There may be extra features in there that you did not know about, and which could be useful. All this time spent testing and tracking will pay off in the long run, as autoresponders, used properly, are one of the most essential tools of the professional internet marketer. In fact there would be not one person making a full time living off the internet who does not have an autoresponder service, and a lot of them use the same one. So if you want to join the big time gurus, don't go with a free autoresponder - use these when you only have a small list, and are not really interested in hitting the big money. Spend the small monthly charge and get a professional autoresponder service - it will repay that monthly fee many times over.

Peter Phillips

About the author
Peter Phillips is an accountant and writer living in Canberra, Australia
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Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills.With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is

Article marketing is a really profitable method of advertising your business. You get to generate leads that convert up to ten times better leads than from other sources. As a sales trainer once said people like to buy from people that they like, know and trust. If people read several of your articles and they like them there is a much bigger chance that they will buy from you than from many other advertising sources as they already trust you.

Here are my top article marketing questions that get asked all the time:

1) How many articles do I need to write to succeed?

This is a very important question. You need to be writing at least five to ten articles every day to succeed. If you are not doing this then it will be very unlikely that you will succeed. Life only begins once you have two hundred and fifty articles.

2) What is the one factor that will boost my article marketing results significantly?

There are several things that you need to get right to succeed with this method of advertising. However, the one thing that I noticed had the most impact on my results was to have an attention grabbing headline. If your headline is boring then nobody will read it.

3) Which article directories do I need to submit to?

When I first started online I was submitting my articles to most of the directories. This was very time consuming and I did not get the results that I wanted. When I tracked my articles I noticed that Ezine Articles performed much better than all the other directories combined. Now I spend all my time writing and submitting to Ezine Articles.

Are you really interested in driving massive traffic to your website?

Here's the answer:

Secrets Of Article Marketing - Download your free ebook now.

Mark Abrahams is a full time internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online.

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Anyone who has been involved with successful Internet Marketing for some time will to some degree be entitled to call him or herself a search engine optimisation expert. But like self-professed "experts" in any field it is wise to take the term with a pinch of salt.

To continue the culinary analogy, any "search engine optimisation expert" actually worth his or her salt will have kept absolutely up-to-date with the latest theories and techniques. These change on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

The importance of proper search engine optimisation for the small business web site cannot be over stressed.

Google is notorious for changing its algorithms, sometimes having disastrous effects upon the search ranking of sites which were hitherto riding high. Some of this moving of the goal posts has been very dramatic indeed. The main aim of Google and other search engines has always been to improve the quality of their search results. Therefore content is king, as they say.

The type of search engine optimization expert you want to avoid is someone who did a course in website construction and design which included a small component of SEO six years ago (or even one year ago) at their local college. This person may well design you a really pretty-looking website with bells and whistles agogo, but unless they are regular visitors to internet marketing forums and readers of up-to-date reports, their "expertise" will be way off when it comes to SEO.

It's quite atrocious when you see how much archaic, old and even "black hat" (semi-illegal and likely to get you banned by the search engines) tactics are used by these guys. A real search engine optimization expert is versed in the latest techniques, including article writing and submission, directory submission, blogs and forums, and the detailed optimization of web pages for keywords long-tail and otherwise.

A great deal of the time we can only guess at what the search engines are looking for in an optimal site on any given topic.

The main point is, the person who can make an educated guess is better than the one who is groping in the dark for an answer. It has been said (and may be true) that the only real search engine optimisation expert is a guy sitting in a locked room in the offices of Google, Yahoo or MSN!

For more about search engine optimisation and the small business web site have a look at http://smallbusinesswebsiteservices.co.uk/

Dianne Davies is a writer who has made her living from the Internet since 1999.

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A place for finding the Nuts and Bolts for Making Money Online with Affiliate Marketing Business Opportunity!

If you do article marketing, or even if you're planning on including this in your arsenal, the most important word for you to memorize is...Quantity!

Notice, I didn't say quality. Quantity is the name of the game if you're using articles to drive traffic to either a normal web page or a squeeze page. Now, quality is an issue in one sense. You want to deliver meaningful content to your reader because he or she will decide to click through to your page based on your content. Also, your article is your first impression.

The reason you need to go from quantity instead of quality is because of the way the internet works.

Think about it: How are people going to find your article? Not by going to EzineArticles and sifting through all the articles. People are going to find your article through a search engine. So, the more articles you write, the more chances you have of being picked up on someone's search.

Article marketing is long tail marketing, par excellence.

Well, if the name of the game is quantity, then how do you find five or ten topics to write articles about every single day?

Some of my resources for topics include

• previous articles on EzineArticles
• the fifty or so internet marketing blogs I subscribe to
• Internet marketing forums
• and, Google searches about specific issues.

I write five to ten articles per day religiously. The way I do it is this.

Before I go to bed, I sit at the computer and make a list of ten headlines for articles to write the next day. If I need any inspiration, I go to the above named sources. But I don't go to bed until I have my ten headlines written down.

I lay my list by the computer so I can find it first thing tomorrow.

As I'm sleeping, I think my subconscious mind must be working on my articles for me-using the headlines as a guide-because ever since I started doing this, when I get up the next day, get my tea, and sit down at the computer, I notice that the articles seems to just flow out of me.

I basically sit down and write until I'm done.

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Lee Cole is an successful internet marketer who can help you get your internet business up and running, and most importantly--profitable! To learn more, visit Lee's website!