In part 3 of this series I touched on Forum Marketing as a way of getting people to visit your site for free. This time I’m going to look at Article Marketing.
There are a few ways in which Article Marketing and Forum Marketing are similar:
- Their purpose is two fold: 1) to grow your credibility and trustworthiness with your readers and 2) to get visitors and links to your site.
- You’re not able to directly promote your site within the body of the article (or forum posts)
- You can (and should) place a link to your site in the article resource box – similar to the signature file in forum marketing.
- Any form of spamming is out, out, out!
Remember that when I started this series on promoting your site for free I said that off-site SEO carries more weight than on-site SEO in the process of getting your site noticed by the search engines. I also said that off-site SEO was largely about getting inbound links to your site.
Article Marketing is a great way to get links to your site because, if your article is good, it will get picked up by ezines and webmasters who are constantly looking for good content. When this happens your article will be published far and wide – and since your resource box will contain a link back to your site you’ll be getting lots of high quality inbound links.
But, just to set your expectations – that probably won’t happen with your first article!
Like anything that’s worth doing, it takes time and effort. But there is one tool that I’ll cover later which makes the task of disseminating your article efficiently a gazillion times easier.
OK – so where do you start with Article Marketing..?
Here are some basics:
- The subject of your article should be closely relevant to the site (or page) that’s going to be linked to in your resource box at the end.
- You cannot link to an affiliate site – it has to be to a site owned by you.
- You cannot openly promote a product or service in your article
- Your article needs to be informative and well written.
On a logistical level your article should:
- Be submitted either in an email or in an attached text file (Notepad or WordPad) – i.e. without formatting
- Be between 600 and 1500 words long
- Be formatted to 60 characters wide (but check the requirements of the directory you’re submitting to)
- Include a 4 – 5 sentence summary
- Contain a 2 – 3 sentence resource box (author’s bio plus link to your site)
- Be free of spelling and grammar errors
What to Write About?
For the first-time article marketer, finding something to write about can be daunting. But, at the end of the day, the only way to get started is to get started – so jump in!
Here are some simple steps:
- Pick a subject that’s closely relevant to the site you’re promoting
- Choose an article type – here are some common types:
- A review article, which compares 3 or 4 different models of the same product or service, coming down to a ranking
- A testimonial article, which is usually a case of reporting on your own personal experience of using the product or service
- A ‘how to’ article, giving simple, clear steps for how to solve a problem or do something
- A ‘this is what happened to me’ article, giving others the benefit of your experience in a specific field
- With both review articles and testimonial articles you’ll need to be careful to avoid any direct promotion of the products you’re reviewing or testifying on.
- Once you’ve got the subject of your article and you’ve decided what type it’s going to be, map it out – just the section headings – to make sure you don’t miss anything when you’re doing the full script.
- Once you’ve got your article mapped out, start writing.
When you start writing don’t try to get it perfect first time. However much trouble you take on the first draft, I can guarantee that you’ll be doing lots more editing before you’re ready to unleash it on your unsuspecting readers.
So just write. You can go back and tidy it up later. (In fact you’ll have to!).
My approach:
The approach I use is to write the article initially using Word (or any word processing package). This is because I can use the spelling and grammar checkers to get all that basic stuff right.
This includes the main article, the 4 –5 sentence summary and the 2 – 3 sentence resource box text.
I then copy everything into Notepad to get rid of all the formatting that Word puts in. I also set the width of my Notepad window to 60 characters. You can do this by simply typing 1234567890, then copying it and pasting it 5 more times across the top of the page. Then grab the right margin of your Notepad window and drag it to the point where your 60 characters exactly fit.
I then put hard carriage returns at (or before) the 60 character point on each line, making sure to delete any extra spaces, so that no line of the article is more than 60 characters wide. Many will be less, because if the 60 character point falls in the middle of a word you’ll have to put the hard carriage return right before its first letter.
Finally, when that’s all ready, you’ll have an article that’s formatted correctly for most of the article directories. However, do take care to check out the formatting guidelines of the directory you’re submitting to, because they do vary – and some even allow you to use HTML.
The Objective of Article Marketing
To recap, then, the objective of article marketing is to create credibility and authority for you and generate lots of visitors and incoming links to your site.
To do this, the article needs to establish you as an authority on your subject. You need to provide good, useful information in your article and it needs to be well written, because that will entice readers to click the link in your resource box.
The headline is particularly important. Without a good headline people won’t even read your article, so it must be a headline that entices people to click on it.
The actual content of your article will be a lot easier to come up with than you may think. Firstly, as I’ve said earlier, it needs to be directly relevant to the site or page you’re linking to through your resource box.
I personally prefer to write ‘How To’ articles. This is because a) it’s easier to create a title that will attract visitors and b) I don’t have to worry about crossing the line by being too promotional of the product or service I’m writing about.
So if you’re creating a ‘how to’ article, simply take something from the page or site you’re promoting and describe how to do a related task, or solve a problem. Use simple language, short sentences and bulleted or numbered lists.
Don’t flood the market with articles. You’re far better off going the quality route, rather than the quantity route. Aim for 1 or 2 a week – no more. But make them good!
Remember also, that this is not an instant fix. You won’t get a ton of traffic to your site as a result of your first article. Possibly not even from your first 10 articles. But you do need to be publishing articles regularly. Over time, as your article ‘footprint’ grows you will start to see traffic to your site building up.
It’s all part of creating a presence online. Like a departing train, it takes a while to build up the momentum but, once you have the momentum, it’s powerful.
Automated Article submission
I mentioned earlier a tool that will help you disseminate your articles much more efficiently. It’s a membership site that costs $37 a month and it distributes your articles on your behalf to literally hundreds of ezines, directories and webmasters.
This means that you only need to write and submit your article once – the service takes care of the rest.
You can set up various parameters in your account (such as your resource box, for example) which then enables you to concentrate on writing articles without worrying about the logistics each time. All the issues around formatting for the different directories and ezines they submit to are taken care of by the service.
They also have a very good tool that enables you to produce different versions of your article very quickly, which greatly reduces the chance of any directories or ezines getting duplicate copies.
They also have a wealth of resources and tips for article publishers and, in my view, the service is well worth the fee.
It’s a service that absolutely slashes the time required to produce and distribute articles widely.
I’ve used them for a few months now with great results. Check out the details here
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