5 Killer Strategies For Being Successful With Article Marketing
Article marketing is an extremely popular method of marketing online because of it's many applications and low cost. For example, you can use article marketing to sell affiliate products, to sell your own products, to boost your site's search engine rankings, to boost your credibility, to build your list, to brand yourself as an expert, and more. If you're not interested in writing your own articles, you should consider hiring someone to do it. If you intend to write your own articles, then you'll be interested in these helpful strategies:
1. Do your keyword research.
If you don't do proper keyword research, nobody is going to be able to find your article online. Start with a general topic you wish to write about, then find related keywords or keyword phrases with decent traffic but low competition. In this way, your article may find its way on to the first page of search engine results for your selected keyword(s). Remember -- be sure to optimize your article (title and body) for your main keyword(s) so that it'll get more traffic.
2. Craft a killer headline.
A bad headline does not communicate any benefits and does not contain the proper keywords. Ideally, you'll want your keyword to appear at least once in the title. For example, if I wanted to rank for the keyword phrase, "quick weight loss tips", a strong headline would be "Quick Weight Loss Tips: 3 Simple Strategies for Losing a Pound a Day". This is a good headline because it contains the keyword phrase and lets the reader know that they'll learn how to lose a pound a day if they read the article. A poor version of that headline would be "How to Lose a Lot of Weight Quickly".
3. Have a good resource box.
The resource box of an article is where you get to shine. Basically, you want to show the readers how you can help them solve their problems, and persuade them to click through to your site, whether it is a squeeze page or a cloaked affiliate link. A sneaky way to attract more clicks is to make your resource box look like part of your article.
4. Don't just sell stuff - build your list.
Trying to make sales isn't a bad thing, but not capturing the lead is. The reason is that if you refer a sale without capturing the lead, you've gone through all that effort to make the sale and you only have a few measly bucks to show for it. However, if you capture the lead, you can market to that lead over and over again. So instead of sending your article's readers over to a product, try sending them to a free offer instead.
5. Don't limit your submissions to just one directory.
In addition to submitting your articles to the biggest directories, you should consider the others on the top 10 list as well. Terms of use and author guidelines change, so you may experience dips in your traffic. Also, as Internet marketers, we tend to visit different sites which serve the same purpose because it's often part of our marketing campaigns. For example, we'll visit numerous social bookmarking sites to do our bookmarking or we'll visit multiple video sharing sites to submit our videos. However, non-Internet marketers usually don't do this; they tend to pledge their allegiance to one site and go there exclusively for their specific needs. For example, not many people will go on Youtube for videos and then switch over to Vimeo for more videos. Similarly, if you submit your articles to multiple directories, you have a much better chance of reaching a larger audience.
1. Do your keyword research.
If you don't do proper keyword research, nobody is going to be able to find your article online. Start with a general topic you wish to write about, then find related keywords or keyword phrases with decent traffic but low competition. In this way, your article may find its way on to the first page of search engine results for your selected keyword(s). Remember -- be sure to optimize your article (title and body) for your main keyword(s) so that it'll get more traffic.
2. Craft a killer headline.
A bad headline does not communicate any benefits and does not contain the proper keywords. Ideally, you'll want your keyword to appear at least once in the title. For example, if I wanted to rank for the keyword phrase, "quick weight loss tips", a strong headline would be "Quick Weight Loss Tips: 3 Simple Strategies for Losing a Pound a Day". This is a good headline because it contains the keyword phrase and lets the reader know that they'll learn how to lose a pound a day if they read the article. A poor version of that headline would be "How to Lose a Lot of Weight Quickly".
3. Have a good resource box.
The resource box of an article is where you get to shine. Basically, you want to show the readers how you can help them solve their problems, and persuade them to click through to your site, whether it is a squeeze page or a cloaked affiliate link. A sneaky way to attract more clicks is to make your resource box look like part of your article.
4. Don't just sell stuff - build your list.
Trying to make sales isn't a bad thing, but not capturing the lead is. The reason is that if you refer a sale without capturing the lead, you've gone through all that effort to make the sale and you only have a few measly bucks to show for it. However, if you capture the lead, you can market to that lead over and over again. So instead of sending your article's readers over to a product, try sending them to a free offer instead.
5. Don't limit your submissions to just one directory.
In addition to submitting your articles to the biggest directories, you should consider the others on the top 10 list as well. Terms of use and author guidelines change, so you may experience dips in your traffic. Also, as Internet marketers, we tend to visit different sites which serve the same purpose because it's often part of our marketing campaigns. For example, we'll visit numerous social bookmarking sites to do our bookmarking or we'll visit multiple video sharing sites to submit our videos. However, non-Internet marketers usually don't do this; they tend to pledge their allegiance to one site and go there exclusively for their specific needs. For example, not many people will go on Youtube for videos and then switch over to Vimeo for more videos. Similarly, if you submit your articles to multiple directories, you have a much better chance of reaching a larger audience.
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