Archive for March, 2010

When we spend our money on article marketing, we concentrate on two things: 1) Persuading the consumers of the article to visit our site; 2) obtaining some “link juice” for the page of our site linked in our anchor text (i.e. SEO).  After all, we want to get “the most bang for our buck” when it comes to content syndication.  Particularly when we outsource to a high quality web writing service, we want to make sure that we do more than merely recover our investment.  That hope is understandable, but is it wise in the long term?

Sometimes our enthusiasm for generating external links to our website’s pages and our hopes that our readers will take the bait and click through to our site gets in the way of a rather important detail.  For our articles to be truly effective, they need to be found by readers and considered worthy by the search engine algorithms.

Face facts, our new article isn’t the only one being posted on EzineArticles or GoArticles on any given day.  Even more painful to recognize is that there are probably other new articles that address the same topic as our article and use the same keywords.  So how do we make our article stand out from the massive amount of new content published on the web each day?

We, you and I, are fully aware of the standard tips for article marketing submissions:

*  Use a descriptive title and, if possible, make it “catchy.”
*  Tag the article with keywords that are popular and that are actually used in the article.
*  On EzineArticles or other directories which offer us an opportunity to provide an abstract, make sure that is intriguing, so that the reader will want to click to the entire article.

All of those tips are important; none should be ignored.  What we really need, though, is for the search engines to give our articles some much deserved respect.  After all, most of our potential readers will find our article by means of a search engine.  Only then can they be emotionally moved by our prose.  Only then will they follow the link to our site.  Only then will they repeated buy our product and service.  Only then will we become as wealthy as King Midas as we sit around in our pajamas, working from home only fifteen minutes a day.  Okay, I got carried away a bit by the marketing hype.  I offer you my sincere regrets for getting carried away.

What makes the search engines respect content?  Links.  Multiple links.  Links with similar and accurate anchor text.  How do we get those wonderful external links?  Well, we either sit back and wait for them to magically appear, or…

We have to actively assign a part of our article marketing plan to creating external links to our content.  Yes, that may mean somewhat fewer links to our site, but the advantage is that the links that we do have pointing to our site will become more potent.

Most of us should probably dedicate every third or fourth or fifth article to linking to existing articles.  Here’s and example of what I mean:  Every once in a while, submit content to A1Articles that has links to your two or three of your articles on EzineArticles and EverydayArticles.  Use an ArticleDashboard submission to pass a little link love to a brilliant piece you have published on ArticleMap. 

I know this seems as if it is a cycle that never ends.  It is.  That’s why so many of us make our overall strategy clear to the professionals and let them do the actual work and tracking.  Then we can just sit around in our pajamas and count our money.

It is simple to use Twitter, and with little effort at all you can increase the amount of people who view your website through the use of tweets, or short messages on Twitter. You also have the option to use Twitter in conjunction to your cell phone or Blackberry, making the whole promotion of your content and traffic generation easy. Whether someone writes a blog or if they have a business online, everyone wants to attract more people to their website. Your blog or company’s website can start to have new followers, who read your updates on a regular basis. All you have to do is sign up for a free account at Twitter and start to use the site to send out frequent updates. You aren’t limited to how you can use this powerful service for marketing purposes. For example, you can sell your own products, affiliate products, put the word out about a certain company event, or be it anything, driving traffic with Twitter can be an easy and effective. The twitter is a great medium for promoting products such as videogoround.

Starting off, in order to get good traffic, you should not overuse the kind of benefits you get from Twitter. Its true that regular tweets will keep your followers interested but you really need to make sure you’re using your time effectively as a marketer. You should take advantage of automation options where you can. An example of this is seen on socialoomph.com, which allows you to send a group of micro messages all at once, but they will actually be dispersed individually at different times. This can save you a tremendous amount of time, possibly up to an hour each day, that you would normally be spending keying in your outgoing tweets. This step can prove invaluable to increasing the effectiveness of your Twitter marketing. Twitter allows you to post links that are suited to a particular audience and this acts to spread your site information to those who could be potential customers. It is important not to flood the market with your information so people will read what is there. You also have the opportunity to get traffic from your profile, as your followers can view your site’s link on it. You can generate a lot of traffic from Twitter if you are smart about what your target market is and how you will gain their attention. Once your followers trust the information you give them you can begin to show them promotional material. A great product to promote for example is videogoround.

If you have looked into marketing with Twitter, then you already know that talking to those who follow you and the people you are following will be the most helpful part of increasing the amount of traffic you have. But that’s not your only method of increasing the number of visitors to your blog or website. The best part about Twitter is that you can tweet your updates and include a link in the update that leads people directly to what you are talking about on your site. If you want people to know about a product of yours, all you have to do is tweet a link that will take them to the page the product is on. Over time, you will be able to design new strategies for promoting your business or blog and find more creative ways to introduce links into your tweets on Twitter, which will help draw more visitors to your site. Twitter is a relatively new social networking site, but it is a powerful tool. The amount of people you can reach through Twitter is astounding, and is only growing. The opportunities Twitter offers are boundless. You just have to have some common sense and a good marketing plan that will give you the results you want.

Check out more blog tips and tricks on the blog.