Article Marketing, Article Marketing…. It brings tears to some marketers as eyes soon as they think about it. If you are not a natural writer or you just don’t like to write in general, doing Article Marketing can be very boring and discouraging.
If you are not a writer and you don’t like to write articles yourself there is another option for you. Will get to that later.
Why Should I Do Article Marketing?
Some people will argue the following point, however it is defiantly true if you are a beginner and don’t have other traffic channels available to you.
POINT: “Article marketing is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to drive traffic to your website!”
Some marketers will say that there are easier ways and options to achieve the above. That is true, but sometimes they forget that being new to all of this you will not have all the experience and resources. They forget where they started once.
Enough about this argument stuff… Let’s get to Article Marketing.
What Is Really Article Marketing?
Article Marketing is a process of writing and publishing articles online. The goal is to position yourself as the authority.. Maybe better said: Increase Your Credibility and credibility of your business. It also serves as a means to send traffic back to your website and help you with the visibility in the search engines.
Like with any other marketing strategy, you need to have a marketing plan in place. You will need to identify:
- What you are trying to achieve
- How you will do it with Article Marketing
- How you are going to write the articles
- Who is going to write them
- Where you will distribute the articles
- What you will write in your resource box
- Some more…
Ok, it is not that complicated but important to understand so that you can use Article Marketing to its best potential.
Are You Ready To Use Article Marketing?
To start writing articles it helps if you have allot of knowledge on the topic. Of course it is not essential, you can always research… but it would help.
Every article you write should be a minimum of 500 words. I like to try and push myself from time to time and aim for 700 – 1200 words. What you will find, if you write about a topic you like that writing 1000+ words is very easy.
Most important is that your articles are of value and are informative. No one wants to read something that is boring or makes no sense. Make the articles relevant to your business niche. This means if your business is about Marketing, you can’t write articles about buying shoes. I mean you could, but what would be the point?
The Magic Title Of Your Article
Oooo Keyyyy…. The Title. It still amazes me how many people write a title that does not match the article. Even worse, a title without the main keyword in it.
Make sure the title is engaging and drags the reader to read and find out more. Whatever you do, don’t forget to put your keyword in it.
Find Your Keyword Or Don’t Bother!
What do you mean, don’t bother? You are so rude Alem!
Joke… no matter what you are writing for. A website, blog, an article you will have to find the keyword or keywords you will be targeting. I almost feel embarrassed writing about Keyword Research as everyone keeps going on about it and it seems like I’m just repeating. But the problem still is that for some people, it goes into one ear and goes out of the other!
If you don’t do it right, chances are you are just wasting your time.
If you pick a very broad and competitive keyword (Example: Real Estate, Marketing, Golf…) you can be plugging away for years and years without seeing any results at all. For many reasons..
If you pick a keyword that no one is searching for, you may rank for it, but you cant make a living from 5 visitors per month. This is not a Keyword Research Guide, it is just another reminder not to forget! I know I did many times when I first started.
My foworite two FREE Keyword Tolls:
Google = https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
SEO Book = http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
Please bookmark the two links or save a shortcut somewhere on your desktop. You will be going to revisit these very often. I do it every day! Sometimes I even get locked out as they think I am a robot trying to save data.
Once you have found your keyword, if not done already. We can continue!
Write It, Submit It, Let’s Do It!
Lets hope we have the keyword issue worked out. This means you have researched and found a keyword you want to target.
The first thing we need to do is to come up with a good title. Make sure you have your keyword included. Be creative with the title and think of something that will pull the reader to find out more.
Titles like:
7 Ways To….
10 Tips on…
9 Reasons why…
These titles work usually very well. People love articles that reveal the 10 best ways to do something. Play with it and see how you go.
Now that we have the title sorted out we can go on writing the article. This part is not as hard as many make it out to be. If you are scared of writing just get started. It will flow from there. The more you sit and think about how much you don’t like it, the more you will get discouraged and nothing will happen.
So, just get started.
Please keep in mind that your article needs to be:
- Informative
- 2-4%keyword density
- Minimum 500 words long
- Easy to read and understandable
Submitting Your Work Of Art Or Disaster
Now that you have written the article and it is either a work of art or a disaster we can go on and use them as intended. (If it is a disaster… fix it)
NOTE: Read your article once or twice to see if it is ok. Spell check it and if you have someone else available, make them check it too.
Depending on the reason for writing the article we can go to the next step. Eather post it to your blog or website or post it to article directories. In this case we are going to assume your article is intended for article directories.
Here is a list of 10 Article Directories:
1. Ezinearticles.com
2. ArticlesBase.com
3. Buzzle.com
4. SearchWarp.com
5. ArticleAlley.com
6. GoArticles.com
7. Web-Source.net
8. ArticleSet.com
9. WebProNews.com
10. Amazines.com
Before you go and start publishing your article on the article directories you need to create your author box/author section. The best way for you to learn this is to go to ezinearticles.com and open few articles. Look how other people have structured these and find one that you can use as an example.
NOTE: Make sure you have two links in the box. One is the plain URL. For example: https://www.seoexpertmelbourne.com.au/ . The second should be a text links that links your main keyword to your website: SEO services.
The reason why we have a plain URL links is that some people may republish your article and they turn off the link on purpose (which they should not do). If the links are disabled people can still copy and paste your link to get to your website.
Now, go and submit your article to the directories above. To find more Article Directories you can Google: Article Directory List or something similar. I can’t do all the work here
Maximise Your Article Marketing
What in the world does Maximise Your Article Marketing Mean? It means getting the most out of Article Marketing. It means that you don’t waste time on articles that will bring little or no results for you.
So how do we do it?
1. You need to make sure you have a GREAT title with your keyword in it. No exception! Do it or don’t bother as you won’t get the best results.
2. Write an informative article that will bring some value to your readers. No one wants to read boring and non relevant content.
3. Sprinkle your keyword/s throughout the article.
4. Have your keyword in first paragraph. Preferably right at the front.
5. Have your keyword at end of last paragraph.
6. Write a good resource box that will get people to click on and visit your website.
7. Don’t try and cut corners!
8. Rinse and repeat!
How about 20 articles per week instead of one?
Yep, you read it right. How about 30 or 40? You must be thinking that I’m mad… 40 articles per month, who is going to write and submit all those?
This is nothing new and I’m sure you have heard about this… wait.. wait.. Outsourcing!
This post is not about outsourcing but I’m going to give you some details. You can outsource pretty much anything these days. Even your dog walking if you like. So of course writing articles and submitting them is available.
If you have some spare cash and would like to save some time, head to freelancer.com.au and order some articles and get them submitted. Not only that but yop can find someone to hire in any field you need help with.
