This is a megapost version of the How To Promote Yourself Through Article Marketing series. You can read it in it’s individual sections as well: Part I, Part II and Part III!
Introduction
As a webmaster or marketer, you need to use every tool at your disposal to drive visitors and traffic to your website. Without visitors, you have no chance at branding or revenue, like a store with no customers.
One tool that is often overlooked by many webmasters is Article Marketing. Article Marketing is the process of writing an engaging, informative article, and submitting to a number of article directories on the Internet. By linking back to your website or websites from within the article, you can often drive large amounts of traffic, and create numerous backlinks to your site.
What Can it Do for Me?
Article Marketing has three major benefits for those that practice it:
It is beneficial from a SEO perspective as when it is done properly, it will create a large amount of backlinks on the Internet, with anchor text you control. The links will ideally be on pages relevant to your site’s content, which will somewhat increase the importance of the links. Without getting off-topic here, we know that the more relevant links your site has, the higher it can rank within the major search engines.
From a traffic perspective, if you do things right, you might get hundreds of visitors to your website via the articles you write. These visitors will be interested in your site and subject, and will be open to your message and/or products. This can easily result in increased revenue and sales.
From a branding perspective, Article Marketing can help you increase your mind share. When people think of a subject within your niche, or planning to purchase an item you sell, you want them to think of you first.
If your article is written well, and is appealing to readers, you may find it re-syndicated and republished on websites across the Internet, resulting in more traffic and more links. It is not uncommon for a well written article to be republished hundreds or thousands of times on different websites!
Write Your Articles
The most important part of Article Marketing is the articles themselves. If an article doesn’t catch potential readers immediately and entice them to continue reading, nobody will feel compelled to visit your site.
Now, the scope of this post does not include lessons or tutorials on how to write an article. If you would like to know more about that, read Copyblogger. I would, however, like to make a few relevant points to help you maximize your success.
Write Something Unique
Do you want people to remember you? Than write something they haven’t read before. Take a new angle to a controversial issue, or discuss something that hasn’t been discussed before. You need to offer your potential readers something they can’t get anywhere else. You need to provide a reason for them to remember you, and this can be done successfully with unique views, opinions and content.
Headlines Are Your Best Friend!
On an article directory, your article will be mixed in with hundred or thousands of others, with only your headline to differentiate yourself from the rest. Therefore, write something that will grab the reader’s attention and steer them towards yours!
Make sure to include some keywords in your title for search purposes – a potential reader searching for a specific subject will be more likely to click on your article if they see exactly what they want in the title.
Headings Are Your Second Best…
Many writers do not use headings and subheadings in their articles. This is a mistake. Readers will often scan an article, a read the headings as a type of ‘Table of Contents’ to the article. It makes sense – what better way to get a feel for the contents of the article?
By breaking up your article into sections, you are providing some structure to it, and making it more comprehensive for the reader. Be careful though – too many headings may be just as overwhelming as a large block of small text.
Make Your Author Bio Box Compelling!
Most article sites have an author bio box which you can use to write a bit about yourself, and perhaps include a link to your site. Think carefully about what you want to include in this. Of the following two examples, which is more compelling?
“Brian Vuyk is a blogger who writes about SEO stuff at http://www.caydel.com”
or
“Get the most from your websites! Learn how to promote yourself by reading Brian’s blog at http://www.caydel.com”
Obviously, the second is far more compelling. It contains a call to action, and should grab the reader’s interest. Seriously – would you really click on the first?
Look the Part in Your Author’s Photo
Another thing to consider is a photo. Many article sites will publish a photo of the author along with the article. It is a proven fact that people will remember and recognize the photos long before they will recognize the name. The photo draws people’s eyes, and creates an impression on them. I know that I have often read an article, and recognized the author without recognizing the name or the site. I simple recognized the photo.
Take your photo seriously. Consider the image you are trying to present of yourself in the article you are writing, and the site you are linking to. For instance, a high-powered stock trader writing articles on stock tips will want to present a different photo of themselves than the outdoorsman writing about techniques in bowhunting.
Link Back to Yourself Cautiously
In addition to linking to yourself in the Author Bio box, try to link back to your website once or twice within the body of the article. Be careful with this! Make sure that it fits within the flow of the article, and ensure that it is relevant to the specific context of the paragraph you include the link in. If the link sticks out too much, or points to an irrelevant page, you may risk rejection by some of the sites you submit it to. Use anchor text that fits into the sentence you are writing, but try to include some keywords for SEO purposes!
Market That Article!
Now that your article is written, you have to market it. There are typically two ways to do this – either by manual submission, or by using a distribution service.
Submitting manually is the process of visiting the various article sites and directories on the Internet, and individually submitting your articles for inclusion.
Distribution services are exactly what they sound like. You can hire a company or individual to submit your articles for you to a set number of directories. Sometimes the articles are submitted by hand, other times the service will use a script to automatically submit the article to hundreds of sites.
Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Submitting manually may take a large amount of time and effort. But it will allow you to customize your article’s formatting and display for each site you submit it too, ensuring that it is presented to the best of it’s ability. Submissions services are quick and easy, but may involve a fee. if you employ a submission service, you will lose the ability to ensure that your articles are displayed properly on every site. Below is a few of the siteswhich offer for article submission.
Article Directories:
Article Distribution Services:
Please note that I have not used any of the distribution services listed apart from ArticleSender.com, although I do have articles in the four directories listed above. These lists are not comprehensive - you can find dozens more simply by using Google or searching on the various webmaster forums.
In Conclusion…
Article Marketing has the potential to be one of the most valuable tools you have for promotion of yourself or your website. With everything, what you get out of it will be a reflection of the effort you put into it. If you make a point of ensuring that the article is top quality, and it distribute it well, you will find that it can drive valuable traffic to your site, leading to greater profits, and promotion of your brand. Take it seriously!
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