Article MarketingArticle Marketing is one of the most critical tasks you can perform to attract visitors to your site. Why is that? Simple. Article marketing helps distribute your content across the web, both attracting readers and improving the visibility of your site through backlinks.

Not every person is knowledgeable about article promotion, so let me take you through the three basic steps of article marketing.

Article Marketing Step 1: Create/Write Articles

Decide before you begin writing your article marketing what the purpose of the articles will be: will this article drive traffic (is it likely that people will click on the article and read it?) or is the article or blog post simply written to build one-way links (is it likely that no one will read the article but it will be indexed by Google?)? If it is the case that you are writing and article to be read (and drive targeted visitors to your website), the most critical factor is your headline. The headline that you write will be what the search engines display in the search engine page results (SERP), which are click-able by web searchers. Headlines should be intriguing and slightly controversial. If you are struggling to think of a good headline/title, drive to the grocery store and read the headlines of the magazines or tabloids at the checkout counter. An excellent title offers some intriguing text, but in no way tells the entire story. An example, “How to Lose 5 Pounds with this Single Diet Secret.” We know based on the title that there is a way to potentially lose weight, but we don’t know the answer of exactly what to do. This is a good headline. This is good article marketing.

The next step is to craft an article that will maintain the visitor’s focus. A great way would be to describe a task, make a list of the top 3 lessons learned, or even write a review of a product. Make sure to breakup wording into paragraphs so the reader understands the outline in advance. You might want to use bullet points or section headers to the reader can better read through your article.

If you’re article marketing efforts are about simply creating backlinks, and you don’t expect that people will actually read your article, then all you have to do is make sure you have a reasonably unique article (more than 50% unique) and one that is readable. It is important that the text reads well, because you will be submitting this to article directories and private blogs, where there is usually a human review. If you article is mumbled garbage or obviously spun content, it will likely get rejected. What is important here is the your article is accepted, and the one way links are picked up by Google. Article marketing is about getting page views and getting backlinks. Don’t over complicate it.

Recommended Tools to Help You Write Articles

Part of writing articles for submission is making sure you have reasonably unique articles. To accomplish this, you need to “spin” your articles. Article spinning simply means you create a number of synonyms for words or phrases ore even sentences, so when an article is submitted, the text is varied. Below I have listed the article spinner that I use, and you can also find one inside the article submission tool. Spinning is a critical element of article marketing if you want to scale your efforts. Don’t neglect spinning or you will need to write a brand new article every time you do article marketing.

  • The Best Spinner: The Best Spinner has a very user friendly interface and the most powerful spinner on the market. With a built-in database of the most popular synonyms (taken from other users — so you know these are good), TBS makes the arduous job a article spinning a little easier. You can copy “spun text” to any article directory or the “spun syntax code” to SEO Linkvine, Article Demon, or Article Blueprint without changing anything. The Best Spinner is $7/month and $77/year.
  • Article Demon: Article Demon has an excellent spinner built into its software. Though not as powerful as The Best Spinner, Article Demon is significantly easier to use than SEO Linkvine for spinning. Read my Article Demon review of complete details.

Article Marketing Step 2: Build Anchor Text for Inbound Links

The most important part of article marketing is creating anchor text. Anchor text is another way of describing a contextual link. When you create one way links (or inbound links), it is important that each of these has an anchor text. For example, if you are trying to rank for “internet marketing”, you want to use “internet marketing” as the anchor text, which will be the text that is hyper-linked back to your website. The anchor text is significant considering that it will tell Google just what referring web page is about. Should you be looking to improve the SERP (search engine results page) for a particular keyword phrase, you definitely need to write articles with this keyword phrase as the anchor text for one of your links. Remember, for each article you write, you will always have at least one backlink. A contextual backlink is more powerful than a linked listed in the footer, as the contextual link has the “context” of the rest of the article. This is why article marketing emphasizes inline anchor text.

Do not go overboard linking a single keyword phrase or term since Google might perceive that you are trying to “game” the rankings. Rotate your anchor text every few articles, and and you should not have any issues. In fact, you’ll likely rank for multiple terms. Isn’t that the whole point of article marketing?

Recommended Tools to Choose Anchor Text

Do some keyword research before selecting your anchor text. Selecting random text of what you “think” might be the right keyword can be a real waste of your article marketing effort. I use two paid tools which both use Google’s Keyword Tool to pull out the keyword data. I use this data to make sure my article marketing is targeting good keywords and keywords that I can rank for.

  • Market Samurai: one of the most complete keyword research tools on the market, Market Samurai identifies the 10% of the keywords that drive sales, and helps you exclude the other 90%. The full price of the Market Samurai tool is a one-time cost of $147, but you can download a free trial. Complete with keyword research tools, SEO tools, and even free article content, you will not miss out on anything with Market Samurai.
  • Traffic Travis: from internet guru Mark Ling, Traffic Travis is everything you need and nothing you don’t. The keyword research has a very handy tool that tells you how easy it would be to rank for a certain keyword phrase. This can save you countless hours of wasted time. Also, there are SEO tools and a good pay-per-click (PPC) research module. Traffic Travis is $97 all-in for the professional, but you can also download a free trial version.
  • IM Advantage: a complete SEO tool and a training library, IM Advantage includes all the tools of SEO Blueprint below, plus comprehensive keyword research tools, website creation software, link tracking software, and complete internet marketing programs including best-sellers Commission Blueprint, Niche Blueprint, and Mining Money Online (you can get Mining Money Online free for a limited time!). If you are new to internet marketing and want top notch training, courses, and software tools, IM Advantage has no equal.

Article Marketing Step 3: Submit The Article To Top Article Directories

Should you be making a short article pertaining to targeted traffic, you need to give full attention to the best web directories. Here are a couple decent recommendations: goarticles.com, articlesbase.com, and articlesnatch.com. The best directory is ezinearticles.com, but the approval process takes nearly a week. It’s always best to publish to the premium directories first, hold off until they’re approved & published, then you can upload the articles in bulk to far more directories of lesser page ranking.

Always remember to reword every posting so that it is at least 50 percent unique or you will possibly not have the Search engine ranking optimization advantage as well as article directories may possibly reject your submission. If you wish to be leading-edge, it is best to create accounts with all the article submission sites with different e-mail addresses and pen names. It may well help the articles look different.

Recommended Tools for Step 3

Manual submission of articles to article directories normally has the highest degree of success. However, it can take a very long time to create accounts, pen names, and submit a single article. There are several good tools on the market that make article submission & approval easier and speed up the overall article marketing process in general. I own Article Demon for automated article submission and I have used the following private blog networks to submit unique content for backlinks. I suggest submitting to the top article directories if you want traffic, and blog networks/lower tier article directories for backlinks.

  • Article Demon: a complete article submission tool by EdwinSoft. Article Demon not only helps you create accounts (automated registration, pen name creation, email confirmations), it will help you spin articles, and submit to over 1000 different directories. You can even add new directories on your own. Article Demon is a godsend if you want to both spin your article text and your anchor text. I can get 10 good submissions in less than 10 minutes, if my content is already set up. To get 10 more, simply push the button and go. Read my complete Article Demon review to see if it is right for you.
  • SEO Blueprint: Two separate tools to help you build backlinks, all included in the SEO Blueprint bundle by Steve Clayton & Tim Godfrey. Article Blueprint can submit articles to 500+ private article directories. Blog Blueprint will do the same for unique blog posts, utilizing a PR 3 – PR 5 network of blogs for guaranteed backlinks. I have seen the greatest increase in rankings for my website by using Blog Blueprint. If you can write a 100+ word blog post, you can get a high quality backlink from Blog Blueprint.
  • SEO Linkvine: a private blog network from Brad Callen. SEO Linkvine has a built in spinner and a “drip feed” submission process where one article can be submitted to up to four directories per day. This helps create a natural flow of backlinks. SEO Linkvine is good if you don’t already have an article spinner. In addition, you can use SEO Linkvine as a source of articles to be published on your private blog.
  • BuildMyRank: BuildMyRank is a private blog network similar to Blog Blueprint, but it allows you one backlink per 150 words or unique text. So if you write a 450 word article, you can get 3 backlinks. BMR requires unique content — no spinning. But the rewards are there because the BuildMyRank network is higher quality. I wrote a complete BuildMyRank review that you need to read. There is currently a waiting list for BuildMyRank. Sign up to get notified when they open up the BMR doors again.

Article Marketing Summary

Article Marketing is a big part of internet marketing. If you are not already head-long into article marketing, you should start doing it now. I hope you learned a few article marketing tips and wish you the best of success online

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Tagged with: article marketing • article spinning • article submission • backlinks • internet marketing • keyword tool

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