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Posts Tagged ‘articles’
Monday, January 9th, 2012
One tool that has helped many new bloggers and article writers is to create a writing plan. Some people call it a publishing schedule. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s a useful tool.
Your writing plan is a pre-scheduled list of blog posts or articles that you plan to write over the next month. It’s best to put them on your calendar so that you don’t push them to the side. Put them on the calendar and mark them off your list as you write them.
So what details should you include in your writing plan?
First, note the date you want your article or blog post to be published. That’s important because if you want to publish it to coincide with a particular event you have planned, then you’ll have to write it a few days before you publish it. If you wait until publication date, your article won’t be as strong and you may find that you don’t have the time to complete it.
Secondly, include your keywords. What keywords will you target for that content? That’s important because this tells you how you will write the article and to an extent how you will publish it.
Next, include a one sentence summary of your article. What do you want it to say? What’s the primary message? If you can summarize the article or blog post in one sentence, then you have clarity. That sentence could go on to be your opening sentence or thesis statement for the article. Then all you have to do is write the article and publish it.
Focus is the name of the game. If you have a writing plan, you’ll be more focused and you’ll be able to produce more content at a faster pace.
Tags: articles, blogging, online marketing, writing
Posted in Business Writing | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
When it comes to building an online Web business, or putting together a Web marketing plan for your off line business, it isn’t difficult. It takes time and money, both of which you have in limited quantities. But you can take what you have and build a solid Web marketing plan. Here is a template you can follow – a 5-point template that works for any business.
- Your website – Your website is the hub of your online business. Make it look good, fill it with great content, and make it user friendly.
- Start a blog – Let’s face it, you can’t really run a Web business today without a blog. It’s a proven fact that updated websites get better search engine traffic than static websites. So build a website and add a blog.
- Develop a social media presence – It doesn’t matter where you spend your social media time except that you go where your target customer is. Choose a few places that are easy to manage and spend a few minutes each day monitoring and engaging through social media.
- Write some articles – Article marketing used to be about mass submission. Today it’s more about putting out unique content with a few content partners. Not only can it build your reputation, but you can build links to your web properties as well.
- Provide great customer service - You can do all other things right and still fail online if you don’t provide good customer service. You do want your customers coming back, don’t you?
There’s your 5-point plan for online marketing. It works no matter what business you are in.
Tags: articles, blogging, online marketing, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Article marketing is a mainstay of Internet marketing. It’s been around since the earliest days of the Internet and Web-savvy marketers have been very effective in using article marketing to drive traffic to their websites and in closing the sale. But recently, article marketing has taken a huge turn – for better and for the worse.
Google slapped the article directories hard, so hard that you might not want to keep putting your articles there. They may work and they may not. But there is actually a better way to go about marketing your business and your website these days.
The 2011 way to market yourself through articles is to distribute them through other channels. Try HubPages, Google Knol, and Squidoo Lenses. Or find websites within your niche that publish articles. Even niche-related blogs.
Articles are still good marketing tools. But distribution channels change, and the methods that article marketers use should change right along with them. If you want to be successful at article marketing, study your niche. Whose doing what? Where are they publishing? What are they publishing?
Don’t ask those questions to follow the trends. Rather, ask those questions so that you can move ahead of the trends. Then, write your articles and send them to the right places.
Tags: article marketing, articles
Posted in Article Marketing | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
If you’ve been paying attention to the Google Panda update, you’ve noticed that EzineArticles – the largest article directory online – was hit and suffered a huge traffic loss. That’s a doggone shame. But what is even more of a shame is the article directory’s response to the update.
Chris Knight says he agrees with Google’s update. So do I. But he boasts about EzineArticle’s quality guidelines post Panda. Here are the changes the article directory has made to its quality guidelines and what you’ll have to do to get your articles approved there.
- Match the author name in your resource box with the byline
- Limit your links to 4
- Deliver on the article title
- Limit reference material within the article
- Properly format your articles
- Keep the resource box short (15% of total article length)
- Maximum keyword density of 2%
In an age when most serious SEOs have given up on keyword density, that last point seems rather strange and out of place. I understand all the other guidelines and agree with them. Perhaps EzineArticles is saying it won’t publish articles that exceed a certain percentage of keyword density because it wants to control spam in its directory. But this guideline sends a signal that keyword density is important. I would not walk away with that impression. Google has more than 200 criteria for making ranking selections. No one, not even EzineArticles, knows all of them, but I’m reasonably sure that keyword density isn’t one of them.
Tags: article directory, article marketing, articles, EzineArticles, keyword density
Posted in Article Marketing | 2 Comments »
Sunday, March 27th, 2011
I don’t read Michael Martinez much, but I trust that he knows what he’s talking about. I believe this because every time I do read him, I walk away with new insight. Such was the case recently when I read his thoughts on how to get quality articles for your website.
The gist of the article, and sorry if I ruin the punch line for you, is that you should write them yourself. After all, if you can write an e-mail requesting 20 links, he says, then you can write a blog post for your blog. If you can write a guest blog post for someone else, then you can write 20 blog posts for yourself. I guess I never thought about it that way, but it’s true.
It’s become fashionable in SEO circles to talk about link building as if link building is the most important thing in the world. In fact, many SEOs believe that it is. But I don’t. And I’m pretty sure Michael Martinez doesn’t.
Here’s a litmus test for you: Try building links to a site with no content on it and see what happens. Build thousands of links. Go out of your way to get as many links as you can, especially high PR links from relevant websites. Next, write a blog post every day for a year and don’t spend any effort building links to it. Which site do you think will have better search engine rankings? If you said the site with content on it, then you win a new toaster over (just kidding, but you’re pretty smart). 
Here’s the point. There is nothing you can do to promote your website and your business that is as important as adding new, fresh, quality content to it. That’s the best article marketing you’ll ever get.
Tags: article marketing, articles, link building, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
One of the best ways to ensure that only good things are being spread about you online is to take up those first several spots on the search engines yourself. How do you do that? Well, here are a few ways.
- Article marketing. Places like Ezine Articles tend to rank fairly high for specific keywords, so if you are targeting your main keywords in your article marketing, these are the articles that will show up in the search engines.
- Blogging. Blogs are much loved by search engines, so using one that will provide plenty of keyword exposure for your business and will give you a good chance of getting up there in the rankings.
- Link building. When you use link building techniques to boost your own business site and blog posts, you`ll beat out a lot of the lesser sites that may only mention you once to complain.
Getting your own articles, blog and website into the top ten spots on the search engines will mean that you control what people see when they do a search on your business or even keywords. It takes a lot of work, but reputation management is worth it.
Tags: articles, links, Reputation Management, search engines
Posted in Reputation Management | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Directory submissions is one of the best ways to get inbound links to your website. But what makes a good directory. The following list applies to web submission directories, article directories, e-zine directories, and blog directories.
- Reciprocal Links – Does the directory require a reciprocal link? If so then what they really care about is getting inbound links from you. These directories are not as valuable as directories that don’t require reciprocal links.
- Pay for Submission – If you have to pay to be included in a directory then you are buying a link. That’s something the search engines don’t like and may penalize you for. They will certainly penalize the directory then your link won’t be as valuable any more.
- High Traffic - How much traffic does the directory get? Ideally, you want your site, articles, e-zines, or blogs to be listed in high traffic directories. You do want additional traffic, don’t you?
- Content Quality – Does the directory have a good list of quality articles, e-zines, blogs, or websites? If the quality of submissions is poor then you’ll be in bad company.
- Advertising-based – Is the directory based on advertising? If so then your listing may not be as important to the directory as the advertising.
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Crawl depth – Are the index page and category pages the only pages getting indexed by the search engines? If so then it’s a very poor directory. You want to have your individual page in the directory crawled and indexed. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time.
- Specific Niche – Look for directories in your niche before going to general directories. General directories are not bad, but you’ll benefit a lot more from the niche directories.
You should check the quality of a directory against other site owners. Ask around. If you hear too much negative information about a specific directory then leave it alone. If it’s just one or two bad reports then be suspicious, but always consider the above points about any directory you are considering submitting to.
Tags: articles, blogs, directories, directory submissions, e-zines, websites
Posted in SEO for Small Business, Tools for Small Business, link building | No Comments »
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