SEOcious: How to Get Listed in Google

Article Marketing Secrets and SEO Techniques

You don't get much given away free online that is of great value, especially article marketing secrets. Most people are unaware of the true power of article marketing, and regard it as just a means of getting links back to their website and perhaps the odd click to the site from an interested reader.

However, article marketing is a very powerful traffic tool if used right, and my purpose here is to reward my readers with valuable free information that I would normally charge clients a lot of money to obtain. Some of this might seem elementary, in fact each individual secret I am about to give you is indeed elementary when taken as a separate entity, but put together they form a tool that I doubt anybody online, including the most experienced marketers, are using in its entirety.

This lens is also being used to exemplify one of the secrets I am about to reveal - well, not really a secret, more common sense really. So here we are: what I am about to reveal to you here my clients would pay a massive amount of money for - even as much as $20. It's too late for them though, because you have it free, and they will now have to pay a lot more than that.

Why do people write articles for directory submission? They do it for each of two reasons:

To get the all-important back links from the article directories that improve their Google PageRank and so the possibility of a high search engine listing. However, the directories are not in existence for the benefit of their submitters, but for themselves. If I am talking about directories as if they were humans please bear with me - it is easier than referring to the article directory directors, or owners.

Article directories exist to make money, and they do so through Adsense and advertising, and some also by charging for express submissions. Otherwise why should anybody offer you free article listings, because the vast majority are free (apart from the express listing charges)- I would write that they are all free, but some smart ass would probably inform me about about a small directory in Patagonia that charges 5c a listing (sorry Patagonians - I had to use somewhere).

The reason that you will generally find Adsense blocks beside your article is psychological. It is because many articles are very poor, and written only as an introduction to the author's resource and website link. This is true: too many authors write for themselves and not their readers, and once the readers see the article they are turned off. They have nowhere to go so click on an Adsense ad, so making money for the directory.

However they make their money, the directories know that the higher each article is listed in search engines such as Google, the more exposure they will get. The higher the Google listing, the more visitors or readers, and hence the more Adsense clicks. The directories also understand that the higher the listings they can achieve for their authors, then the more submissions they will get, and that leads us to the first article marketing secret.

Secret #1

If you write an article on a topic that relates to a page on your website then the directory will optimize the directory page on which your article is published for the main keyword you are using. That is why directories ask you for the keyword pertaining to your article. They do the SEO work for you, and will get your article as many visitors as possible.

Therefore, if you are useless at SEO, write an article for your website using a particular keyword (or have an article ghostwriter (me) do it for you) and submit that to the directories. They will do the SEO and send visitors to your web page for more information. They earn money and you get the traffic. A great arrangement! Why do you think that your articles have to be of a certain standard and of a minimum length? To get a high Google listing of course.

Secret #2

Many article directories allow full HTML formating of your articles. Most allow only text, but those that do allow HTML are invaluable. Some, such as iSnare offer both. You should use that to maximum advantage and produce a beautifully formated piece of work, with bullets and proper headings.

Your readers will think you to be an expert writer (your text can be relatively poor as long as it looks fabulous)and will want to see more of your work. That click to your link is a given. It is a website magnet.

What you have to do is to find the directories that allow HTML formating of the body of the article and submit to them manually. Leave your submission software to deal with the rest. Most software allows you to add to and delete directories from the database, so use that judiciously to suit your needs. Always submit to the HTML sites manually since each might have distinctly different rules and specific HTML tags allowed or disallowed.

Secret #3

Many sites allow you more than one link in the author's resource box. You can present links to two or three different web pages and some people do that. Others ignore it and stick to the one. What you are going to do, however, is something different. You will present links to:

• One selected page on your website that relates to the article


• The Squidoo lens you have just created that also relates to the article.


• Your blog posting that also coincidentally relates to the article

That is using your allowed links to their best advantage. If your reader likes Squidoo, the click is definite, as it also is if you have a blog reader. You might get a click to your website, but most people don't bother clicking to websites these days unless your article is compelling or leaves them hanging with only part of the information they need. That is a skill that has to be learned, and not for this posting.

Secret #4

Learn HTML. This is a formating language, originally intended to allow linking of text to website pages. It is also good for formating text graphics, tables and many other features of a website. You can use it on your website or your blogs to make them look more professional. It is not difficult to learn , and if anybody remembers the old Wordstar word processor with its Control Codes for formating before the advent of wysiwyg, then that is like HTML. For control codes, read tags.

It provides a much more visually pleasing finish to a web page and blog posting, and if a page is visually pleasing,the reader might just make a purchase. The same is true of article postings on directories.

Secret #5

Integrated linking. This is my term for linking your articles to a blog, then the blog to a web page, then the web page to a Squidoo lens, and the the Squidoo lens back to the directory page containing the article. Eventually a reader can visit all of your pages on all of your publications. I have been scoffed at for doing this, but the person doing the scoffing earns less money online than I do. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, which just proves that my cousin eats too much pudding because he could play both Tweedledum and Tweedledee together.

Secret #6

This is the last - honest! I will keep any others for my next blog posting. If a specific article directory allows only one link in the resource box then do not make that to your website. Make it to your blog if you have one. Link it to a posting on the topic of your article (write a post if you don't have one). The post should offer more information on the subject of the article, but only some, with another link to the full article on your website. The full article should be a leader to a review of your product.

That way you make best use of links and also expose the reader to as many of your sites as possible. Who knows, they might remember and return some time, but they should also end up where you want them to.

It's all about links and traffic, and article marketing secrets and SEO can be used together to achieve the ultimate objective of most websites today: to make money. If you do that then you have done what you you set out to do, and that is the most important result of all. The rest is just a means of attaining it.

Here you find SEO hints and tips to improve the search engine optimization on your websites. I get all of my websites listed on Google and Yahoo within 2 days, and achieved #1 listings for my main keyword on each of my websites within days of applying SEO the way I use it.

TOP 5 SEO TIPS

Presented In My Order of Effectiveness

Not everybody will agree with the order in which I have placed these, and not everybody will agree with my top 5, but these are from personal experience. I am not interested in theories, and neither should you be. What counts is what works, and these work for me.

Using these, I have achieved #1 and #2 on Google for my keyword Article Services against more than 850 million competing web pages, and #1 to #4 for my keyword Improved search Engine Rank against over 2 million others. That is what I call 'working', and here, in general terms, are the things I did to achieve that with sites that had previously never been seen in the top 10 pages. So. My top 5:

1. Keyword Optimization


• Use the keyword as the title of the page in TITLE tags.
• Use the Keyword in the heading, but not alone. Use it as about 30% - 50% of the heading in H1 tags
• Use it once in the first 100 characters and once in the last paragraph, plus once more each 400 words. No more than that.
• Use a lot of text semantically related to the topic, rather than stuff it full of keywords.


2. Let the spiders see your text. Make sure that the spider gets to the text on your page before your links, or it might disappear without seeing too much of your content.


3. Incoming Links


• Write articles on your subject and get back-links from article directories. Keep submitting: at least one a week.
• Get as many other incoming links as possible to your home page, until that has a high Page 1 listing
• Provide reciprocal links from an internal page in your site, not your home page.
• Once your Home Page has a good listing, get links to internal pages.
• Submit your site to as many free website directories as you can.


4. Internal linking strategy: Lead the spiders where you want them to go: logically from page to page and not all over the place.


5. Present Google and Yahoo with an XML sitemap of your website: that will ensure that all your pages get visited and listed.

There are many more that I will add as I update this lens. In the meantime, if you want to get listings as high as mine in a very short time, and drive masses of traffic to your website by use of the major search engines, click on SEOcious for more information. This is not a sales page.

Here are my two blogs if you want to have a look. The first is on SEO and the second about blogging. They are fairly new blogs.

SEOscopy Blog and Blog on Blog