Saturday, February 16th, 2008
Writing articles for the web is not the same as writing a school essay.
I have realized something very important. You need to write both for your readers as well as the search engine spiders. This is where many online writers fail miserably.
The truth is there are a lot of good writers with a flair for writing and profound knowledge about the topic they write. But the trouble is, they often think in terms of the human readers and not the search engine spiders. Therefore, they write in such a manner that attracts the reader’s attention, but score poorly in the eyes of the search engines.
Online publishing is different from normal offline literature. You can use bombastic words and write an article with all that creative juices but it will still receive low readership. I have seen many articles of high quality receiving low page views. What a waste!
Article marketing cannot depart from good SEO practices. By that, you need to take note of a couple of factors when writing your articles or web content:
1. Keyword Density, both in the title and the content
2. Latent Semantic Indexing
Article marketing basically is targeted at the search engines. If you cannot rank your article in the top 10 search engine results, you can be sure that your readership will not be outstanding. Conversely, any article that is ranked well gets tons of targeted traffic from the search engines.
So how do you rank them in Top 10?
Treat your article as a web page. In all web pages, the meta-tags and content are optimized for the target keywords. In the same manner, the meta-tags are synonymous with the article title, and the web content with the article body.
Did you realize that the article titles of all articles that are indexed in the search engines are showing up like the meta-title? Likewise, the content is showing up like the meta-description?
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in layman terms simply means that you have to pay attention to the keywords and topic you use. On top of keeping an appropriate keyword density of the target keyword at about 1% to 2%, you need to associate your content with related keywords. Also, do not go overboard in targeting your main keyword. Never spam your content!
In the past, simply littering the content with the targeted keywords is good enough. Today, rules have changed. For example, if you are writing an article on “article marketing”, instead of just repeating “article marketing” as the only keyword, you probably would think of “online authors”, “EzineArticles”, “article title”, “bum marketing”, “web traffic”, “article submission” and so on.
Likewise, when writing an article on “buying a used Toyota”, you will associate it with “car dealers”, “auto insurance”, “Toyota Prius”, “Toyota Rav4” and so on.
The whole idea is to stay relevant.
So how do you come up with the associated keywords to use in your article content?
1. Use the “~” search feature in Google. Say you want to find a synonym for “car”, simply go to Google ~car and you will see some possible synonyms.
2. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and search for related keywords and phrases. Remember to check the “Use synonyms” box. This free keyword tool will churn out keywords that Google deems as related to your target keyword.
3. Ask your family and friends. Sometimes, they can tell you some interesting words you may not have thought of.
4. Google the main keyword, and find the top few websites. Take each url and place it in the https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Remember to check the “Website Content” box.
If you will pay attention to the above 2 factors, your article stands to rank well. This strategy will work very well with EzineArticles.
Of course, other than these 2, there are other key factors such as creating unique content, picking long tails and more. I shall talk more about this topic in my next post. We will also discuss later on what makes a “Perfect” article.
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Article marketing is my pet topic. This is one powerful marketing technique that has brought me more than 460,000 unique visitors and $10,000s of sales. But it was not always a bed of roses. Let me tell you a little silly story why. When I started marketing in early 2006 as a complete newbie, I was making use of safelist marketing solely.
It was only when I chanced upon the NicheRockets forum in end 2006 that I got to hear about article marketing, ie writing and submitting articles to free article directories for traffic and sales. I also picked up some free ebooks on article marketing as well in the forum.
The people there were using articles to drive traffic to built-for-Adsense sites and making loads of money in the tune of $1000s every month. Of course there are other stealthy tools and killer tricks that they use and talk about such as advanced content generating tools and so on.
The first article I wrote was for an online golf gaming software that ran on a MLM model. Matrix, Level Up, 2 Up and all that jargon that most people cannot understand. I left the article alone and never took a second look at it. I just chucked the article marketing technique aside to do other stuff.
But on one occasion, a very innocent search I did on Google revealed that my article posted at Article Alley was ranked No.1 for a highly competitive keyword related to “country club”. There were about 200 million results for that keyword! I was Excited!
But then came my Exasperation…I forgot to check if my affiliate link was working…and it wasn’t…and I couldn’t update the link. I felt really silly!
So even though I made it to the top of Google for a highly competitive keyword which drives tons of traffic to my article, I never made a SINGLE CENT out of it.
Of course, that was my silly past. I have since learnt my mistakes and for the entire year of 2007 worked diligently on mastering article marketing.
Why is Article Marketing useful for all marketers, whether you are an affiliate or webmaster?
1. Article Marketing is Free.
If you can write quality content, you can submit your article for free without paying a single cent. It works whether you are a newbie or experienced marketer.
2. Article Marketing Drives Lots of Traffic.
There are a few ways to drive traffic using articles.
a. An article that is optimized for a target keyword has the potential of ranking well in the search engines. We all know the benefits of that.
b. A well-written and informative article will be picked up by publishers. These publishers may place your article onto their websites or send it to their lists. More traffic!
c. Submitting an article to dozens of article directories can get you instant one-way backlinks. Many quality directories carry a high PageRank, so that means more link love and higher search engine rankings for our sites.
3. Article Marketing Builds Your Credibility
You are what you write or so it says. Your content will reveal your understanding and knowledge about a topic. So if you are selling weight loss products, contributing articles regularly on the topic establishes you as an expert. People are more willing to listen to your advice and…product recommendations.
4. Article Marketing Pre-sells!
A well-written article can pre-sell your prospects and convince them to do what YOU WANT them to do. Trust me, it improves the conversion rates much better than just flashing the product sales page!
One product that converts at 1 sale per 100 clicks has been shown to convert at less than 50 clicks. Disclaimer: Not all products will see such dramatic improvements but you should still see a great improvement.
The reason is simple. When people read your article, their intention is to find out more information. But little do they know that their subconscious minds are starting to buy into what was presented to them.
So it warms them up to feel good about the product or service you are promoting. You know what happens when they click the author resource link to see the sales page. The likelihood of them flashing out their credit cards dramatically improves!
This is just an introduction to article marketing. In my subsequent posts, I will share in greater details of how to make money using article marketing.
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic | No Comments »
