The Ultimate Guide to Article Marketing

Photo: North York Moors in low light

Hi, my name is Steve Shaw. I've worked from home full-time with an online business since 2002, and live with my wife, Tracy, and three small children. I'm based in the UK, more specifically in York, in Northern England.

That's what is really great about working online - the flexibility of time and location, means I see so much of my family. The Internet provides a different way of life that suits my mentality and life style - and I love it!

Since my livelihood depends on the success of my website, I was looking for a way to drive traffic to my website, increase my search engine rankings, and also get the word out about my business...Oh, and I also didn't want to spend a lot of money to accomplish that goal (I think we all know how that is! ;-)).

I had heard about article marketing--which is writing articles and then submitting them to online publishers. It's FREE--I mean, the only cost is your own time that it takes you to craft the article itself and then submit it.

I started writing and submitting articles and saw such amazing results that a lightbulb turned on in my brain--THIS ACTUALLY WORKS!

Photo credit

In brief, I write and then distribute articles to various publishers on the Internet. When they publish them, this can lead to rapid traffic and sales growth on my web sites.

Usually I write just one or two a month - with practice, I can churn out a single article in less than half an hour, with a bit more time spent on reviewing it and ensuring it is suitable for publication.

So how does this concept work?

Quite simply, ezine editors and web site owners are quite literally crying out for quality content they can use.

For the ezine publisher, quality content is essential. It encourages their subscribers to keep reading rather than unsubscribe, and ezines that are read are far more profitable for the publishers, whether via advertising or other revenue streams.

For the web site owner, content equals traffic. It's that simple, the more content you have, the more traffic you attract from the search engines, particularly engines like Google which are content-crazy.

Content is what makes the web go round.

By simply providing the content that publishers can use in their ezines and on their web sites, you can get your name all over the web rapidly, boost your credibility, bring you large levels of traffic, and increase your sales levels.

I've seen such massive results with writing articles that I've spent a considerable amount of time over the past several years figuring out what works and what doesn't work. This is not brain surgery, but I know from experience that if you try to figure things out yourself you can be in for a lot of wasted time and frustration.

So, why re-invent the wheel? I've been through a lot of trial and error, run into brick walls and then figured out a way up and over them. I've found which methods work...and which don't work. I've even found a way to create a successful business out of article marketing (more on that later).

**A quick word of warning though.**

Many people, however, submit articles the wrong way and get very little result - I'll show you the right way to do it that will have publishers willing to publish virtually every article you send to them.

I'm sharing all this information with you--basically everything I've learned in over the past 6 years-- so that you don't have to try to figure out everything yourself. I know how frustrating that can be! Everything you see here is everything you need to know if you'd like to write articles and increase your website sales..the right way."

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

You may be thinking, "Why would someone go to the trouble of writing an article, and then submit it for free to online publishers? What do I get out of this?" Great question!

Trust me, there is method to the madness--you, as the author of the article, are getting many things in return for providing "free" content. You are not receiving money directly for the article (there is no one handing you a wad of cash in exchange for the article), but you do receive three very important things that are massively valuable if you have a website.

Article Marketing is a triple threat when it comes to benefiting your website:

1. Article Marketing builds links.


2. Article Marketing gets the word out about your website, bringing widespread exposure and an increase in targeted traffic.


3. Article Marketing can help establish you as an expert in your niche and build customer confidence. 

Here's how it all works--Each time an author submits an article, he includes his resource box. A resource box is a short author bio, which also includes a link back to the author's website.

Every time a website owner decides to publish a free reprint article, he also includes the author's resource box. So, every time the article is picked up for publication the author's name and a link back to the author's website are published also.

In this way the author builds links and increases exposure for his website. The people clicking through to his website will be doing so because they found his article helpful, and since his article is on the same topic of his website the article generates targeted traffic.

Yes, you are letting publishers publish your articles for free, but that's the point. That is what gets your article widespread distribution, builds links to your website, establishes you as an expert in your field, and brings increasing exposure to your website.

How about this--instead of thinking of Article Marketing as writing articles for free, think about it as letting other people market your website for free.

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I know - I can almost hear you saying that you can't write to save your life! Rest assured, you do not have to be Hemingway to do article marketing.

Believe me, almost anyone can do this with a bit of practice and some good advice. You'll soon be able to churn out articles as quickly as you can write a letter to your old Aunt Mildred.

So, don't make excuses, and just start writing right now. Here's a couple of excellent resources (actually they are articles about writing articles - neat!) you can use to point you in the 'write' (excuse the pun) direction:

This one's from Joe Vitale, a quick and easy formula you can use to write virtually anything:

The Easiest Way To Write Anything

And this one's from 'Ezine Queen' Alexandria Brown, giving you 7 different ways to approach article writing:

7 Formulas For Writing Articles That Get Read!

Choose one of these approaches, and get something down on paper. Just write about what you know.

Once you've done your first one, the hardest part is over - and virtually anyone can get an article down on paper by following Joe's or Alexandria's advice.

From then on, your articles will just get better and better!

One useful technique that I've found works well is to leave the article alone for a few days after you've written it - you'll be amazed at how much you'll then be able to improve its readability and construction.

If you're a beginner, it's best to then leave it again for a short period of time, and review it again, until you are happy that it's of publishable quality.

One final point - always ensure your article does not contain any spelling mistakes or obvious grammatical errors - run it through a spell checker to make sure before you submit it, and/or get someone else to read it through to double check it.

I've found that articles between 700-800 words are optimal--anything overly short or long can have limited appeal to publishers. Generally speaking, ezine editors and other publishers are not looking for articles that are much shorter or longer than this. This length fits into ezines well, and looks about right on web pages too.

Technically though, most article directories will accept quality articles between 400 and 1500 words.

By submitting your article to publishers, you are going to allow them to freely publish your article without any payment to you in cash - instead, your 'payment' for providing publishers with valuable content is that they must publish your resource box at the end of the article.

The resource box typically contains information about the author, and usually provides a link or URL to the author's web site that anyone reading the article can then follow if they wish.

So how should a resource box be constructed?

Here are some guidelines you should follow, based on my own experience with numerous publishers.

The information in the resource box attached to each article should always contain some biographical information about the author.

If it is entirely commercial, eg. just an ad about your product, many publishers simply won't publish it.

As a rough guide, it should be in context with an 'About the author' subheader, i.e. you should give some information about yourself and your background, while providing a link to your website and/or an email address via which readers of the article can contact you.

In Lesson #3 we'll go over how to craft a really strong resource box in much more detail.

In order to have the maximum impact with your articles, you should stagger your article submissions (this means not submitting a bunch in one day or over a short span of time). I suggest no more than 2 articles per week submitted on different days. Submitting no more than 2 articles per week means you will be submitting somewhere between 1-8 articles a month.

Here's a resource that may be helpful to you:

How Many Articles Should I Submit-Is More Better?

Easy Tiger--this is actually a "less is more" situation, and you will have greater results by moderately and steadily submitting articles over an extended period of time rather than trying to inundate the internet with your articles. Here's why:

Quality publishers dislike several articles from the same author within a short time period, and submitting more than this can lead to publisher overload and refusals to accept your future articles. Also, it isn't enough to just get your articles to the distribution sites; the articles have to be of such quality that it makes website and newsletter owners want to publish them. That's how you get your best exposure and boost your targeted traffic to your website.

While it's not in your best interest to inundate the internet with tons of articles all at one time, it is extremely effective to consistently produce quality articles and trickle them out over the long term.

Here's how that works:

The more quality articles you write, the more websites will publish your article online. The more websites pick up your article, the more inbound links you'll have coming to your site. The more inbound links you have, the more long-term targeted traffic you'll have. The inbound links and steady traffic will improve your search engine ranking, which will then, in turn bring you even more traffic.

Also, the more articles you write over time, the more you solidify yourself as an expert in your field. Publishers will start to know who you are and be more likely to choose your articles for publication. Readers will also get the feeling that you really know what you're talking about. After all, you've been consistently publishing valuable articles on your area of expertise over the long term.

Yes! When you're writing and submitting articles you need to keep in mind what the publisher's needs are. Publishers are looking for quality articles that bring value to readers.

Quality definitely counts with article marketing--you will see much greater results with one well written article than with 10 or more sub-standard ones.

And on top of that--remember that your articles are representing YOU on the internet!

If you were going out to meet your potential customers, wouldn't you want to put your most professional face forward? Of course you would!

I have 3 things to say about article writing quality: proofread, proofread, proofread!

Don't even think about it.

Oh, I know that it's tempting to think, "Hey, I'm going to the effort to write this article, it will (hopefully!) be published on several websites, I basically have a worldwide audience--why not take this opportunity to talk about the supreme special-ness of me (or my website or products)?"

I beg of you--please don't even go there. Here's why:

Just because you submit an article to an online publisher does not mean that they are required to publish it. Quality publishers have screening processes and editorial guidelines. They are looking for educational articles that their readers will find helpful, not advertisements or sales pages--that is not what article marketing is about!

So do yourself a favor and scrap the idea that you can use your article body to be like a commercial for your website or business.

In your resource box!

Yes, that's the appropriate spot to promote your website, your products and your business.

In a little bit I'll go over how you can craft a resource box that will lure readers back to your website.

Glad you asked :-)

Here's what you need to do--take your salesperson hat off and put your expert hat on--you need to think (and write) like an expert in your niche, providing useful information to your target readers--not sales copy!

To get the greatest benefit from article marketing and an optimum amount of targeted traffic to your website, you will write articles on the topic of your website. Articles on the topic of your website are on topics that your target readers will find helpful and informative.

Ask yourself this--What are the top 10 questions that the people in my target market ask me?

Or What are the top 5 problems that folks in my target market have (concerning the topic of my website)?

Remember, you cannot mention your website in the body of your article (your author resource box is the appropriate place to talk about yourself and your website), but you can most certainly address issues that are on the minds of your target market.

I know this may be a difficult mind shift for some of you who have product based websites. If you're having trouble coming up with ideas for topics for your articles, you might find this article helpful:

What is the best way to write articles to drive traffic back to my product website?

When I have my article written, does it need to be formated in any particular way when it's submitted to publishers?

Advice on this can vary, but I've generally found that 60 characters per line is the format which most publishers prefer. Articles submitted via the service at SubmitYOURArticle.com we can actually format to whatever CPL (characters per line) the publisher requires, though standard is 60CPL for email submissions unless they request otherwise.

While results certainly can be dramatic - for example, publication in a major ezine can bring a surge of traffic over a few days - an article submission marketing plan is generally a long-term strategy for building up the traffic to your web site, so don't think that you can submit one article, and then a few days or weeks later see a huge change in your traffic or search engine ranking.

It can certainly take a few months before you start seeing results. Remember, search engines such as Google can take months to adjust search engine rankings based on incoming links and an increased search engine ranking for your major keywords can of course build traffic dramatically for the long-term.

You should plan on doing your article marketing campaign for an extended period, generally for several months. Ideally, article marketing should be an intrinsic long-term part of your overall marketing strategy.

So article marketing does take time, but the results are excellent and long lasting--definitely worth the effort!

Yes, the article is very important, but the real jewel for the website owner is the author resource box that sits beneath the article.

That is the one spot where you get to talk about your business, your products, and your website. It is also the spot where the precious link back to your website goes.

But the resource box has the potential to do much more than just build links to your site-your resource box is the one place where you can talk about your own business/website and entice the reader to click through to your site.

So, how do you entice and lure in 450 characters or less? That's an excellent question, and I've compiled some helpful resources for your here that will guide you in crafting a really strong, attractive resource box:

3 Secret Tricks For Luring Readers Back To Your Website

Making Your Resource Box...Work!

How To Make Your Resource Box Sticky (And Get Those Click-Throughs!)

How To Sabotage Your Article Marketing with a Last Minute Resource Box

5 Ways To Stop Singing The Resource Box Blues

Photo credit: lure

Okay, so you've got a quality article written, formatted correctly for the publishers, with a nice resource box at the end to drive traffic through to your site. But without distributing your article effectively, all your hard work so far will be in vain.

There are three main distribution channels for your articles that you should concentrate on:

1. Ezine Editors

2. Announcement Lists

3. Article Directories

Let's go through these...

Finding Suitable Ezine Editors

So how do you go about finding these ezine editors?

You need to find editors who publish ezines in the same 'category' as your article - for example, if your expertise, and your web site, focuses on gardening, you should be submitting your articles to editors of ezines in the same genre (of course, only if they accept article submissions).

The important part is the readership of the ezine.

Are the readers of the ezine likely to be interested both in what you have to say, and in what you have to offer on your web site?

It is straightforward enough to build up a list of suitable ezine editors - the downside is that it can take considerable time and effort, and as with most things, you have to be willing to persist in order to succeed. There is however an alternative that can save hours and hours of time, as you'll find out by following the link below.

To build up your list, you need to scour ezine directories for ezines within your genre, check each ezine to see if they accept article submissions, and then double check with each editor to confirm that their details are correct, and that they still accept article submissions - you will unfortunately find many of the listings are out of date, and some ezines are no longer published at all for whatever reason.

To get started now, you can find a listing of several dozen ezine directories here.

Finding Suitable Announcement Lists

Another way to contact hundreds, if not thousands, of potential publishers, is through what we call article announcement lists.

An article announcement list is a type of mailing list that concentrates on article submissions. The subscribers of the mailing list are either publishers looking for content, providers of that content (i.e. article writers such as yourself), or possibly both.

Every article you submit to these lists get sent to all of the subscribers of that list - by submitting to multiple lists, you're effectively sending out your article to thousands of potential publishers.

Before you can submit any articles though, you firstly need to subscribe to each one.

And note that as a subscriber, you will receive article submissions from all the other subscribers, which means you should be prepared for a significant amount of email. For this reason, it's often wise to subscribe using a completely separate email address to your usual email account.

So how do you locate these lists? Simple, I've done it for you :-).

Here is a listing of several article announcement lists.

How To Submit To Article Directories on the Internet

The article directories have a number of distinct advantages:

- Instant publication - your articles are often put on almost permanent display, for use by publishers at any time

- Often your article postings will be displayed with active links to your web site, which can help with your search engine rankings in major search engines such as Google

- Your articles can be read by anyone, regardless of whether or not they are a potential publisher

- The articles can be indexed by the search engines, feeding targeted traffic through to your web site and raising your profile

There are numerous such article directories on the web that allow you to submit your articles, and retrieval by publishers.

Here is a list of some of the most popular article directories.

After submitting an article to some of these, I'm often amazed at the amount of instant traffic and sales it can bring, often because many of the directories display a 'Recent Articles'-type listing which dramatically improves the profile of your article for a short period after your submission.

I know what you're thinking: "I thought you said that you do Article Marketing and you have time left over to spend with your family, do hobbies, and run a business--how can you do everything article marketing requires and still have a life?"

Well, remember how I told you that I had "been there, done that"?

When I first started using Article Marketing to drive traffic to my websites and increase leads and sales, I was doing it by hand, painstakingly typing in all the information into forms on various article directories, and going through all of the steps I've told you about here.

Yes, I've done it the hard way before, and I thought "There must be a better way."

So, then I decided to try using article submission software, and that helped a bit, but at the end of the day the submission process did still tend to be a manual process. Even with the software, article submissions were still a difficult time-consuming process (and I got tired of receiving numerous spam complaints from the 'publisher' email list that was included - most of it in fact was out-dated and irrelevant).

And so my quest continued...

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I have a Master's Degree in IT, so as I was encountering all these frustrations trying to submit articles more efficiently, the wheels in my brain started turning.

"Hmmm," I thought to myself. "I'm a programmer--why don't I just make an automated program that I can use to submit my articles?"

I created that automated article submission program several years ago, and what do you know--it worked like a charm!

To tell you the truth, when I created that program to submit articles automatically, I was just interested in making my own life easier. I wanted to be able to submit articles to a very large distribution network of quality publishers, and I wanted to submit to publishers who actually wanted to receive my articles. And I didn't want to spend all day doing it!

The automated article submission program I created was such a smashing success that I thought, "Hey--surely there are other people in my situation who would find a 100% automatic article submission service like this beneficial."

And the rest is history...I turned the automated article submission program that I created into an online service and called it SubmitYOURArticle.com.

I'm proud to say that we were the first automated article submission service available online and have developed a loyal following of website owners many of whom use article marketing as their main web promotion method. We're known for quality. We're known for our stellar customer service too. We're also known for listening to our customers and constantly improving the service to meet their needs.

We've even invented a way to allow our members to create multiple article variations (as many as they want!) so that they are submitting high quality unique versions of the their article to the various publishers, rather than the same article to each one.

Of course you can still see some results by submitting your articles manually--this is how I got started!

But if there ever comes a time when you'd like to reach a large quantity of high quality publishers at the click of a button, then please let me know if I can be of service to you.

I can tell you I've been doing Article Marketing for several years for my own sites, and the results are long lasting. In my opinion, the most effective method to build targeted traffic to your web site over the long term and increase your sales levels is via article submissions.

I also work with fellow website owners every day helping them submit article to various publishers on the web, and quite frequently they'll take the time to email me and tell me how pleased they are with their article marketing efforts and how article marketing has actually exceeded their expectations. If you'd like, you're welcome to read some of their feedback for yourself.

This website owner shares his traffic stats for a brand new site he was launching with the help of Article Marketing, and his results are exciting!

I love that type of feedback :-), and I love helping people do this and see that it actually works, but really the only way for you to know for sure is to try it for yourself.

If you feel like you'd like to test the waters, why not do a little experiment?

1) Make a note of your traffic, your backlinks and your search engine ranking for your keywords before you submit your first article.

Not sure how to find how many backlinks you currently have?

Google has lots of little tricks, and this is one of them--just type this into the Google search box:

link:http://yourwebsite.com (you would substitute the URL of your website after the "link:" part).

A list of all the websites that are currently linking to your site will appear, and if you look towards the top of the page, you can see a count of how many links your website has.

To find your search engine ranking for your keywords, just type your keywords into Google and see where your site comes up in the search results.

2) Okay, now submit 1-8 articles a month for 4 months to an article directory (any of the popular ones that I've listed here). Now, that's just one directory submission, so the results will be limited, but every little bit helps.

Of course if you want to go full throttle you can use a service like SubmitYOURArticle.com to get your article out to hundreds of targeted publishers. It's your call as to what approach you'd like to start with.

3) At the end of 4 months, check your stats again, and see if there is any difference.

Now, why am I saying 4 months? Well, remember that search engines like Google can take months to adjust search engine rankings based on incoming links.

It's sort of like starting a workout plan--you wouldn't lift weights for a few days, and then at the end of the week expect to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his "Terminator" days, would you?

Actually I think that a lot of us would have those expectations :-)--humans love immediate gratification! And then when we don't see results immediately we get frustrated and give up.

But let's not let that happen here--we know that it will take at least 4 months before we can see results with Article Marketing in the search engines, so please commit to that time frame, knowing that ideally Article Marketing is an ongoing type of thing, something you do continuously throughout the life of your website.

This is a great question because as you've picked up on by now Article Marketing requires that you write a steady stream of articles, basically 1-8 articles a month.

Now, depending on how used to writing you are, that may or may not sound kind of intimidating, but trust me, as with any endeavor it's all about organization and learning from other people who are more experienced.

There are all sorts of productivity and time management methods that I do myself that I've learned from observing professional writers and other productivity gurus.

I've compiled a list of "productivity for writers" type of articles that I've found very helpful, and I hope you will too!

Learning To Write First Thing In The Morning

How To Schedule Your Writing Time Like A Professional Writer

How To Create A Storehouse of Article For the Winter

Tips And Tricks For Distraction Free Writing

Want To Boost Your Writing Productivity? Have A Baby!

5 Tips For Finding Writing Time

How Do You Conquer The Dreaded Writer's Block?

10 Steps to Create The Habit Of Writing

The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource

How To Write Without Distractions

Beat Blank Page Syndrome: 10 Tricks to Get Your Writing Started

9 Tips To Productive Revision

Revving Up Your Writing Productivity

Time Is Not on Your Side: Time Management Tips for Writers

Image by JPox

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments and for letting me know what other types of article marketing info you guys really need.

As a result of your input, I'm adding a few more sections to this lens. The newest lesson is:

Lesson #8: How To Craft An Attention Grabbing Article Headline (or Title)

And these are coming soon...

Lesson #9: Basic Article Marketing SEO: How To Use Keywords In Your Articles Without Being Obnoxious

Lesson #10: More tips on writing articles, including...

a) How to turn a blog post into an article
b) How to never run out of things to write about
c) A step-by-step guide on how to write your first article

And I just want to thank all of you for helping this lens to grow and be shared as a useful resource with your friends and colleagues--you're the best!

Pumping up the punch of your article headlines is one of THE most effective ways to get the most bang for your article marketing time and effort.

Why? Imagine this...

When a person goes to an article directory or does a Google search, they are looking for information on a specific topic.

At an article directory, the reader will click on a category and be presented with a long list of articles on similar topics. When doing a Google search they'll type in their search terms and be presented with a list of results.

Either way, you know that before someone gets to the point of actually reading your article, they will likely be looking at a list of other articles on a similar topic.

Initially, what makes a reader decide to click through to read one article and not another?

The article TITLE!


Image by -zyber-

The hard, cold truth is that you can write the most well-written, insightful, engaging, useful article on the planet, but if you slack off on your article headline, you will not see the results you were hoping for.

So, I encourage you--if you would really like to maximize your results with article marketing, please pay special attention to your titles.

• Do your titles stand out from the crowd?


• Do your headlines tweak a reader's curiosity and make them want to delve into the content of your article?


• Do your titles promote a sense of urgency in a reader that they should look at your article first before looking at any others?


• Do your headlines give the reader a taste of what your article is about
  and tell the reader what they have to gain from reading your article?

Believe it or not, there are certain headline writing tricks you can use to get your creative juices flowing and create electrifying titles.

I get asked for pointers on writing article headlines all the time, so I've got several resource that walk you step-by-step through crafting a really amazing title. I hope you'll find these helpful!

How To Give Your Article Curb Appeal

Have you ever been house hunting and the minute you laid eyes on the exterior of a particular house you knew that it was "the one"?

I've known people who have actually put down offers on houses before even seeing the interior-the curb appeal was that good!

And when you're selling your house, there are certain things you do to make it so that when potential buyers pull into the driveway they fall in love before they even get out of the car.

Maybe you didn't know this, but writing articles has a romantic, 'love at first' site element too.

It doesn't matter what you're writing about-the first thing a potential reader will see is your article's curb appeal, which is the article title.

Read more...

The #1 Very Simple Tweak You Can Make to Your Articles for Maximum RESULTS!

What if I told you that amidst all of your article marketing efforts, all of the time you spend writing, all of your consistency and eloquently worded articles, that there was one very simple change you could make that would impact your results in a major way?

Well, there is, and I really want to encourage you to take this tip to heart:

An ATTENTION-grabbing article title is PARAMOUNT.

Were you expecting something more mind blowing?

It really is that simple-you can craft an excellent article and resource box but if your title is not enticing, you won't be getting folks to read your article, or to read your resource box, or to click through to your website from your resource box.

Here's what you need to do:

Construct the title to give people more of a reason to click through and read the article.

This is even more important nowadays with the amount of articles in circulation. You really have to find a way to make your article stand out from the crowd.

Read more...

How To Sabotage Your Article Marketing: Slap On A Lackluster Title

You are submitting articles consistently. [check!]

You are writing articles that serve your readers and please publishers.[check!]

Your resource box is sticky and lures readers to your site. [check!]

You've created some really superb content in your articles. [check!]

Yay for you :-) , but what if you're not getting as much traffic from your articles to your website as you would like?

Whenever someone asks me what one thing they can do to take things up a notch with their articles, I've got just 2 words for them:

Your TITLES!

Read more...

Photo by: bebalance - in slow motion

There is a delicate balance between the SEO side of article marketing and the educational, writer-ly side.

On the one hand, most likely you started article marketing because you wanted to build links, increase traffic, and basically grab Google's attention so that your website would be featured more prominently in the search engine results.

So, our motivations may be SEO oriented, but at the same time we have to remember what article marketing is at its heart:

Article marketing is writing quality educational articles that publishers want to publish and readers find valuable.

The problem I see most often when people try to leverage their keywords to attract Google's attention is that they let the writing quality side slip in favor of a more technical SEO oriented approach.

Frankly, when you use your keywords in your articles to the point where you compromise the quality of the article, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot.

I always tell folks--focus on quality and always write articles on the topic of your website. If you do that, you will likely be using your keywords naturally in your articles, which is more attractive to Google than manually stuffing them into your article.

I would always put the needs of the readers and publishers first, and then if you want to you can try to deliberately use your keywords in your submissions.

If you are considering taking a stab at walking that delicate tight rope between a quality article and a keyword rich article, I've compiled some resources for your below that will hopefully help you maximize your SEO punch while at the same time maintaining writing quality and value.

We'll cover some basic info below, like what a keyword is and how to do keyword research, and then graduate on to more challenging aspects of using keywords in article marketing.

Here we go:



What are keywords, you ask? Great question!

First let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time many years ago there was a major airline that wanted to drive traffic to their website. In particular, they wanted to attract people who were looking for inexpensive air travel fares.

So, they created a gorgeous website and on appropriate pages on their website they talked about their "inexpensive air travel fares".

They thought, "Who doesn't want to travel inexpensively? Surely we will get lots of search engine traffic to our site because we've madeit clear that we specialize in inexpensive air travel fares!"

But their faces fell when they saw their website traffic stats-they were hardly getting any site visitors at all, and they were extremely perplexed and disappointed.

"Why?!" they asked. "We know that oodles of people want inexpensive air travel fares, so why isn't Google sending all those people to our site?"

Then one day a wise person answered their cries of distress and confusion...

Read more...




When a website owner is determining his keywords for his website, he needs to think backwards-he needs to put himself in the place of the person who is searching for information on the topic of his website.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I am not good at figuring out what someone would type into Google to reach one of my sites. I always think I know the obvious search terms that someone would use, and then I'm shocked at the simplicity of what folks actually do type in.

The lesson of the story is-it's worth it to do keyword research. You'll be creating your website keeping your keywords in mind, and also writing your articles on the topics of your keywords.

So, it might be a good idea to take some time on the front end and figure out what your keywords are.

But how?

Luckily there are tools created just for this purpose. On the web there are many free keyword research resources and some that cost money. Let's look at a few:

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When you've finally decided what keywords you'll be using on your website, how do you use that knowledge in your article marketing campaign?

Great question!

Keywords are useful to Google and the other search engines because they help categorize what your web page (or the web page that your article appears on) is about. There are a few areas that Google pays extra attention to when trying to establish what your web page is about, and your title is one of them.

I would suggest trying to naturally work your keywords into your titles, if possible.

Notice I said "naturally"-as we've discussed before, your title is like curb appeal for your article.

First and foremost you want to craft an attention grabbing title that will draw readers in, but I think you'll find that you can also use your keywords most or some of the time when you're crafting titles.

Here's what NOT to do...

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When you're submitting your articles, either manually through the directories themselves or automatically through SubmitYOURArticle.com, you may have noticed a field in the "enter article" page that asks you to insert your keywords.

What exactly is done with the keywords that you type into the keywords box when you're entering your article?

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We're all in the same boat here-all of us are at various stages of learning how to market and drive traffic to our websites.

If you're like most folks, when you first start marketing your website you probably didn't have any idea about any of the SEO stuff, such as keywords.

Then after a while, you learned what keywords are and what their purpose is, and you got the general impression that you're supposed to be using keywords in your website and in your article marketing campaign.

Perhaps you've overheard bits and pieces of information, such as "use your keywords in your articles to attract Google's attention" and "putting your keywords in your titles is extra effective."

And then you take that information and try to do the best you can with it.

No one can blame you for that-even the most experienced SEO junkie is constantly learning, constantly trying to figure out how things work.

But I have to tell you, I see more articles than I'd like to admit that look like they've been peppered with a keyword machine gun, with keywords just sprayed throughout the title, the article body and the resource box with no attention to the writing quality and educational content.

This is not what you're going for!

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We've been all over this keywords thing backwards and forwards-yes, it's good to know your keywords when you're doing article marketing, but depending on how you use them things can either go very right or very wrong.

How can things go right?

Well, whenever you're building a website or doing any type of online marketing (including article marketing), appropriate use of your keywords can draw desirable attention from Google. This means that when folks are typing your keyword terms into a search box, Google knows to associate your website with those words, which means you'll rank higher in the search engine rankings.

How can things go wrong?

Sometimes in an attempt to catch Google's attention, writers will forget that they first need to please a few other groups of people:

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I'm warning you--when you click the links below you will be taken to resource pages with a ton of info (all neatly organized into sub-sections under the particular topic).

I've created so much teaching info on the topic of Article Marketing that I've decided to go through it all and make it so that if you were looking for info on How To Find Article Topics (or whatever), that you could just go to that resource page and find everything your heart desires all organized into neat and tidy compartments.

These are the ones I've done so far, but I'm still working on others.

Putting these resources together is kind of painstaking --I hope you get some use out of them!

Below you'll see the introductions to each resource, but click "Read More" to see the complete resource.


Photo by: Rickydavid

Article Writing: How To Find Great Topics

What Should I Write About?

This is probably the most common question I receive, and one that I sometimes find myself wondering for my own article marketing campaigns!

Even if you're an experienced writer, I think we all run dry on ideas sometimes, and it helps to have some tricks for stimulating those creative juices and getting the ideas flowing.

I've written many resources on the topic of 'how to find an article topic', and the links below are to some of the key posts on this topic. I hope you'll find this to be a useful reference.

Topics included in this resource:

*Strategies for generating article ideas
*How to never run out of topics to write about
*How to write articles for a product based website
*How to use keywords to find article topics
*Article Writing Formats--how to write 'How To' and 'List' articles
*Using Blogs, E-Books and Other Content To Generate Article Ideas
*And much more...

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Photo by: Rickydavid

How To Create A Resource Box: The Ultimate Guide

How Do I Write A Resource Box?

If you've just started Article Marketing, the concept of a Resource Box may be new to you.

I've written many articles on the topic of 'how to create a great resource box', and I thought it would be a good idea to compile and organize them in one place so that you will have a ready resources when questions arise.

Topics included in this resource:

*How to create a basic resource box
*How to be sure that your resource box links work
*Resource box lures--ideas for luring readers to your website and increasing click throughs
*Before & After: Real life examples of author resource boxes that were in need of makeovers
*HTML resource boxes--what they are, step-by-step tutorial on how to create one, slip-ups to avoid
*Special tricks for resource boxes if you are submitting through SubmitYOURArticle.com
*And much more...

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Photo by: Rickydavid

SEO Resources For Article Marketers

How Do Google And Article Marketing Interconnect?

It is not necessary to know the ins and outs of how Google works and how Article Marketing influences search engine listings to see positive results from your article submissions.

You can progress and see the benefits if you write articles on the topic of your website, submit articles consistently, and craft strong titles and resource boxes.

However, you must know that Article Marketing is inextricably linked with SEO, and when you're feeling up to it there are some more advanced things you can do to with your articles that will capitalize on the SEO benefits of Article Marketing.

Topics included in this resource:

*How to get a higher search engine ranking
*Backlinks: When can I expect them to show up?
*Keywords: What are they, how do I do keyword research, how to use keywords in articles, titles and resource boxes
*Writing with SEO in mind
*How to create an article marketing campaign
*Tours of stats tracking tools

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