Since the inception of the Internet, there have been millions and millions of users who are out there hungry for information. When you have articles that you would like to have promoted and read by many people, then you need to make sure that you know a little bit about article promotion. After all, you can have incredibly written content, but if you are unable to get the word out about them properly, then the chances of them being read by the number of people that you would like is really slim to none.

All in all, one of the most important things to remember about article marketing is that you should always start off with a piece that is well written. A catchy title is always a great way to get your reader hooked and longing to read further. If you think about it, they always say that your first impression is the most important one. Nailing down readership with a catchy title that helps make the reader think that you are answering their most asked questions or helping to solve a problem of theirs will pretty much guarantee traffic.

If you have a specific market that you are targeting, you have to make sure that your article promotion is filled with smart keywording. Using keywords that will draw in readership in both the title of your piece as well as throughout the body of the article will help you to rank higher in the search engines. With that being said, if you have articles that pop up higher in the search results, then you can see just why you would be bringing in more readership than similar articles that do not.

After you have your articles filled with terrific content that is search engine friendly, you can then take your article promotion to a whole other level with links on social sites and of course submission to some of the best article directories online. There are a number of outlets that writers can use to showcase their skills and help to draw in readership and traffic to their websites. If you would like, you can even pick one or two of your strongest articles and market them online. Because article promotion doesn’t end there, you should make sure to have those stronger articles linked to your website or other articles so readers can click through to read more of your work if they like the way that you write!

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Although you may have written a number of articles that pertain to your business or the products or services that you provide, you may not have given much thought when it comes to marketing them. Of course, any time you write articles, you want to make sure that they are out there in a way that is going to draw a bunch of attention from readers that can then transform in to potential customers. The right article marketing strategy should be able to give you all of the exposure that you need and then some, you just need to know where to begin!

To start with, you need to make sure that the articles that you have written are keyworded in a way that are made for search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO. They keywords should fit in with what your target market is searching for, so once they punch in a word in a search engine that is in your article the chances are much greater that your content will pop up in the search results. After that, your helpful and informative article will do the rest of the work to keep your readers hooked and coming back for more in the future.

If you have a few great articles that you would like to market, then you may want to think of taking the time to submit them to some of the article directories that are out there on the Internet. After all, article marketing is made much easier when you use some of these handy outlets to get your content noticed. These directories are well known for having a good reader base and have the ability to draw in a strong flow of traffic that you need in order to get your pieces read.

When you are a member of any one of the many social sites that are out there today, then you should already know the kind of exposure they can bring. A simple link to your article or a mention of the content on a social site can help to get your article marketing campaign off to a great start. Whether you are marketing your articles to a list of your friends or if you are in a group that will help to push your content around for others, these websites are an amazing tool to help you draw in readers. With the right website advertising campaign, you can end up with traffic that you have always dreamt about.

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Video article marketing is a relatively new niche activity for search engine optimization firms, having become more popular since the widespread advent of ADSL2+, and the birth of YouTube. We look at what video article marketing is, and how to boost your website’s rankings and return on investment with it.

There are no tricks in the label ‘video article marketing’ - you are simply marketing articles in a video, rather than a written format. Some types of information are much easier to get across visually, and some people prefer to get all types of information in this format. These videos may be hosted on a content-sharing site, like YouTube, or on your own website. The publishing options are the same as they are with written article marketing.

You’ve heard it a hundred times when looking at guidelines for creating SEO content - make sure you have a great basis for your video. Videos that are vague, hard to understand, or don’t have a clear focus won’t be watched past the first thirty seconds, if at all. Create videos on topics that will instruct or inform people of something they want to know. A combination of your company offering, and an understanding of your target audience, is what creates an in-demand video article.

You also need to base your video around a keyword. You should include this keyword in the title of the video, the textual description for the video, and the video itself. If people don’t hear something that sounds like their keyword in the first portion of the video, it is unlikely they will stick around until the end.

A little time and effort can go a long way towards making your video look professional, with a simple video editing program. Windows Movie Maker will help you add titles, music and some limited special effects - just ensure that you only add them where necessary.

You will also need to choose where you’ll host the videos you create. Posting to YouTube and embedding the video link is a free and easy option, but does have its downfalls. The YouTube logo in the bottom corner of a video takes away from your authority and professionalism. The ads contained in YouTube ads may very well be for your competitors (who will have similar keywords to your own company), and the site may choose to stop hosting your video article marketing efforts at any time. As with any form of website advertising, expert guidance and advice is certainly recommended for novices in the field!

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Article submission is about more than the content creation and the keypunching work to get it submitted. The websites that see the best ROI per word written are those that put the time into strategy, as well as creation and submission. Here we look at the strategies that article marketing services use to get the best results for their clients.

Create a goal

The first thing a strategy should do is define a specific, measureable goal. If the aim of your article marketing is to brand you as an expert in your field, then aim for a specific number of page views with a minimum time spent on them, after a set period. If the aim of your campaign is to boost pre-qualified traffic to your website, define how much you’d like your traffic to increase by, and what percentage of the above should convert on site in order to make your efforts financially viable. If your goal is to gain backlinks, set the number that you’d like to gain within a certain timeframe.

Define a target audience

Use metrics and variables such as:
* Age
* Sex
* Race
* Work status
* Religion
* Buying preferences, and
* Geographical location

You need to keep your target audience in mind through every step of creating your articles, from deciding on a topic, to choosing the keywords that you’ll use, to the voice you use when creating the content, to assessing your success.

Set a schedule

You’ll need to set a schedule for article submission, and more or less stick to it. Plan to submit a certain number of articles weekly, fortnightly or monthly. As few as two and as many as eight articles per month (depending on your niche), can be a useful part of your SEO strategy.

Measure your success

This may be last on the list, but setting up analytics to measure success is one of the first things that article marketing services will do. If your success metric is direct website visits, insert some tracking code in your About the Author link text that allows you to see what proportion of website visitors come from your articles. If your success metric is backlinks, plan to do a backlink analysis after a set period and chart how far your site has come. Make whatever plans are necessary at the beginning of a campaign to ensure you can measure your success at the end of it.

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Article marketers usually realize that the actual article content is essential for the reader, but surplus to the publisher … while the resource box is surplus for the reader, but essential to the company. It may seem that never the twain (yours and the reader’s interests) shall meet in article submission - however, there are some unique, fresh ideas to help bring the readers and your interests together. We look at how to engage your readers not only with your content, but with your resource box.

The content of your article should be good enough quality that the reader actually wants to know more about who wrote it. However, there are some tricks that you can use within resource boxes to help catch a reader’s eye even if it just skims over it. A resource box needs a skeleton to fill out first, though. The basics that you’ll need to include in your resource box are:
* The company name, and the name of the person writing the article. Including a person’s name gives the information a sense of trustworthiness, with the implied personal accountability.
* Your website address - even if your article directory doesn’t allow HTML tags within resource boxes, make it possible for people to cut and paste your address into their browser.
* Your USP (unique selling point) or elevator pitch should always be included- it is an essential part of your marketing and branding strategy.
* A call to action - tell the reader what you want them to do after reading the article. Why not personalize this part for each different article (or category of article) you write? It is a little more work, but much more effective.

Some extras that can really help catch your reader’s eye as they skim over your resource box include:
* A link to a free report, free mini-ebook, free demo, or free assessment and quote for one of your services. Being able to include the word ‘Free’ is what will stop that little eyeball from travelling further down the page!
* A link to your website through a keyword in the resource box, as well as in your web address. This strategy only works for article directories that accept HTML in the resource box, and shouldn’t be overdone. Choose one text link to make it stand out.
* Contact information for your business other than the website is another great thing to add the resource box of your article submissions. The risk of being added to a telemarketing list is small compared to the potential for non-web proficient customers to flood you with calls.

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Article marketing is one of the most basic forms of search engine optimization, and a sound, regular article publishing strategy forms the basis of many top-ranking sites. The notion of creating content only tenuously linked to your business in order to drive customers to buy your products seems a little roundabout - here we explain why article marketing works, and how it forms an integral part of your search marketing strategy.

The base reasons that companies engage in article marketing include:

* For the backlinks acquired when a publisher reprints your article from an article directory

* Increasing the keyword density of your own website for better search rankings

* To build up your company as an expert in your field

Publishers web-wide are looking for informative, fresh content every day. If they don’t want to pay the money to have this written themselves, an article directory is a great resource for them. Publishers don’t pay for the privilege of reprinting an article - they only need to provide a valid backlink on the publishing site, back to your site. The backlink is included in the About the Author box that accompanies the article.

The backlink itself is of value for SEO purposes, of course, building up your Google ranking simply by existing. However, a well-written, informative article may also garner you visitors that come to your site directly through the About the Author box, because the content was relevant to them. For example, if you sell pet care products on your website, and write an article about weekly routines for dog grooming, readers who appreciated your article might visit your site because the content has built up your reputation as an expert in your field.

Even if your visitors don’t come directly via your About the Author boxes (which you can track via web analytics), readers may remember or bookmark your URL to return to your site at a later time.

Publishing a group of keyword-focused articles on your own site is also a good way to increase the overall keyword density of your web copy. A bonus is that you can focus more on marketing-based language, and less on keywords, in your base web content when you have articles on site.

Off-site article marketing is the SEO pillar that consistently brings results for most companies - it is here to stay!

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Article promotion may be the workhorse of SEO, but that doesn’t mean it should be dry, boring and routine! This is one of the ideas about article promotion that simply doesn’t work. Find out what to do in your articles, by finding out what not to do.

Don’t assume that just any content will do

There are hundreds of thousands of people that can - and do - write page upon page of useless, trivial comments with several keywords thrown in and label them articles. Readers instantly recognize these, and will leave the page within seconds. Your About the Author box has not been read, and your publisher will see these stats and pass your articles over next time they are searching for content.

You need to offer information that is valuable to somebody, even if only to a narrow niche audience. How-to guides often make great articles, as do listed posts, ‘Beginner’s Guide’s, and complete resources.

Don’t keyword stuff

Less is more when it comes to keyword incorporation in your articles. Your keyword density should be around 5%, and should be derived from a mix of different keyphrases. If you pick a topic that is relevant to your business and your website’s current keyphrases, it shouldn’t be difficult to work the right words in.

Additionally, if you publish the articles on your own site and they are obviously keyword-stuffed, Google may penalize your site. Hardly an ideal situation.

Don’t slap the title and summary together at the last minute

Creating the title and the summary for your article should take at least a quarter of the time that it took to create your article. Look at the titles of other articles in the niche, and examine what characteristics make you want to read them, so you can use these in your own articles. Try out several different versions, and choose the one you like best.

Don’t assume that article promotion is an overnight success method

Article promotion has been called the ‘workhorse’ of SEO. If you publish quality articles on a consistent basis, you will almost certainly get results. However, they may take time to build. Be patient with the process, and you will reap the rewards. Abandon it too early, and your efforts will definitely be wasted.

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Article marketing is a web-wide phenomenon - just about every company that ranks highly for high search volume keywords writes articles to promote themselves. Putting words on paper is not the beginning and end of the process, however! We look at some article marketing tips that help make sure you achieve your goals.

Tip #1: Research your keywords thoroughly

Even if you have been using a particular set of keywords for a long time, the beginning of an article marketing campaign is a great time to review them. Ensure the keywords you are using throughout the articles are:

* Still relevant to your business
* Still gaining a high search volume and have relatively low competition
* Still representative of the way customers search and speak

Tip #2: Follow keyword placement best practices

You should include a keyword in the title of your article, the first sentence and the last sentence, at a minimum. The only way to do this while sounding natural and smooth is to ensure that your keywords are intrinsically relevant to your business, and that your article topic is intrinsically relevant to your keywords!

Use long-tail keywords to help target your traffic better, and use a variety of them throughout the text to help broaden your focus. This will also help ensure that your articles keep bringing you rankings and traffic in the long-term, as well as the short term.

Tip #3: Create a unique About the Author box

Your About the Author box is what makes the difference between article marketing for SEO, and just writing advice for the fun of it! Putting a little more effort than standard into your resource box can get you great results. Include a link to a free white paper, report or mini-ebook on a topic related to the article content in this text. You could also think about including offline contact information, if it is appropriate to your business, or a subscription page URL for your newsletter, for example.

You’ve got the quality content, the submission strategy and your metric measurement plans in place - these article marketing tips are what could make your campaign shine, or fizzle.

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One of the great things about article marketing is that if you are not comfortable with writing, you can hire a professional for a reasonable amount that will still allow you to make money. A common mistake by website owners is that they allow information on their website to become stagnant. However, studies show that by keeping content fresh and new, you will not only capture new customers but retain existing customers.

Article marketing has been proven so successful that the hugely successful online businesses would not be without it. When you write an article about your website or have one written for you, make sure you always have a small closing statement at the end where you can quietly promote your site. Included in the paragraph should be a small statement about what you offer, the company name, and the website address with a hyperlink.

With article marketing, you need to submit your articles out to various directories. In addition, never hesitate to publish articles within your own site as well. In fact, you might consider having a separate link within the site that has a variety of articles for readers to enjoy. You can set this type of article marketing up so that as people click through to another place within your site, you make money. If you like, you can also provide downloadable e-books to people who read articles, asking for a fair price that would help you make money.

Then, with article marketing, rather than save the articles in text or word format, use RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. This way, any feed publishers that work with RSS would be able to put articles on their own site, increasing traffic to your site even more. Keep in mind, using RSS format is not only beneficial to the RSS publishers but also to subscribers. This particular technology is innovative and it produces very fast results.

In summary, you have more options than you might be aware of for article marketing. Remember, words are highly powerful and people love to learn new things. If you have a website that sells healthcare apparel, take the opportunity to write articles about some of the most read healthcare topics such as breast cancer, Lupus, MS, or perhaps you could have a special article segment about West Nile Virus or Lyme Disease.

In other words, the content you write in your articles should be related to what you sell online but it also needs to address important issues while meeting the demands of your readers. When done right, article marketing is an all-around solution. You get more traffic to your site, thus making more sales and ultimately more money, while the public is getting the benefit of valuable information.

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When it comes time for website promotion, article marketing is by far one of the most successful tools you can use. However, for article marketing to work, the articles you write have to sell. As you will discover, there are a number of ways to do this, one being the resource box. By creating a resource box within your article, you have the opportunity to provide a brief biography, which actually markets your online business without being blatant. Some of the specifics that should be included in the resource box for article marketing include the following:

* Name - Put your first and last name in the resource box. Sometimes, people will also add their title, which is acceptable but not necessary.

* URL - Always include the URL to your website so people will know exactly how to reach your company.

* Pitch - Very briefly, no more than two to three sentences, explain to readers the reasons why your website’s product and/or service is superior to that of your competitors.

* Call to Action - You also want to create a call to action, which means you encourage the reader to buy what you sell. Although some people will use more than one, the resource box should have just one such action.

The above items are the most commonly used in resource boxes. These are usually very beneficial, but there are additional options that you could consider. For instance:

* Contact Information - If you want readers to have the ability to reach you then you can always add your company’s phone number

* Subscription Address - For ezines, you can provide readers with a URL that takes them to your subscription address.

* Autoresponder - Today, many people will use an autoresponder address and while it can work if done properly, you have to be careful in that this could cause the resource box of your article marketing to be deemed spam.

* Free Report - People love free things, even if it is information. Therefore, let readers know that they will receive a report, short ebook download, or some other type of free item when they visit your website.

Now, for article marketing, you can see that specific elements will make your resource box stronger and more powerful. However, just as there are things you want to include, there are also things that should never be used such as:

* Advertisements - When creating a resource box associated with article marketing, make sure your article and products are relevant.

* Multiple Websites - Even if you are the proud owner of several online businesses, you need to maintain your integrity in the Internet world by using only one website URL, again, specific to the product being sold and mentioned in the article.

* Accomplishments - While you can be proud of yourself for the degrees, certifications, and various accomplishments earned throughout life, you need to keep the resource box concise and focused. Clean and clear is your best bet for article marketing of this type.

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