There are many ways to get ahead in the cut throat world of internet marketing, but very few of them are easy and not all are ethical. The number of choices can be mind boggling at times. Ezines, newsletters, RSS feeds, Web 2.0 marketing and many more can all be effective, depending on your situation. However, very few offer all of the benefits that you get from article marketing. Read on to find out more.
Internet marketing is all about getting the best results for the least possible investment of your time and money. By writing good articles and submitting them to article directories you can drive significant traffic to your website. It is not the only way to do this, but few of the alternatives have so many benefits.
Search engine optimization
There is no better way to drive traffic to your website than by appearing at the top of the search engine rankings. While many internet users will ignore advertisements they will happily click through to search engine results. Advertising campaigns can of course be very effective, but they can be prohibitively expensive.
When you submit articles to article directories you will create backlinks to your website. The search engines will award you for these and you will will get a higher page ranking. Be careful though. Search engines can now recognize duplicate content so a unique version of each article article must be submitted to each directory for your campaign to be effective. Article submission alone may not help you to get to the very top of the search pages, but it will certainly increase your ranking.
Create direct traffic
By submitting articles to article directories you are giving websites free license to publish your articles. If you can produce quality articles that people want to publish and read you could find them appearing on hundreds, if not thousands, of websites. Each time a reader reads one of your articles there is a chance they will click through to your website through the resource box link, thus increasing traffic and sales.
You can make a name for yourself
The most successful internet marketers are well known in their field, or across the web in general. As an internet and article marketer you want to do the same. Try to become an authority on your niche subject and get your name known. If you are successful with this you will find that website owners will actively seek out your articles and be more than happy to publish them, rather than stumbling upon them by chance.
By submitting articles to directories you are already getting your name out there. However, you should back this up with other methods. Become involved in the online community relating to your field. Post helpful replies on forums, or comment on articles in blogs. You may find an opportunity to include a link to your site while doing this, but only do so if it is helpful, relevant and acceptable for that website. On the subject of blogs, you should set up your own. You are already writing articles so these can go in your blog, and you can also add posts including your thoughts, comments or smaller snippets of news when you want. If you engage with the online community in this way you will increase traffic to your website.
Long term gains
Once you have submitted an article to a directory it stays there, and if it is not time-specific it will be published again and again in the future. Bear this in mind when writing articles. Sometimes a newsy, topical article can be a good idea but often it is best to write articles that will have a long shelf life so they remain relevant in the future.
Your article can set up the sale
If a web user happens upon your website through a search engine link or an external link they may not be ready to make a purchase. With article marketing you can use your article to set up the sale. For example, if your article is giving advice on something you can give basic advice in the article while subtly giving the reader the impression that your product or service will provide the ultimate solution to their problem.
Article marketing is cheap
When compared to advertising or even to other marketing strategies, article marketing is very cost effective. It can be done for free if you make all of the submissions yourself by hand. However, even using a service or software to make articles unique and submit them to directories need not cost a lot.
So, if you are not already using article marketing to drive traffic to your website you should start now.
Showing posts with label submit articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label submit articles. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Secrets Of Effective Article Posting
Submitting articles to article directories is a proven way to attract more visitors to your website, give you a higher search engine rankings and, ultimately, make you more money. However, search engines and article directories are getting tougher on the articles you submit and how you submit them. In this article we give you some tips on how to submit articles to directories successfully.
Changes in the way search engines and article directories work in recent times mean that article marketers need to be a bit more savvy about how they go about submitting their articles. There was a time when you could write a good article, submit it to hundreds, if not thousands, of directories and watch your profits grow. These days it is not quite so simple.
The easiest way to get your article published on a lot of directories quickly is to use an article submission service. It is possible to do it by hand but this is a laborious and tedious task, unless you submit to just a small number of directories.
There are many article submission services available online, both free and paid, or you can invest in software that will do the job for you. These can be effective but there is a danger that article directories will reject your content if they suspect you are using an automated submission method. In a worst case scenario you could be banned from submitting to the directory again.
So, if you are using an article submission service check that their methods will not cause you problems with the directories. If you are submitting articles yourself, do not submit too many articles to any one directory at the same time.
Duplicate content
An even bigger problem for article marketers is that the major engines now penalize duplicate content. In the past you could submit an article to 100 article directories and the likes of Google and Yahoo! would award you for having 100 backlinks to your website. You would also be awarded when the article was picked up and used by other websites. However, this has changed.
The search engines can now recognize duplicate content. So, even if your article appears on 1,000 different websites you will still only be awarded for one backlink. You will of course gain traffic that accesses your website directly through the link provided with your article. However, this makes it much more difficult to use article submissions as a search engine optimization tool.
The only way to get around this is to submit a unique version of each article you write to each article directory. Again, if you only submit articles to a small number of directories you could tweak each article yourself so you have a number of different versions. However, if you are submitting to hundreds of directories this is out of the question.
It is not really known just how much an article needs to be changed to become unique. Some argue simply switching paragraphs within an article is enough, while others think that the text within the paragraphs needs to be changed too.
There are a number of possible solutions to this problem. Many article submission services have been quick to move to address this issue. As well as submitting your articles to multiple article directories they will also create different versions of each article for you or provide you with a tool for doing so yourself.
Alternatively, you could invest in some software that helps with the re-writing of articles. These are also known as article spinners and will automatically replace words with other words of a similar meaning. For example, the word 'small' might be changed with the word 'little' and so on. However, the software needs to be configured to do so manually. Others will simply change the order of paragraphs in articles. This can also be very time consuming and may not do enough to make the different versions unique in the eyes of the search engines.
One final option could be to get outside help. There are many websites such as elance.com and getafreelancer.com where you can post rewriting projects for professional writers. The quality of the work will vary but rates can be quite cheap.
It may be a good idea to try out these methods and see how they work for you. You will have to invest some money but it will be worth it if you find a workable solution to duplicate content.
Writing articles and submitting them to article directories can be as beneficial a marketing and SEO tool as it has ever been. However, doing it successfully is a little trickier than it was before. We hope the advice in this article helps you build a successful article marketing campaign.
Changes in the way search engines and article directories work in recent times mean that article marketers need to be a bit more savvy about how they go about submitting their articles. There was a time when you could write a good article, submit it to hundreds, if not thousands, of directories and watch your profits grow. These days it is not quite so simple.
The easiest way to get your article published on a lot of directories quickly is to use an article submission service. It is possible to do it by hand but this is a laborious and tedious task, unless you submit to just a small number of directories.
There are many article submission services available online, both free and paid, or you can invest in software that will do the job for you. These can be effective but there is a danger that article directories will reject your content if they suspect you are using an automated submission method. In a worst case scenario you could be banned from submitting to the directory again.
So, if you are using an article submission service check that their methods will not cause you problems with the directories. If you are submitting articles yourself, do not submit too many articles to any one directory at the same time.
Duplicate content
An even bigger problem for article marketers is that the major engines now penalize duplicate content. In the past you could submit an article to 100 article directories and the likes of Google and Yahoo! would award you for having 100 backlinks to your website. You would also be awarded when the article was picked up and used by other websites. However, this has changed.
The search engines can now recognize duplicate content. So, even if your article appears on 1,000 different websites you will still only be awarded for one backlink. You will of course gain traffic that accesses your website directly through the link provided with your article. However, this makes it much more difficult to use article submissions as a search engine optimization tool.
The only way to get around this is to submit a unique version of each article you write to each article directory. Again, if you only submit articles to a small number of directories you could tweak each article yourself so you have a number of different versions. However, if you are submitting to hundreds of directories this is out of the question.
It is not really known just how much an article needs to be changed to become unique. Some argue simply switching paragraphs within an article is enough, while others think that the text within the paragraphs needs to be changed too.
There are a number of possible solutions to this problem. Many article submission services have been quick to move to address this issue. As well as submitting your articles to multiple article directories they will also create different versions of each article for you or provide you with a tool for doing so yourself.
Alternatively, you could invest in some software that helps with the re-writing of articles. These are also known as article spinners and will automatically replace words with other words of a similar meaning. For example, the word 'small' might be changed with the word 'little' and so on. However, the software needs to be configured to do so manually. Others will simply change the order of paragraphs in articles. This can also be very time consuming and may not do enough to make the different versions unique in the eyes of the search engines.
One final option could be to get outside help. There are many websites such as elance.com and getafreelancer.com where you can post rewriting projects for professional writers. The quality of the work will vary but rates can be quite cheap.
It may be a good idea to try out these methods and see how they work for you. You will have to invest some money but it will be worth it if you find a workable solution to duplicate content.
Writing articles and submitting them to article directories can be as beneficial a marketing and SEO tool as it has ever been. However, doing it successfully is a little trickier than it was before. We hope the advice in this article helps you build a successful article marketing campaign.
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