Online marketing has been a vast and rapidly growing outlet over the past decade. Obviously, there are many approaches to online marketing, but very few that come close to the effectiveness of article marketing. Article Marketing has provided a large portion of the visitors for some of the web’s most successful businesses and it has proven to be one of the most cost effective marketing techniques today.

What is Article Marketing and How Does it Work?

Article Marketing is the publication of written content on websites other than your own. Sometimes these websites may have similar content or products as your business. Sound like helping your competition? Here’s the catch. Your article includes a backlink – a link that leads to your own website. Simply put, you provide an article on other people’s websites that ends with a link back to your own website. The idea is that for those sites using your article, they must include the link back to your site.

The quality of your article’s content is a deciding factor in how many people will publish it on their sites. This is why it is very important that your articles be well written, purposeful, and relevant to the subject. If you don’t or can’t write the articles yourself, you might want to consider paying for someone to write for you. In the long run it will be worth it.

Is Article Marketing Effective

Article Marketing has become extremely popular because of the way search engines do their searching. There was a time when the number of visitors to a site was a critical factor in its listings with search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Today, however, the key determinant is the number of backlinks: pointers from other sites to yours. To understand how the backlinks work in relevancy to your page listing, you must first understand the search engine process.

Your page’s popularity, known as the page rank, is judged by two factors: how many backlinks there are to your site; and the popularity of the sites that those backlinks are on. For example, let’s say you have two backlinks to your site listed on two different websites. One of those sites, say Microsoft.com, has a very high page rank. The other, BobsDoItYourselfComputerRepair.com, has a pretty low page rank. Your site will receive more notice from the search engines because of the link on the more popular site. So, backlinks on high-profile sites will inevitably raise your page ranking.

Creating and Submitting Articles

When creating your articles, remember that quality is of utmost importance. People are looking for information, and a well-written, relevant article will position you as someone who knows what they are talking about in a reader’s mind. If you don’t think you can write your own articles, there are many online outlets for finding writers.

Once the article is written, add a link to your site along with your by-line. This is called a resource box and can include a little bit about you and your business as well as the link to your website.

Next, you will need to get your article submitted to other sites. You don’t have to do this yourself. There are literally thousands of article marketing source sites on the Internet that can do it for you. However, the more popular ones are those that produce the most effective traffic. Among these are EzineArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.Com, and GoArticles.Com. Each of these will provide excellent sources for backlinks, but be prepared to submit only well-written articles, as they tend to be quite thorough in their screening process.

Check Your Article Marketing Campaign

Once you have submitted your article, give it a few weeks to make its way out onto the World Wide Web. Then, use one of the many backlink-checking tools available on the net. Most are free and can be found by doing a simple web search. Domain-Pop.com and IWebTool.com provide some of the more popular tools. The larger search engines (i.e. Google.com) provide backlink-checking tools also. These programs are usually easy to use and require no download. Simply go to the site, put the web address of your site into the appropriate space, and hit enter. In a few seconds you will be able to see how many backlinks your site has and, in most cases, exactly what sites those backlinks are listed on.

Article Marketing is not only one of the most effective techniques for building your page rank and popularity, but is also one of the most simple and most inexpensive, particularly if you have good writing skills of your own. Remember to keep your article content similar to the content of your site. People surfing for the information in your articles will only click on the link in your resource box if it is relevant to their own personal interests. Also remember that article marketing takes time and effort. It doesn’t happen overnight. With every article you put out onto the web, you are putting out another way for potential visitors to find you. Over time, this will increase the traffic to your website and will eventually increase your sales.

Author’s Note: This article also published here.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more articles written by Enzo F. Cesario

The Merits Of Key Word Phrases used in niche marketing

The use of keywords has changed over the years and all the experts seem to have their own opinion, and the biggest question, or discussion that always comes up is :  “Are key words and key word phrases really needed?” Here’s’ my take on this issue: Yes! Yes! Yes! Especially in Article Marketing. It is true that Google primarily scan for content and disregards any keywords in the meta tags, but what do you think the  Google scans are looking for? Google has to have some basis to list your articles or websites when someone does a search and the keyword phrase plays a very big part. For example if your were looking for “fishing equipment”, I am going to search on Google using these same two words. I think you get the picture because google is going to list sites that have this keyword phrase or similar words in their website or article content. Maybe the meta tags do not hold any significance but keywords or a keyword phrase do.

I have compiled a simple outline below broken into two parts, to help you generate a powerful list of key words and Key word phrases to use in your article marketing efforts.

#1 – Identifying your niche market is so important, If you do not know precisely what you want to write about you are spinning your wheels. A niche market is a subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing on. Lets take for example we are looking for specific information about article marketing services, the most broad market would be marketing , then your niche would be article marketing . This information could also be under the broad marketing of Internet marketing but your niche would still be article marketing. My keyword list would be generated from the two words “article” and “Marketing” combined together. If you have not identified what your market and what products you are trying to sell within that market, do not waste your time writing articles yet. You need to complete step #1 if you want to be successful.

#2 - Once you have identified what your niche market is you can now focus on creating your keyword phrase list. Enter the following link in your browser to go to Google’s Awords webpage and sign up for a free account if you can’t access the keyword tools directly.. .

Here’s a link to their tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

These free tools are very easy to use, lets use “marketing” for our example. Enter this phrase into the box that says Enter one keyword or phrase per line: You will notice that the results are way too broad if I were selling information related to crappie fishing. Now , type in the word “crappie fishing” You can see the results are much more refined. Fishing and crappie fishing are only examples, But I think you can see the power of this free tool to develop a list for any niche market. What you want to do now is download the resulting list to you PC, I always Microsoft excel to help build my lists but any software that you can store your results would work well. You will need to pay attention to the two columns “Advertiser Competition” and “Approx Search Volume:” to prioritize and weed out keyword phrases that are too competitive or have a low search volume.

Pay very close attention to the green bar in the advertiser competition. If that green bar is over have half way across the box, delete this key word phrase from you list. I personally have had the best luck concentrating on key word phrases that the green in the rectangle box is less than ½ and the search volume listed is over 1000.

Now you are ready to start writing your articles. I recommend you just start writing what ever comes to your mind then refine your article, it’s a bit like brain storming and works for me so I can get all my ideas on paper. It has been my experience it is better to just start writing your topic and let your expertise flow into your words before you worry about inserting your key words or keyword phrases. Concentrate on writing articles that are from 300 to 600 words. It has been my experience that that the search engines seem to like content of this size and people tend to read your entire article without getting bored. And just click on to somewhere else. After you have written down your ideas its time to refine your article by inserting at least two different keyword phrases that refer directly to your articles content. Pay close attention to how many times your phrases are repeated, it is important that you space approximately 100 word counts between them. You don’t want to get penalized by the search engines for what is called keyword stuffing. Also , for example the keyword phrase article marketing automation or any variation that had the first two words the same then I could only be used them every 100 words. If your article was say 600 words in length, then you could use phrases that had the exact words “article marketing “ six times. You can mix up your keyword phrases so each word is not exactly the same but be careful. Of course if you get creative you could vary your words so they are not exact and get even more value out of this same phrase.

Well folks this concludes my article. May your article marketing efforts prosper , just remember that keywords, and phrases are extremely important when identifying your particular niche market.

Mark Fleagle owner of the article-miracle.com is an expert author at Ezinearticles.com and a silver member at Searchwarp.com Learn how to increase your website traffic using article marketing the right way! Learn why the most successful website owners have migrated to Using Keyword Phrases and Niche Marketing Details Here: http://www.article-miracle.com

Also Click Here For more detailed information on article marketing software

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When trying to make money by online article marketing as your basic strategy, you will find that there are no “experience required” signs hanging over your head. Unlike looking for a high paying job in the offline world, the internet doesn’t require you to have a 4-year college education with a Bachelor’s or Associate’s Degree in anything. It is the only career where you can start with zero experience, learn the ropes as you go along, and earn money that grows exponentially with your experience.

But, when we talk about experience, in article or internet marketing, what exactly are we meaning? What experiences are you going to either need to bring with you or pick up along the way? Obviously, to be a successful and to make money by online article marketing, you are not going to start or remain in a vacuum the whole time. Not if you expect to be making a good living off of your internet income stream, or any money at all for that matter.

The first skill you will want to acquire is how to pick out the right articles that will send the right kind of traffic, targeted traffic, to any sites or blogs you are promoting. Without targeted traffic, you will remain broke and wishing you could make money. By picking out the right articles, I mean choosing between fishing for content at free article directories, or paying a professional to write them for you, or writing them yourself. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but typically the paid professional pathway has more commonly led marketers to profit quicker and greater.

The next thing you need to do is learn how to pick the keywords and phrases that will be responsible for bringing you a good flow of targeted traffic, while at the same time not being too competitive to where you find it hard to land on the first or second page of the search engine results for those keywords you have selected. If you are picking keywords that are also being used by the larger companies, you don’t stand a chance.

Then, you need to get familiar with what search engine optimization is, and how it will help you in landing that coveted spot on page one of the search engine results pages. Once you get good with this skill, combined with being able to pick good, low-competition keywords, you will find yourself in an enviable position of being able to not only enter into, but quickly dominating the niche market of your choice, as you will get a great deal of visitors, which will mean a great deal of income.

If you want to only deal with one website as your means of making money online, then you need to learn how to promote that website to your audience through paid banner ads and various test link strategies. Otherwise, if the very small two to five page niche sites are more your flavor, then you will not want to use paid banner ads and text link strategies to promote all these minisites, as this would not be a very cost effective strategy for you. More of your profits will be going out the window than need be.

Following this pathway to learning, and sticking with it during the first few months of your internet marketing training period, then you will not fail to become an expert. Reading ebooks and visiting forums frequented by newbies and veterans alike will give you just enough to get started in the right direction, to where you can then learn as you go. Making money by online article marketing is a good start for your internet campaigns and the money that you make along the way you can then reinvest to gain greater insights into an even greater profit stream.

Written by Troy Foote.  Online Marketer owner of several websites designed to educate people of how to succeed with internet marketing. To learn the proper way of internet marketing please visit The Wealthy Pages Today.

If you would like to receive the FREE 27 page ebook “Affiliate Marketers Handbook” please send me an email with your name to the following address theshoppbox@yahoo.com

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There are lots of travel website owners who write travel articles for article marketing, many of whom do not give themselves the best shot at successful results. In this article I will explain why some travel writers let themselves down and how I believe they can improve their results.

The Nitty Gritty

First of all article marketers submit articles to article directories as part of their website promotions – that and much of what I’m saying here applies for any niche. Ideally article marketers are working towards the following:

·    Long term backlinks pointing to their sites
·    Viral effect of articles being re-published on authority sites and ezines
·    Click throughs on those links
·    Establish themselves as an authority in their niche
·    Credibility in the eyes of readers

The first 3 are about getting more traffic to your sites, the last 3 are about benefiting from the traffic. Article marketers will not benefit from their work if they produce:

·    Poorly written articles
·    Show a lack of first hand knowledge
·    Ruin their credibility by misleading and disappointing readers

It’s all common sense but not every writer gets it. In order to explain more I will use some potential scenarios.

Information Searches

Jess and Mick have booked a cheap flight on the Internet to the Canary Islands. As they need accommodation it’s only natural that they do a search for the type of accommodation that they want. They use ‘Canary Island holiday property rentals’ in their first search and are pleased to see an article titled ‘Canary Island Holiday Property Rentals’ at the top of the search results.

Disappointment hits them when they find that the article is about the Canary Islands in general and has nothing to do with holiday property rentals except for a link in the resource box. The author has lost credibility because their title is misleading and the only links that are likely to be clicked on are the Google ads that you generally find on the article directory pages or more likely Jess and Mick click away and continue their search.

They finally find the information that they really want and accommodations sorted out they now want information about hiring a car. Their search is Canary Islands car hire, the top link is an article titled ‘Canary Islands Car Hire’. Imagine how annoyed Jess and Mick feel to find yet another general article about the Canary Islands and the only thing concerning car hire is a link in the author bio – goodbye credibility, article and click throughs!

Publisher Searches

Mathew is building a website about the Caribbean. He has some of his own material but decides to visit an article directory and find some content to help build his site faster. He finds a really great article about visiting Jamaica and would love to use it but the title ‘Cheap Flights To The Caribbean’ is a problem. Yes you’ve guessed right – the only reference to cheap flights is in the author bio. Mathew decides against using the article on his website because he has ethics and does not want to mislead his site visitors.

He then spots an article titled ‘Fabulous Jamaica Resort Review’. Mathew expects a genuine review from somebody who has visited the resort, but he doesn’t get that. Instead there is a brochure like article extolling the virtues of a hotel or all inclusive resort that just happens to be linked to in the author bio – and an article that shows no indication of the author ever setting foot on the beautiful island of Jamaica. There is also a sentence recommending a website for more information within the article body and that website just happens to belong to the author – goodbye credibility.

Reality Check

With these scenarios the authors have thought that they were being clever and used the best keywords and phrases in the titles for what they are promoting in the author bio. Fair enough if the article content matches the titles and key phrases – shooting yourself in the foot article marketing if it doesn’t.

If you promise a review of a resort you should deliver just that and not something that can be found on any travel brochure or travel site. A review should be an author’s opinion written from experience and nothing less. Recommending your own websites in the article body not only spoils an article but is also a credibility hit.

If your misleading article is accepted on article directories do you want to benefit from the viral effect of your article being published on other websites and ezines? Would you want content on your website or ezine that is misleading or pure unpaid for advertising? I know that I wouldn’t.

Any good and ethical sales person, and that includes Internet marketers know that to do well you need to build up trust with your prospective customers. You want your articles to work for you so start thinking about them from the point of view of a reader or publisher and you won’t go far wrong.

The travel niche is huge and nowadays many travellers search the Internet for information before they book their dream holidays. The majority of travellers know nothing about Internet marketing, article marketing or key phrases. All they know is what they see – that they are being misled. Would you click on a link and buy from an author or seller who is misleading you?

The author Patricia Jones writes for the UK travel guide and Make Money From Writing where you will find lots of tips to help you with your writing. Patricia also owns the top travel article directory Articles Abroad where authors may submit quality travel articles and publishers find free content.

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Article marketing is touted as the most effective link building strategy and traffic building tactic in existence. It is and it isn’t depending on how you employ it. There are many different points of view but there are mainly 5 strategies that most experts agree upon and use.

Article directories allow you to include a resource box for every article you submit. Inside this resource box, you include a link to your website. If you submit just one article to 100 article directories and it is approved for publication, you will immediately receive 100 back links to your website. There are thousands of article directories in the World Wide Web which can mean thousands of back links and huge traffic!

Now, if you submit, say, 5 articles to a hundred directories, you may get 500 back links easily! How? Again, by including the link to your website or blog in the Author Box at the end of your articles like I have done below. The best part about this strategy is that quite a number of article directories have high page ranks (PR). We’re talking about PR4, PR5, and on occasion, PR7 websites! Having a link to your own website in a website which has a high page rank would give a significant boost to your search engine standing! This means your site will be noticed by more people.

Here are the top 5 questions that experts get about Article Marketing and the answers to those questions.

1. If I submit the same article to many article directories, will it violate a search engine’s policy against duplicate content?

The simple answer is – No – but see #2 (below) for a loophole. Since we’re dealing with high ranking websites, the search engines will assume that the submitted content is your original work. This is the reason why most article directory editors are pretty confident about the articles they display. The problem that they try to avoid, really, is with regards to the credibility of their services. They don’t want to be known as a repository of junk content, that’s why they have outlawed the posting of PLR (private label rights) articles as well as articles loaded with Affiliate links.

PLR articles are those you buy that were written by someone other than you. These are not a good way to go because the authors are selling the same articles to hundreds of other people. Using PLR articles will create a “duplicate content” problem for you with both the search engines and with the Directory editors.

2. Should I submit articles which I have already posted in my own web pages?

If the article was posted on your website or blog first, the answer is “Yes, absolutely!”. If you submit your articles to directories first, the search engines may assume that where the articles first appeared, in the Article Directory, is the originator of the content. In that case, your articles could be distinguished as “duplicate content”. This could lead to the de-indexing of your articles. It will not, however, get your website de-indexed. The key is, you want your articles to appear on your website or blog first and be indexed first as originating with you. Wait a few days and then submit them to directories.

3. Can I submit as many articles as I want to as many article directories as possible?

Absolutely, that’s what I do and I do it often! This is very much advised as a fast way to build up your link popularity and secure a great page rank for your website or blog. I have only found one directory so far that only allows one submission per day. I have not found any others that have any limits whatsoever.

Bear in mind that search engines are quite wary of any website that suddenly experiences a great increase in the number of its back links. It is advised that when you submit articles to the article directories, wait a few days between each submission. There is one exception to this. When I began submitting articles I had 10 that I submitted on the same day to get established, so to speak. After that I limited my submissions to one a day to each directory.

4. Why are my page views still quite low even after submitting my articles?

If your page views remain at low levels after submitting many articles, ask yourself, or someone you trust, the following:

a) Is the subject of your article interesting enough? Does it cater to a wide audience?

b) Is your title enticing enough to merit a reading of your entire work?

c) Is your article informative enough to merit recommendation to others?

d) Is your article readable enough to give your audience an easy time in digesting the information you are sharing?

I almost always ask my wife or my best friend for their advice on my writing. I have no ego to bruise. I want my articles to be readable and helpful. So ASK! If you get – “No” – to any of these, you have found the factors that contribute to your low page views. Doing some editing to correct the problems you have identified can dramatically increase the number of times your article is viewed and your Author Box link to your site clicked.

I have some articles that were viewed more than 130 times in just a few days through just one Article Directory! Multiply that by about 300 and you can see the impact. Many of the readers clicked my Author Box link and visited my blogs for more Free Resources on a particular topic. I pride myself on providing lots of Free stuff on my blogs and you should too.

Remember, some article directories attract only a few visitors so viewing will also be low. If you are writing on a highly specialized topic, low page views would not be unusual.

The key is, your articles are published and your back link in your Author Box is pointing to your website or blog and that helps your page rank even on a low viewed directory.

5. Can I be sure that my articles will be kept intact by people who would use them in their own websites or eZines?

You can never be sure. This is why you have to run your own check from time to time. Search for unique phrases in your article and click on the results. Determine if the webmaster published your Author Box links. If he did not, you could ask him to include them. If you get no response, contact the article directory editors so that they themselves can act on the matter. Vigilance is the key. It is rare but it does happen.

A positive side of directories is the editors will recognize “duplicate content” when the thief tries to submit your article under their name. The article will be rejected. This leaves them with placing it on their own blog or wesbite and you can find that out by doing the search as described.

Do these 5 things and watch your traffic increase.

Lastly, finding Article Directories to submit to is simple – Google “Article Directories” and you will get a huge list. Or, do what I do. I use software that submits the articles with a few button clicks. This has saved me hours upon hours of tedious hand-submission because the software has over 350 of the best directories built in so you do not have to search for them.

Keep in mind, submitting articles takes work, tons of work when submitting to one directory at a time. Check out various software like I did. The best software does cost a few bucks so do not expect to get off cheap. There is free or low cost software but “you get what you pay for”.

Bottom line is: Articles, written by you, are still the fastest and cheapest (Free!) way to get more traffic and higher search engine rankings.

Become a better writer, today! Jim DeSantis is an Internet Publisher and former TV News Editor. Jim provides more information about writing on his blog, AnswersPlus.info, where you’ll find – “The Writer’s Guide to Internet Marketing” and “Instant Essay” software. Click “Writers’ Guide” and “Essay Creator” in the sidebar. Also available here – http://www.answersplus.info

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