Article Marketing - A Newbies Guide To Article Marketing

Article marketing is one of the absolute basics of internet marketing. Having articles all over the internet is a marketing method which enables you to invest some time and effort right now and reap the benefits for years to come. This article will explore some of the advantages of article marketing and its subtleties in order to help internet marketers to use it to their best advantage.

Anyone who's been doing internet marketing for a while knows that writing articles is imperative to the success of one's online campaigns. Having articles in various article directories is a great way of providing links back to your site, thus building your site's popularity. When a page has many links back to it it helps to attain good positioning in the search engines. An article directory which has a high page rank is the best place to submit articles to as this helps to boost your page's rank.

Bear in mind that people take articles they enjoy and publish them in their ezines and on their websites, further providing you, the author, with more back links and publicity.

When you have articles of your own posted in article directories you can slowly establish your name as an expert in your niche. People will be more apt to trust your recommendations.

Although it may be tempting to write a bunch of articles in one day and submit them to a few directories, exercise caution with this. Why is that? Because Google is quite sensitive about a sudden surge in traffic to a link. Although we would all love a sudden surge in traffic, it may cause Google to de-index your site in order to look in to the reason for the sudden popularity of your site. It's better to submit articles every couple of days.

In the process of article marketing, don't submit an article that is already on your own website. It may be considered duplicate content and you don't want that! Google would consider the site which is higher ranking to be the originator of the article (the article directory) and your site's page rank may suffer.

Don't submit PLR articles without making changes!! There is so much PLR available today (free and otherwise) and it is very tempting to just grab it and use it. Don't do it. The purpose of these articles is to provide you with a basis for an article. Read it and rewrite it in your own words. Duplicate articles could be rejected by the article directories and the directories may just decide to ban your account.

Try to use good keywords in your article's title and also in the beginning of the first paragraph. Sprinkle your chosen keyword all over the article as well.

Most article directories allow you to use hyperlinks. For sophisticated and efficient article marketing try to use anchor text that relates to the keywords you are targeting. This will help you attain a better position in the SERP's (search engine result pages). If you are targeting the word "gardening tips" make sure to hyperlink to your website from each mention of the term in your article. This will help your gardening site be higher in the search results for the term "gardening tips".

Try to remember that people will be reading your article. Make it readable for them and don't just concentrate on the density of your keywords. If people don't enjoy reading the article, they won't bother reaching the end of it, which is where you will lead them to your site from the ever-important resource box!

In summary, article marketing is a very important, even critical, element of internet marketing. Every internet marketer should be making the effort to become proficient in article marketing and learning how to write decent quality articles in as little time as possible. It will bring in terrific long term results.

Happy writing!

Article Marketing-Both Sides of the Fence

Every site has its own set of guidelines – but I think if you adhere to the following – more of your articles will get published.  It is best to check each site’s set of rules (but who has the time) or follow this basic set of do’s and don’ts.

1. Do submit articles on a regular basis
2. Do capitalize the first letter of every word in the subject line
3. Do check the spelling and grammar – and then check it again
4. Do write original articles about topics you have a passion for
5. Do write articles that are about 400-800 characters in length – too short and too long will be rejected
6. Do write an article – not a blatant advertisement
7. Do check the paragraph formatting
8. Do write an informative Author’s resource box
9. Do use HTML tags (if allowed) – I would demonstrate an example of a proper link – but most likely it would cause the article to be declined.  Just Google HTML link to see how to do it correctly

1. Don’t capitalize every letter in the subject line
2. Don’t bold the subject or your links
3. Don’t submit more than 2 links in the author’s resource box
4. Don’t put links in the text of the article
5. Don’t cloak links – do it legally to get links back to your site
6. Don’t write an ad – write an article (I know – I already said this above)

Here are some general recommendations:
1. Get a real domain – it is much more acceptable and professional than blogspot, angelfire, or any of the other free site places.  If you want to have a blog – get a domain and use wordpress – the domain will cost all of about 8 dollars per year and hosting can be had for under $5 per year.
2. Use an autosubmitter.  There are free and paid services – either way – your article(s) will be at hundreds or thousands of sites instead of one or two.  Be advised that some article sites don’t accept articles submitted by autosubmitters – but they are in the minority.
3. Visit your articles.  Many article sites will send you an email that tells you that your article has been submitted.  Go and look and make sure it looks OK, the link(s) are correct and then vote for it and if the site has social bookmarks – bookmark it.
4. If you use Private Label Rights (PLR) articles – change them – make them different so that they are not the same as a bazillion other articles online.
5. Check the sites’ guidelines – some don’t accept gambling articles, sexually oriented articles, etc.  Some will even decline your article if it doesn’t pass their internal word search.  I have had some declined for using the word “sex” or “marijuana” in the article.  Even though the “sex” article was health related and the “marijuana” article was a travel advice article informing travelers not to smuggle drugs.  Sometimes you can’t win.
6. Don’t get frustrated.  It can take time for the articles to get indexed in the search engines and it can take time for the article site owners to approve your articles.  Just keep plugging away and it will pay off.
7. Quality is better than quantity.  Just cranking out crap articles daily is not as good as writing 2 or 3 good articles every week.
8. Take time with the subject.  If the subject is boring – most likely the article will not get read.  Be creative.
9. Write 2 or 3 sentences in the Author’s resource box.  Tell us about yourself and why you are the expert on this topic or why we should click your link.

Hopefully this helps you in getting more of your articles published.

Email Courses and Autoresponders

Offering free things to your website visitors is one
marketing method that often results in a lot of sales.
Free courses that are delivered via email are very
popular, and people sign up for such courses on a
regular basis to learn more about a topic of interest
to them. These courses are best maintained and
delivered with the use of autoresponders.

An autoresponder can be set up to send out a
series of lessons for an email course. The lessons
can be set for distribution at specific intervals. You
determine how often the lessons for the course are
sent to the people who have signed up for it. Email
courses are very different from traditional courses,
web based courses, or any other type of course.

There is no student and instructor interaction. The
instructor writes the information out, puts each
lesson in an autoresponder series, sets the timing
for the lessons, and the rest is automated. You can
opt to have lessons delivered daily, every other day,
every three days, or any other time frame that you
think works best for your email students.

Email courses are commonly used to sell products
and services. For instance, if you sell widgets, you
might develop a course that teaches people how to
use widgets or how to care for their widget. Experts
agree that an email course can be written for
almost any product that you can imagine – if you
put enough thought into it.

Start by determining what your course will be about,
and how long it should be. If the course should be
delivered every other day for two weeks, you know
that you would need seven lessons. Write the
lessons, and load them in the autoresponder. Set
the interval for each lesson, which in this case would
be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13.

This means that the first lesson would be delivered
one day after the person has requested the course,
and the second lesson would be delivered three days
 after the person has requested the course, and so
on. The interval for each lesson is set for the
number of days after the person has signed up
Make sure that everything is spelled right, and that
your sentences are grammatically correct. You
want the lessons to look and sound as professional
as possible.

Next, simply advertise the email address that will
activate the autoresponder. Make sure that you run
a test first, sending each lesson to yourself. This will
allow you to see what your email students will see
when they sign up!