Increase Your Site Readership

Increase Your Readership - Article marketing

Get Your Business Known:

You have to do what others do not want to.

Article marketing is a branch of content marketing. It is a type of advertising in which companies write and distribute short articles to a range of outlets such as article banks, forums, and newsletter publishers.

Remember the article you read online about that great newly released sports car or a review of a high-end vacation getaway? Or maybe you scrolled through the blog post about a new diet that promised to melt away fat if you just followed it exactly. All of these articles were likely part of a larger campaign known as article marketing

Article marketing is one of the oldest strategies used by online marketers to acquire new visitors and increase sales on their websites. The practice typically involves writers and publishers as primary participants, with article marketing services working as intermediaries that help match writers with interested publishers.

The fundamental purpose of article marketing is to attract wider online audiences and increase the number of sales opportunities for products or services offered on websites. The most popular articles support an author’s or company’s reputation as an expert in a specific field and help cultivate a loyal audience. Increased site traffic boosts where their web page ranks in search engine results, which means more people will see the site and have the opportunity to buy what the author is selling.

Some examples of businesses that use article marketing include:

·         Health and wellness service providers searching for new clients

·         Scientific journals aiming to increase subscriptions

·         Online retailers and resellers looking for new customers

·         Travel groups and hotels wanting to increase bookings

Article marketing is one of the fastest, cheapest ways to promote online content and attract new visitors. Here are 4 of the most important factors in a successful article marketing campaign:

1.     Keyword search optimization. Thoroughly research keywords that fit the needs of your targeted niches. Find keywords or phrases containing 3-5 unique keywords, and make sure that competitors use the keywords. This ensures that the keyword actually has value.

2.     Develop article content. Develop article content that addresses the personality and needs of your niche market consumers. Articles can be developed in-house or outsourced to freelance writers for a fee. In both cases, relevant content is the key component.

3.     Submit the article. Submit articles online to article directories with high PageRank scores and make sure to include a resource box with links, description sentences, and your name. Some of the most popular are:

a.     Ezinearticles.com

b.     Helium.com

c.     ArticleBase.com

d.     ArticleDashboard.com

e.     GoArticles.com

4.     Promote the article. Getting eyes on your article is the last step. Promote the article on popular blogs and content aggregators to reach the widest possible audience. Some examples include:

1.     Digg

2.     Reddit

3.     Slahdot

4.     StumbleUpon

5.     Google *

https://www.wikihow.com/Do-Article-Marketing

1.  Identify your market niche. Your niche will determine the type of articles you write, as all of the articles you publish as part of your marketing strategy should testify to your expertise and inspire web surfers interested in your specific product, service or topic to visit your website. For example, if you website is a blog about Japanese food, then all of your articles should pertain to that subject.

2. Choose article titles. The titles you use are extremely important when it comes to attracting viewers and improving your search engine optimization (SEO), and you should therefore take some care in picking them. There are a number of factors that go into creating strong, SEO-friendly titles.

·         Titles should be as short and concise as possible and should accurately represent the information that can be found in the article. Don't make the mistake of choosing a catchy title just to attract attention if the article content does not match up.

·         To factor SEO into your article marketing strategy, research keywords to choose titles that are likely to be searched for by web surfers (high search volume) and that have low competition.

·         Place keyword phrases at the beginning of titles, rather than at the end. For example, an article entitled, "5 Fun Ways You Can Teach Your Bird to Sing" would be more aptly titled, "Teach Your Bird to Sing: 5 Fun Ways."

·         Draw from a variety of resources for article marketing title ideas. In addition to keyword research, you can find title ideas by searching related blogs, drawing from customer FAQs and searching the web for your keywords plus the terms "articles" and/or "blogs."

3. Write high-quality articles. Your article marketing will only be as effective as the articles you write, as low-quality articles are less likely to garnish attention and inspire visitors to your site.

·         When writing your articles forget proper "writing" that you learned in school. Large chunks of content will intimidate your readers. Write your content just as if you were talking to a friend. Try to add bucket brigades as mental breaks that also keep your readers hooked. The more exciting you can make your content, the more visitors and sales it will generate.

·         If the publisher allows you to link to your own website within the article, the body content is a great place to insert article marketing backlinks.

·         Keep your articles between 250 to 500 words. Studies show that most web surfers are less likely to read articles longer than that.

·         Close your articles with a short (2 to 3 sentence) author bio containing a link to your website. This part is necessary to creating article marketing backlinks that can improve your site's SEO. Depending on the publisher, your bio may be placed at the end of the article on the web page, or in a "resource box" area.

5.    Place summaries of your articles strategically within your site. For example, if you have an online winter apparel catalog, you can feature summaries for articles like, "Wear Your Scarf These 5 Creative Ways" and, "Must-have Winter Coats" directly on your product pages. This will engage visitors and inspire them to stay and explore your site.

6.    Share your articles on social networking sites. Additionally, include social media sharing buttons on all of your web pages, so others can share your articles.

A Step By Step Guide To Effective Online Article Marketing

Online article marketing can effectively improve organic search results in a number of ways: Improve visibility for your target keyword phrases Obtain traffic for additional (long tail) keyword searches Assist in building awareness and reputation Increase targeted traffic from other quality-related websites Helps attract more incoming links to your site Help make your website […]

Online article marketing can effectively improve organic search results in a number of ways:

• Improve visibility for your target keyword phrases
• Obtain traffic for additional (long-tail) keyword searches
• Assist in building awareness and reputation
• Increase targeted traffic from other quality-related websites
• Helps attract more incoming links to your site
• Helps make your website more unique and useful

Google’s Panda update showed once again, that it’s important to have high quality, unique content.

The Goals Of Online Article Marketing

Effective article marketing is about writing quality articles that are useful or interesting to your market, using some on your own website and getting some published on other related websites.

Here are our goals for online article marketing for our clients:

• Improving Organic Search Results (Getting found for more keyword searches and helping to increase rankings).
• Help Attract Incoming Links To The Site.
• Building Awareness And Often Reputation Building.
• Increasing Targeted Traffic From Related Sites.
• To Help Make A Web Site More Unique And Useful (e.g. Help educate your readers, help them decide what products/services to buy, etc.).

Make It Easy For Readers To Click Through To Related Products & Services

You want to make it easy for your article readers to get back to the location on your website they were looking at when they clicked to read the article.

For this reason, it’s best to host the articles on your website surrounded by the same or a very similar page template (banner, navigation sections etc) as that on the webpage they were looking at when they clicked through to the article.

It’s ok to host the articles in your blog, but it’s ideal if the blog has the same or similar page template too. We suggest that for most marketers your blog be a part of your main website, not a separate blog web site (See “Where to put your blog for best search engine results“). Put any articles that you do not use on the main website in your blog.

• Include links in your articles to products and services

Add links within the article or at the end of the article (or both) to get people who read the article to click through the main website, ideally to product or service category or item pages related to the article. As you progress with article marketing and get more and more people linking or sharing your articles, these links will help pass additional PageRank to your product and service pages helping them to rank better.

• Add social sharing buttons and announce your articles

Add social sharing buttons (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc) to your articles. Announce each of your useful articles through your social networks and other communication vehicles (like e-newsletters, etc) that you use. If they are truly useful articles some people will share them or link to them, which will help improve rankings and get more people to read them and learn what you have to offer.

Placing articles on your websites help entice visitors to read them why they are looking at related topics they are interested in. Useful articles help convey your expertise and make your webpages more unique (more important than ever after Panda).

In addition, these articles add content to the site that search engines should index and they’ll likely be found in searches. Finally, as you progress with article and social marketing, you’ll likely attract more and more incoming links to your articles from related websites bringing more targeted traffic and helping to increase rankings.

But I Can’t (Or Don’t Have The Time) To Write Articles

Can’t write or don’t have the time to write articles? Here are some ways to get articles written.

Empower your people

Perhaps some of the people who sell or market your products would just love to write articles. See the Crutchfield site mentioned above. Most of those articles and videos were developed by their product marketing folks.

Ask your customers

Perhaps some of your customers can write articles such as case stories like “how we use xx” type of articles.

Hire writers

Ideally, most of your articles should be original, but you could hire writers who specialize in your topics to produce useful articles. There are networks of writers who specialize in many topics. You can find some of them while you are searching for article ideas (See the section above).

As you look for article ideas, search on the names of the authors. Many times you’ll discover the author is a freelance writer who specializes in a couple of fields. Contact them about writing for you. It’s best, to be honest, and include the writer’s name as the author.

Use ghostwriters?

This is an ethical question that I’m on the fence about and have never used myself or for any client. I believe it may be ok to use a ghostwriter (such as a freelance writer who specializes in your field/topic) if you work closely with them, outline your initial thoughts, let them do research for you if needed, oversee the development of the article, work with them to revise the article, and make sure the article is accurate and reflects your knowledge and opinions.