Article Marketing 101
I finally have the time to write a new post! Our country has been hit really hard by Typhoon Ondoy and it needs all the help it can get. For those who wants to donate, you can do it here = Donate Through Kerygma.
On with the topic…Article Marketing 101
Before I teach you the fundamentals of writing a really good article, I’ll give you its importance first.
Why Write To Article Directories?
1. Your link or website URL will be advertised by the article directory in exchange for a short article. Depending on how much traffic does the article directory receives, you could get a lot of targeted visitors back to your site.
2. If your articles are published on article directories, most especially the most popular ones, you will be perceived as an authority in your subject. This builds up credibility and trust with your visitors.
3. These article directories allow other webmasters to republish your content on their site, provided that they include your bio box with it. Here is an example of a bio box:
Having your articles reprinted with this bio box on it will give you two benefits:
- This gives you backlinks to your site, which is good for SEO
- You will be leveraging on the traffic of the sites that have republished your article – the more visitors that site gets, the more traffic to your site
Now that you know the power of article marketing…let’s move on how to write your very first article.
Before you write your articles, make sure that is based on a really good research. The first thing to do is find out what people are searching on the net. There are several free tools out there that will do this job. Just Google search “Keyword Research Tool”.
Google Keyword External Tool being one of my favorites.
Don’t skip on this important step. Without research, you will be like shooting in the dark with your articles. All you have to do is collect a small keyword list that will serve as your guide in writing the article.
Writing Your Article
Article Headline
The most important part of your article is the headline. Make sure that your articles have a catchy headline that will increase the curiosity of the website visitors.
When writing your headlines, include your keywords on it. The ones that you collected a while back. Let’s say your niche is about weight loss.
And “Weight loss program” is one of your keywords…
Your title can be “The Best Weight Loss Program”…this is not the best title out there but it should kill those other articles that are not optimized at all.
When inserting the keyword in a headline, make sure that the exact keyword is included…without any modifications in it. Don’t insert any word in the middle, even “and”, “with”, etc…
Also try to insert the keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible. Google gives more weight to these words, it’s called “Keyword Prominence”.
Don’t be limited to your article titles. Make use of the allowed max characters for it. Make it interesting. As for our example, we can make it more catchy with “The Best Weight Loss Program For Busy People” or something like that.
Other Techniques To Spice Up Your Article Headline
- Use the “How To” Formula – “How To Be Effective In Any Weight Loss Program”
- “Top 10″ Technique – “Top 10 Things To Look For When Choosing The Best Weight Loss Program”
- Creative Use Of Numbers – “How I Lost XX lbs. in XX days With This Weight Loss Program”
Don’t limit yourself with these examples. Try out other stuffs. Be creative!
To wrap it up, when writing your headlines, make sure that it shows a big benefit that the readers will receive, how much convenience they will get when they read your article, and has a catchy element that increases the readers curiosity.
Writing Your Article Content
There’s no faster way to finish an article than actually starting to write it. There’s so many marketers out there asking how to write an article or where to get the content if they don’t know a bit about the topic. If you want to find some techniques on how to get your article content ideas, check my post at Where To Get Your Website Content.
Additional Place To Get Your Website Content:
- Gutenberg.org – this is a site full of public domain literature, these are writings that no longer have any copyright protection on it. This means you can use these for republishing and put your name on it as if you are the author, much like private label rights but completely free.
- ExpertVillage.com – site full of how-to videos. Just convert or transcribe it into a written output.
You don’t have to write an award winning article. Just use ordinary English terms. And you don’t have to write a very long post (500 words and up), 300-400 words would do.
You want your readers to click on your link inside your bio box so don’t leave them with too much information.
Contrary to what several article marketers say about keyword density percentage, you don’t have to focus on that much. Having your keyword on your article title is enough for Google to find it.
However, there’s no harm on being on the safer side so try to include the keyword on the introduction and conclusion of the article.
This should be enough for now. I’ll discuss how to write a bio box with high CTR on my future posts and other article marketing techniques that I use on my sites.
Article marketing is also known as “bum marketing” because its really that easy (and its free). What you need to do now is write your very first article with catchy headlines and properly structured content and submit it to article directories (focus on ezinearticles.com first).
For a list of the best article directories, visit my other site here: Internet Marketing Tools and Resources.
