Article Marketing Strategy- For Traffic, Leads, and Sales!

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Article Marketing Strategy- For Traffic, Leads, and Sales!

17 November 2011 No Comment

The What and the Why of Article Marketing

For those online marketers who have been able to implement an effective article marketing strategy- they see the results in abundance, with high traffic, increased lead generation, and inevitably- sales. It didn’t take me long to see the value in this!

Essentially, you are using articles (often in the form of blog posts), to educate, guide or direct, and inform a reader about any variety of topics. In the case of internet marketing or online network marketing, you are using articles to bring value and offer training and assistance in helping people become effective marketers and build their businesses. Anything from how-to’s, software training, ideas, tips, free and paid marketing methods… all are applicable and helpful, especially to the new marketer who might be overwhelmed or unsuccessful thus far. (Remember your target market! There are many unsuccessful network marketers out there!)

How to Construct your Article

The way you write your articles should be part of your overall article marketing strategy and should not change, regardless of if you write for submission to an article marketing directory or for your own site or blog. (And I would highly recommend doing both.) It is essential you use keywords in your article, as keyword selection is the way that readers and Google discover you, which brings you traffic.

Every single keyword needs to be strategically selected. Make sure you are doing your research to discover which internet sites are using those key words and phrases. You will then be able to make a decision as to whether or not you can compete with the current sites that are ranking on Google, or whatever search engine you are hoping to rank on. I would recommend Google, as it holds the majority of the world’s traffic. Personally, I only target one keyword or one keyword phrase, per article.

The Construction Zone

If you do not like to write, or think you are not good at writing it is a good idea to spend some time reading some of the top articles in article directories, or even more enjoyably, reading articles on blogs of leaders in your industry (you will learn a lot from this too!). Pay attention to how they’re written and constructed their articles and how they lead a reader down towards the author bio box at the bottom of the page. (Article Directories always have an author box or a resource box.) Or, if it’s their own blog, how they lead the reader down to a call of action.

The best articles contain plenty of short paragraphs and they are written in typical, everyday language. Don’t get caught up in using fancy words- you will lose your readers! A good rule of thumb is to write to the 8th grade reading level. You can check your readabilty in a Word document. (Tools Menu, select Spellling and Grammer, select Options, under Grammar select ‘Show readability statistics,’ click ok. The next time you use your spell check, a reability box will pop up afterwards.)

Do not neglect your white space! Do you get excited to read a thesis? Your readers won’t either! They will skip onto the next site that’s more friendly. Leave space throughout your article that will be more visually pleasing and it is going to make your article appear to be simpler and quicker to read.

Another way to build variety into your articles is to use bullet points or numbered lists. It helps make a page of written text seem more appealing, as well as easy to read.

As a rule of thumb, don’t put links to your web site or other products within the body of your article if you are submitting it to an article directory. This is seen as salesy, and your article may possibly be rejected. Keep your links down in the author bio box, or the resource box at the bottom of your submission.

Snappy Headings!

Let’s be real people, it’s the Information Age. Just because someone clicks on your article doesn’t mean they are going to read any or most of what you’ve written! They are looking to discover particular key phrases and expressions that will be important to solving their problems! If you appropriately use headings your reader can instantly move on towards the locations of your article content that interest him most.

Efficient titles are important in articles – they ought to be brief and powerful- both the title and the subheadings.

The Body of Your Article

Be certain to make use of your key words in the 1st sentence of your article, a couple of times in the core of the text, and then one more time within the final sentence. Many individuals are on web sites are looking for solutions to problems, so focus on making your article enlightening and beneficial, encouraging the reader down towards the bottom of the page exactly to where the resource box is, which contains your links.

Inside the author bio or resource box really should be a call to action, encouraging your reader to click for extra information, further training, or to learn more. Most article marketing directories allow two links; typically I’m linking back to my blog or a capture page for what I’m promoting. Even though you are writing to appeal to the main search engines, bear in mind that it’s men and women who are actually perusing your articles.

Be sure to keep track your content frequently and figure out those articles and keywords that are receiving the most views. Continue to use the above-mentioned outline as a way to compose article after article!

Important Notes!

A crucial thing to note: When you have finished your article you are going to want to “spin” it and submit it to hundreds of other article marketing directories. The reason for rewriting them is so that every single article is special to the article directory you submit it to. This really neeeds to be part of your article marketing strategy. Google will only index one copy of an article and ignore the rest. Having duplicate content is a waste of time, and in some cases you can get penalized for it!

An article marketing strategy is powerful when you know how to implement it! It is designed around SEO (search engine optimization), and is free, meaning you aren’t doing pay-per-click or paid advertising. But if you are serious about learning how to really use articles and blogs to build a business online, click to watch this free article marketing strategy training, and learn how I have generated more traffic to my blog with unpaid methods, than I did with pay-per-click. You must have the proper training and systems in place. See how MLSP changed my business when I learned how to effectively market online.

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