Writing articles on subjects related to your niche, posting them on article directories and then enticing readers with a free offer for more information is a great way to get more visitors to your website.
But many people are confused about the exact process for doing this. Here’s my five-part, step-by-step process that will make your article marketing efforts a breeze!
(If you would prefer to listen to this article, simply click on the player below. The rest of this article continues below the audio player):
Step One: Research Your Keywords
Keywords are simply the words and phrases that your target market types into Google (and other search engines) when they are trying to find out more information about a topic.
You must be certain the keywords you choose to use in your articles are the same ones your target market is typing into the search engines. Instead of guessing, you rely on a keyword research tool, such as Google’s free tool to do the job for you (just go to Google and type in “free keyword tool” for the link)
Step Two: Write Your Article
Now that you have determined your keywords, it’s time to actually write your article. Remember to make your content useful and relevant and do not try to artificially stuff your writing with keyword phrases. If you are able to use your keyword in your title in a natural way, then by all means do so.
Your articles should be no shorter than 400 words and no longer that 1500 words. The optimum length is between 700 and 800 words, as that is the length most sought by publishers and will fit very well into an email newsletter.
Step Three: Optimize Your Resource Box
Craft your resource box in a way that leads the reader from your article into the resource box Also be sure to include a link to your website, as you will get traffic from this directly and Google will see this link as evidence for your being an authority on your topic.
Step Four: Submit Your Articles to Article Directories
Now that you have your keyword-rich article written and have optimized your resource box, it’s time to submit them to the free article directories. This is a task that can be time consuming if you are submitting to more than a few directories, so you may want to consider outsourcing this work to a virtual assistant.
If you were only going to use one, then go with the 800-pound gorilla of article directories at EzineArticles.com. I also highly recommend Marnie Pehrson’s IdeaMarketers.com.
Step Five: Rinse and Repeat
The key to a successful article marketing strategy is consistency. The more articles you write and submit, the more you will be published and the more traffic and backlinks you will generate.
Over time, an increase in your search engine rankings will generate even more traffic. Don’t expect an article marketing strategy to work overnight. Give the process time to work and you will be richly rewarded!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I once hired a person to mentor me. That person told me to write and submit articles. I was a green newbie to the internet and the process. $2500 later this is the most succinct advise on the subject I have seen. The how-to on the resource box would be worth a couple of hundred dollars alone.
Wow Bruce! Goes to show you how people can take advantage of people who are new to the internet. Yes, I believe there is info worth paying for, but a basic article marketing strategy isn’t one of them.
Ellen,
As a professional article marketer (I ghostwrite for others), this is a good starting point for people just entering the field. It should get the creative juices flowing nicely, but it only touches the surface of this marketing process.
Sorry to hear of Bruce’s tribulations, but alas, it’s a common tale. My main advice to him would be, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
I have written in the employ of two of the largest article distribution services on the Internet as their preferred writer of choice: Article Marketer and Content Crooner. I still guest blog on CC time to time. I have learned quite a bit about article marketing over the last 5-6 years as a result of that experience.
While article marketing is not rocket science, is it also not an effortless, get-results-quick endeavor. As the old saying goes, “the only place you find success before work is in the dictionary.”
Article marketing is a long-term marketing process, not a “publish a few articles,” proposition to see meaningful results. Chris Knight, owner of EzineArticles estimates that you need at least 250 unique articles/per site promoted, published across the Internet to sustain long-term benefits from article marketing.
That’s no small undertaking for many people. It requires either a lot of personal effort on the part of the marketer or substantial money to outsource the work to achieve that goal. To that end, you get what you pay for and good writers are not cheap.
My team of writers, editors and myself have produced thousands of articles over the years. I feel that qualifies me as an expert of sorts in the field to share my observations here.
Well researched and carefully crafted content, optimized for the search engines, takes skill and time to produce. I scoff at the notion of those “8-minute articles” you hear about and discount them as sub-standard before even reading them. It takes between 1-2 hours to write a conversational, well thought out piece of truly informative content.
You likely will not get that from $2-3/article guys (and probably not from many $10-15/article writers). You may, in fact, do more harm to your brand by marketing with such content, but I obviously hold a certain bias on that subject.
Then comes the matter of relevance. As the Internet and search engines evolve, this is increasingly important. Keywords must not only allow searchers to find your article, but to rank high in searches, landing page pointed to in the resource box must be rich in the same keywords.
This has become critical in this past year alone and made it very important to write optimized content for the specific pages you target for traffic. This is even more import when you target “deep pages” on a site. I don’t make the rules, you’ll have to talk to “the Googles” about that.
In a nutshell, article marketing is still one of the best, most stable marketing assets in the toolbox. It just requires consistency and well thought out campaigns to get the biggest bang for your efforts.
The days of Travis Sego’s “Bum Marketing” with a handful of articles is a thing of the past. With tens of thousand new pieces of content published daily across the Web, if your content is not remarkable somehow, it will simply be lost in the crowd.
Regards,
Mike
Hi Mike,
I appreciate your in-depth comments. I was in no way trying to provide a complete textbook on article marketing, but to give people a way to think about the process that is simple and not overwhelming.
Best,
Ellen
Yeah, I know. Just thought to throw out some ideas to consider with yours. I have no doubts you are an accomplished article writer after browsing your blog.
Article marketing can really be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. Most people get better at it as they go and settle on a style and voice that fits them. It’s really not that bad once you set your mind to it and get your feet wet.
The hardest part of all, I think, is staying current on what the search engines are looking for – they change the rules so often. That not only applies to articles but all content – blog posts, sales pages, squeeze pages, text ads, PPC, etc.
Oh well, it’s just the nature of the beast, I suppose. The only constant in business is that everything changes, all the time. lol
Mike
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