Posts filed under 'Article Marketing'
Writing and submitting articles to article directories is a great way to increase exposure to you and your site. If done properly, article marketing can help establish you as an expert in your field, generate tons of links to your website, and attract targeted traffic that can turn into subscribers and sales.
Before I sit down to write an article to submit to article directories, I do a search for my topic at EzineArticles.com to see what has already been submitted.
This may not be the case with every category, but 9 times out of 10, the articles that are already submitted in my niche are badly written pieces of crap.
Here are the main problems I see when reading other articles:
Horrible spelling, grammar and punctuation - I’m not perfect and I certainly make my share of mistakes, but making the same errors over and over again is unacceptable in my opinion. There is no reason why a person can’t do a simple spellcheck or proofread their articles before submitting them.
Rehashed information - Coming up with a completely unique idea is extremely difficult, but you can make an article unique by injecting your own personality or humour into it, or by adding your own comments, opinions and experiences. Don’t sound like a broken record by repeating what everyone else is already saying. Find a way to make it original, make it your own.
Boring as hell - If you can’t compel the reader to read past the headline, you’ve got problems. You have to draw people in with interesting content and keep them reading right to the end of your resource box. Be passionate. Be exciting. Don’t be repetitive and monotonous or your article will be a boring flop.
Inaccurate information - The main purpose of articles is to inform the reader. If you’re giving them bad information, your credibility will quickly go down the proverbial drain. If you’re not sure of something, do the research until you are sure. If you’re not willing to do the research, don’t write about it.
No structure - A structured article will help guide the reader from beginning to end. Generally, the reader will expect a title, introduction, body and conclusion, followed by the resource box. If your article is all over the place, chances are most people won’t read to the end.
Here’s a tip though. The main goal of submitting articles is to get people to click on your links in the resource box. If you end your article with a great conclusion, they may not think to continue reading your resource box because they got what they came there for.
However, if you leave them hanging a bit (by leaving your conclusion a little bit incomplete) then your reader will want to continue reading and clicking for more information.
Here’s a quick example:
Conclusion #1 - “Now that you’ve learned the 5 best tips for writing articles, it’s time for you to sit down and start writing.”
Conclusion #2 - “These are just a few ideas to help get you started with writing great articles.”
Followed by your resource box - “For more great tips on increasing the quality and effectiveness of your articles, visit Joe Blow’s website at blah-blah-blah.com”
And there you have it. Quality over quantity my friends.
I repeat, Quality (with a capital “Q”) over quantity.
You can write 100 crappy articles and get a few links and a trickle of traffic, or you can write 50 quality articles that will keep the links and traffic pouring in for years to come.
June 6th, 2008
I’m mad and I may be overreacting but I don’t care.
Some asswipe who’s name I won’t mention here stole my article almost word for word, including my lame joke, at EzineArticles. Mine is over a year older than his. I remember writing that particular article. I did a few minutes of research and then sat down and wrote it all out from my head, so I know it isn’t an issue of me copying from someone else, and then him copying from me. Or him copying from the same source that I got my information from.
Anyway, I clicked on the “report this article” link on his article page and am looking forward to a reply from EzineArticles. Until then, I’ll try not to be any more immature about it and keep quiet. I just had to rant a bit first.
But just so you know, you can’t steal other people’s content just because it’s on a free article directory. It’s still their content and there are restrictions as to how you can use it. Also, don’t forget that each article directory has their own policies and TOS. Blatantly ripping off someone’s content almost word for word and then submitting it as your own is obviously against any article directory’s policies.
Don’t do it, or you’ll pay for it later. Theft is theft.
June 2nd, 2008
For many internet marketers, article marketing is a huge part of their traffic generation and search engine optimization. Submitting articles to ezines and article directories are great for three major reasons:
1) Traffic - You’re sending the readers of your articles to your website.
2) SEO - You’re generating links to your website when other publishers pick up your articles for their own website.
3) Expert Status - You’re establishing yourself as an expert by writing quality articles and providing people with the information they’re seeking. This gains you trust and credibility.
Of course, you’ll only get these three things if you’re writing great articles rather than putting a few sloppy paragraphs together.
My favorite directory to submit to is EzineArticles.com. A huge percentage of my traffic comes from them, and although some of their policies seem a bit strict, in the end it helps ensure that their site remains a quality directory.
However, as I was skimming through the Ezine Article Expert Authors the other day, I noticed that the majority of these people had only submitted one article.
If you want to get anywhere with article marketing, you’re gonna have to do better than that!
Article marketing, if done properly, is a guaranteed way to generate traffic to your site. It only makes sense that the more articles you submit, the more traffic you’ll receive.
One of the problems I first had with article marketing was trying to decide which content to submit to directories, and which content to include on my own site. Since then, I’ve realized that there are other ways to use your article directory content without the fear of duplicate content. One of my favorite ways is compiling a bunch of related articles and creating a PDF to give away or sell to readers. Another option is to use submitted articles as autoresponder content for newsletters.
Another problem I had with article marketing was trying to find inspiration for topics to write about. Now, the first thing I do when looking for an idea is skim through my website stats and see what people are searching for. Another good way to get inspired is to read related forums or see what other authors are writing about in the article directories.
The ultimate problem though was the fact that I was generating next to nothing in website traffic. I’ve since learned that this was because I was only submitting one article at a time, and my submissions were few and far between. The best way to start the traffic flowing and keep it flowing is to submit many articles at once, and regularly.
That may seem like a lot of writing, but the more you do it, the faster you’ll be at it. Also, articles don’t have to be three pages long. EzineArticles.com requires articles to be at the minimum of 250 words. That really isn’t a lot. With some practice, you should be able to whip up a few good quality paragraphs in less than 10 minutes.
There’s an inspiring thread about article marketing over at the Digital Point forums. If article marketing is something you’ve been using or something you’d like to start doing, I encourage you to read it. It’s long, but it’s a good read.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=457865
October 18th, 2007
I’ve had this report sitting on my hard drive for quite awhile, but I finally read it today. It was a good read because it made me do some analyzing which I’m sure will benefit me in the future. I’m talking about Building Traffic With Article Marketing by Yaro Starak and Brian Clark. I’ve been a subscriber of Yaro’s for quite awhile now, and I’m a religious reader of Brian’s Clark’s blog, CopyBlogger.com so it’s no surprise that this was a good report.
It’s only 10 pages long so it won’t take you long to read if, but I’ll break some of it down really quick for you anyway. One of the tips that stuck with me was about the title of the articles. So many people get this one wrong and don’t spend enough time coming up with the right title:
Testing Article Titles - If you get this part wrong, you’re screwed. Unless you have a killer title to each article, you’ll be wasting your time writing the rest of the article. You need to capture the reader’s attention right away by having an irresistable title. You can have a blah title like “Weight Loss Tips” and it could be the best article in the world, but it won’t get read as much as one titled “Burn Fat The Easy Way - 9 Proven Tips”.
Something else that this report reminded me to do was to go back and work on improving some of my own article titles since EzineArticles (my favorite article directory) allows you to edit them (but they have to be re-approved first so you wouldn’t want to do this regularly or you might annoy the hell outta them).
In the second part of this report, Brian gives some really good tips to help make sure you get it right the first time and also about writing the author bio box and the article itself.
You can grab the report here.
May 13th, 2007
Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is a great way to increase traffic and generate incoming links to your website, but it doesn’t matter how many articles you write - you’ll never get any traffic or links if you don’t write GOOD QUALITY articles.
Before you submit your next article, ask yourself: “Is this something I would publish on my own website?”
Spend some time to create a quality article with useful information. Be unique and creative. Write something that people will want to link to and refer friends to.
I’ve seen the difference in stats between articles I’ve spent days writing, and articles I whipped up in an hour. Its well worth it to take your time and come up with something link-worthy. Trust me.
October 19th, 2006
