Article Marketing Success And Sheep Do Not Mix

Article Marketing Success And Sheep Do Not Mix

I like article marketing and find it an enjoyable and profitable way of promoting my websites. I never plan articles, the ideas just come out of the blue from something I have seen or heard. Once I start writing the words just flow, but before I write an article there are two things that I consider.

1. Why am I writing the article?
2. Would it be of any use to webmasters for their sites or for newsletter publishers?

It does not take rocket science to figure that I and every other article marketer am using articles to benefit our own promotions, but they will be of little benefit to us if we do not produce quality articles that others will actually want to read and use.

Owning my own article directory I have read thousands of articles, many of which I would never use on my other sites or in newsletters and many I have declined for various reasons. Let us consider the rights and wrongs of articles starting at the beginning.

Attention Grabbing

Your title is your headline, there to grab attention and many people never look past the first 2 or 3 words. I could have called this Sheep Do Not Mix With Article Marketing Success but I want people who are interested in article marketing and not sheep to read it. Another type of title that will not grab me is The Top 20 Tips For Passionate Sex. It would be more likely to create interest if it was Passionate Sex My Top 20 Tips.

Writing Standards

Spelling and grammar are important. You are promoting yourself and your business and you need to present yourself as professional to be taken seriously. I write my articles in Word first and use the spell checker. I sometimes fall out with it because I am English and prefer not to use Americanised spelling.

If you have problems with writing but good information the answer is to use a ghostwriter or copywriter. There are plenty of good writers advertising on the Internet and personally I think that one good quality article will do more for your business than 10 poor articles.

Know Your Subject

Good advice for writers is that they should always know and understand what they are writing about or their articles have no credibility. I was gobsmacked last week to read an article about my own country that I knew to be very ill informed and by somebody I suspected had never set foot on our shores. The guy could not even spell Britain right and as his misspelling was in the title he sunk without trace before he even started!

Original Copy

The best and most memorable articles are purely original, thought provoking and offer different viewpoints to a subject. Some writers submit zillions of slightly changed articles about the same subject over and over; yawn. They are boring and eminently unreadable after the first one or two. There are exceptions where writers are providing updates and news about their chosen subjects. I would use those articles for my sites.

Lists of quotes from the bible for instance are not original articles. At least 90% should be your own work and quotes only used as a point of interest not as the whole article. Submitting articles on behalf of others is suspect, how do readers know whether you have filched them or not? Plagiarism, not worth going there, eagle eyes and google will find you out!

Advertorial Blues

An advertorial is an advert written in article form. They carry no unbiased information or advice that would be of any help to anybody interested in that subject. There are plenty of places to advertise for free on the Internet, so trying to fob adverts off as articles is unfair on directory site owners or visitors who want to read articles not adverts.

Link Usage

The reason most of us use Article Marketing for promoting our businesses is to place links to our websites in the author resource boxes usually placed at the foot of articles.

I like to maximise the potential and use the up to 3 links usually allowed. Many article directories allow active links, but some do not. A problem can arise when articles are automatically submitted if the script the site uses strips the html. I prefer to submit manually mostly and then I can activate the links myself or just put my website address if the site doesn't accept html links.

Links within the articles are unacceptable on most directory sites, but as you get 3 chances in the resource boxes there is no point trying to cheat.

All Keyed Up

You will be asked to provide some keywords for your articles so choose wisely. Study your content and consider what somebody who might be interested in your article is most likely to enter into the search engines. A poor example is if you are writing about search engine optimisation and your title is SEO, Internet Business Bread And Jam, you would not use jam and bread as keywords unless you wanted to attract hungry people. Apart from that your articles credibility takes a nosedive if you do not know what a good keyword is.

Readability

Finally, your article should not be repetitive and should be interesting. Short paragraphs make it easier to read, text talk makes it more difficult. All capitals in the article body or title are a no no, they only stand out in the sense that the reader feels shouted at and nobody wants to feel like that.

I hope that you have found this interesting and useful and that we get lots more quality articles to read.

BONUS : Article Sites We Love You

I love article sites! Why? Because you can write articles about your chosen subject, publish them for free and you reap all the rewards. You get to voice you opinion on your chosen subject area. Becoming a web author is fun. There is a great feeling associated when you search for your own name and Google brings up your articles.

What are the rewards?

Well most good article sites will allow you to leave a short bio which is perfect for adding a link back to your site. So you can get free exposure and people can republish your article if you make this clear, which means even more links spread across the internet.

When you write articles make sure you focus the text around key words you are trying to target. If you used the keywords in the heading of the article this is more weight, if you haven’t then add them. If you write a decent article and publish it on good quality article sites then in a few days you will see your article on Google when using those search terms. More and more people are reading peoples articles to find out information and the best companies to use etc. Many search terms only find relevant content in articles, and if you have clearly left your hyperlink going back to your website then is more weight to your web presence.

What are the best article sites?

The best quality article sites are the ones that Google likes. Article Alley is one of the more recognised sites, it has a network of sister sites and each article get published on all of the sites. Ezine Articles is another good site as is Isnare and Go articles. Some charge a small yearly fee but it is well worth it.

How do articles promote my site?

Articles promote your site because if your name is associated with a particular filed you will be seen as an authority on the subject. And if your article links back to your site then you will start to see more visitors. When Google gets a request to look for a key word it goes and finds the best sites with that content. So writing as many articles as you possibly can with links back to your website will help your web presence.

If you have a site and need some more content, using articles that are free to republish is a great way of adding more content. More quality content means more traffic, so hopefully more business. Article City is a great site which offers the option to republish their articles. So if you need content on fly fishing, search for articles on fly fishing, but make sure they state that they are free for republishing. As long as you know they are free to republish then you can add these articles to your site. Giving you more content and authority on your subject.

Anther great thing about article sites is that you can have your own voice on the internet. You may have a lot of information that other people would benefit from knowing. You might get told you talk too much, I know I have been told that. So now I find if I need to get something off my chest I write it down and publish it. Any points I want to make, I write an article and publish it. There is a great feeling in knowing that people are reading your words and hopefully benefiting from them.

Being a web author is fun, so get writing.