SEO Optimization

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As the owner of a professional article distribution service (I do this everyday), I have the benefit of reviewing and submitting hundreds of articles each month.

As you probably already know, article submission is just one way to build links online. The major problem with article marketing is that it can be rather painful. Consider people who don’t write well, type slowly, or don’t know how to use software to help automate the submission process. Writing and submitting one article can take hours!

On top of that, if you don’t follow the rules, your articles may get rejected, and you’re just wasting time, writing and submitting your articles.

Here are some general guidelines. If you follow these guidelines, you will yield the best results.

WHAT NOT TO DO

* Submit articles with less than 450 words.

Most article directories accept articles with at least 450 words. Some may accept more, some less. But most will accept 450 words.

* Promote a site with nudity of excessive affiliate links.

It’s not common for article directories to reject a site that has been completed. But if you are trying to promote an adult site, or if your site contains nothing but affiliate links, your articles have a chance of being rejected.

* Use super long anchor keyword phrases.

Keep your anchor texts to 3 words max. Don’t link the entire sentence. Keep the links to your author resource box. The author resource box should not be more than 450 characters. 450 characters will allow you to write about 2 to 3 sentences. There is no need to write a short story here. Just a couple of sentences with static text links in them will do.

* Use profanity in your articles.

Don’t use any kind of profanity in your articles. Vulgar words and phrases are automatically detected by some article directories. Your articles will be rejected before they have a chance to be reviewed by a human editor.

* Submit an illegible article.

Articles are seldom disapproved because of grammatical errors, spelling errors, or sentence structure faults. But it has to be of decent quailty. In other words, readers must understand what you are trying to say. If English is not your native language, consider hiring someone to write for you.

* Use software to spin articles.

Some article marketers use software to spin PLR (Private Label Rights) articles, in the hope that the article directories won’t detect the duplicate content. Unfortunately, most software just replace words with synonyms. In the process, the meaning is skewed and the article no longer make sense. For instance, the word “market” may mean several different things depending on context.

Consider:

Original sentence: I go to the stock market to invest.

After replacement: I go to the stock bazaar to invest.

OR: I go to the stock shop to invest.

The word “market” may mean “bazaar” or “shop” - a place for buying stuff. But when you put the words into context, notice that the same sentence now sounds funny.

* Use URL as your links.

You shouldn’t be using URLs as your links. The bulk of your traffic will be coming from the search engines. So make sure you spend a little time working on your keyword research, and pick some phrases to target. Use those keywords in your links.

* Write and submit an entire report.

You are submitting articles, not reports. Every now and then, I see writers submitting articles with over a thousand words. If you have long articles, break them up into separate articles. You are not posting to your blog. You are building links with your articles. More articles equal more links.

In addition, most readers just scan articles instead of read the entire page. If you write super duper long articles, you may lose your reader, and you never get the chance to see them again.

WHAT TO DO

* Write and submit articles regularly.

If you are not building links, your competitor may just be creeping up on you. So make it a habit to distribute articles regularly - even if it’s just one article per week.

* Submit to hundreds of article directories.

Don’t just submit to 1 or 2 article directories. Start with Ezinearticles.com. Once approved, you can use the same articles to distribute to all the article directories.

* Outsource of use software to help you distribute articles.

It doesn’t make sense to sit at the computer for hours just to distribute articles. You have better things to do. Outsource all the article submissions or use some software to automate the process. Your article marketing will become way less painful.

A word of caution if you are hiring writers to write for you. Use a duplicate content check tool like CopyScape to check for plagarism before paying your writers. Some writers are just out to scam others - they scrape content off other websites and submit them as their own. Don’t be fooled!

* Focus on keywords.

Try to dilute your efforts by targeting too many keywords at any one time. Focus on two or three keywords, and write your articles based on those keywords. Once they start to rank in the search engines, move on to other keywords.

Notice that there is a cumulative effect. The more keywords you target, the more traffic you will get. But be patient. SEO does take a little bit of time, especially for competitive keywords.

* Publish 100% original articles.

Using PLR articles is fine. But many directories (like Ezinearticles) will not accept PLR articles. You have to be prepared to accept that if you are using PLR articles. Otherwise, you just have to write 100% orginal and unique articles. Unique means that your articles must not be published on the Internet before. So don’t make the mistake of posting to your blog, and then submit the articles. Once the articles get indexed by the search engines, Ezinearticles may not approve the articles.

* Be clear about your goals.

What are you trying to achieve? If you just want to build links, you can submit general information articles. If you are trying to sell something, focus on the products and talk more about the problems that your products will help to solve. Don’t give away all the answers in your articles. In that 450 words, show that you understand the customers, and that you are sincere in helping them overcome whatever obstacles they are facing. That will encourage them to click your links and visit your site.

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If you are just started going into article marketing, you probably know by now that there are a host of problems associated with article marketing. Although the concept itself is simple to understand, the implementation process can be time consuming. Success article marketers know how to overcome these problems. First, let’s see what these problems are:

1) Articles need to be unique and original. So you need time to write these articles.

2) Articles need to be of decent quality, cannot be self promotional, and must contain useful information. That means no bot generated content. So the thought of using software to churn out tons of useless articles goes to the trash can.

3) When the articles are ready, you need a list of article directories. These can be readily found online, but the problem is, many of these lists are not maintained. So you find quite a handful of outdated or abandoned article directories.

4) Once you have a list of article directories, you need to submit your articles to each directory individually. This is an extremely time consuming process, and most marketers give up because of the submissions. It’s just too time intensive.

There are article submission software that will help to submit articles. But software cannot track your article submissions for you, which leads us to the next problem.

5) It is difficult to track how many articles you have submitted. After a while, most article marketers lose track of the exact number of articles that they have submitted.

Even some sort of simple tracking is better than having none at all. For example, an article marketer should be able to see when the articles are distributed, how many have been distributed, and what are the resource boxes used.

Ultimately, to know whether your article distribution is effective or not, you will need some kind of link popularity tool to tell whether the search engines are indexing your links. Fortunately, there are many search engine optimization tools on SEO websites that offer such tools for free. But it’s still up to the article marketer to check their sites’ link popularity on a regular basis.

Face with seemingly unsurmountable problems as discussed above, inexperienced internet marketers give up before they can see the results they want.

This is unfortunate because in reality, these problems can be overcome. Many successful article marketers have written and submitted thousands of articles, building tons of quality back links to their sites. As a result, their sites rank very well for various keywords in the search engines. Question is, how did they do it?

The secret to being successful in article marketing is to outsource whenever possible. If you write all your articles yourself, there are only so many articles you can complete in a single day. But if you have a team of writers to write on your behalf, theoretically speaking, you can write an infinite number of articles per day. The more writers you have, the more you can do each day.

So outsource both your article writing and article distributions if you can. There are highly affordable services available out there if you look hard enough.

For affordable Article Distribution Service starting from $6, please visit our distribution site - List of Article Directories

Recently, I came across an article distribution service that looks very similar to what we are offering. Upon closer examination, I quickly find that it’s a copycat of the article distribution services we are offering. Everything, from process management to the member dashboard, looks very similar to what we are offering - too similar to be a coincidence.

While this is indeed a flattering find, we firmly believe that you should stick to the original, for a few simple reasons.

1 - Professional article distribution service providers know what they are doing.

Since professionals know exactly what to do, there is no need to copy. Everything evolves naturally out of customer needs. That’s why pro services are 100% original. The problem with copycats is that they are always one step slower. You certainly don’t want to be working with wannabes who think they can do a good job performing SEO just by copying somebody else’s website.

2 - Lack of comprehensive packages.

As mentioned, being copycats, they are always waiting for others to move before they know what to do. Therefore, there is always some gap in their offerings. For example, a copycat that I recently come across claim to offer article distribution services, but they fail to provide article writing services. Why is that so? Obviously, they don’t truly understand the needs of the customers.

3 - Lack of experience.

This is a very important point. To provide a professional article distribution service is not really a simple task. For instance, there is a full blown back end to manage article submissions, customer emails, replace defunct sites with new article directories, etc. As a customer, this is transparent. But you can be sure that lots of effort has been put into developing a top class distribution service.

Copycats tend to avoid problem areas, simply because they don’t really know what the real problems are. That’s why they resort to copying. When problems arise, they don’t really know what to do, or how to go about fixing them.

As a customer, you have a real concern here. If they don’t run the service well enough, they could be out of business very quickly! You want someone who is reliable, and who can help promote your websites year after year.

4 - Lack of professionalism.

Professionalism means providing exceptional service and support to customers. Unfortunately, due to lack of experience, the result is that you are likely to experience a lack of professionalism. Surely, you are not going to trust a company who is just “copying” what others are doing, right?

So don’t just go for copycats. Besides, they can’t really beat the prices offered by professional service providers. There is really no reason to trust such companies. Don’t be surprise if you find their websites to be buggy!

Darren Chow is a full time article marketer. His latest project is a Article Distribution Service where bloggers can promote their own blogs by submitting articles. The Article Submission Services are at affordable rates to help bloggers succeed.

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As a professional service provider for article distribution services, I sometimes see article marketers run around in circles. That means they are doing some stuff that may not necessarily matter. I am talking about duplicate content.

Often, I find that online marketers are too caught up with duplicate content that they forget what matters the most - they are in article marketing to build high quality back links. They keep forgetting that as long as they write useful and valuable content for their sites and continue to build relevant back links, their sites will rank well. Instead, they keep focusing on duplicate content. And I’m starting to observe a rising trend where article marketers spend more and more time writing for the search engines.

You have to remember how duplicate content comes about. It all starts from the search engines. You see, the primary function of a search engine is to help the user find the most relevant content in the shortest possible time. And it has to fill this function while providing a positive user experience.

So that means a search engine cannot possibly list thousands of web pages that are essentially similar when a user performs a search. Who wants to use a search engine that lists thousands and thousands of duplicated pages in a single search!? But recognize that this is a problem that the search engines have to solve.

As article marketers, you do not run the search engines. So it is not necessary for you to be overly obsessed with duplicate content. Let the search engines figure out how to solve that problem. Your job, and primary focus, is to develop unique content for your own site, and build relevant back links to your pages. This is very important, so I don’t mind repeating it again and again.

When I say overly obsessed, I mean article marketers are spending way too much time trying to submit unique content to the search engines. For example, one common way to do so is to submit macro articles.

Macro articles contain several phrases for each sentence that have the same meaning. A special tool or software is then used to spin the article to generate different versions of the same article. Hence, the article marketer can now distribute so-called unique articles to different news sources or article directories.

But unlike ordinary articles, which take somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes to write, a macro article can take up to a couple of hours to complete. This is taking way too long to achieve the same thing - building back links.

Although it is possible using the article distribution service that I provide to spin and submit macro articles, I usually advise marketers not to get too caught up with this duplicate content issue. If you do, you will find that you are spending a lot of time working on the macro articles. This is time that can be spent elsewhere on more important things - like product development.

When the search engines find many pages of largely similar content, what they will do is to choose one to rank well. Again, remember that they do this to make their search results look good. That doesn’t mean they discount all the back links you have built by submitting the same article to several hundred article directories.

I know this for a fact because we have a custom made link popularity tool to track the link counts from all the major search engines. And even when we submit the articles to the online news sources, online magazines, ezines, and so on, the link counts have continued to climb. And so have our rankings. And I continue to observe the same results that our clients have been getting.

So which would you rather prefer? Spending two hours to build a hundred back links or spending fifteen minutes to build the same number of back links? Both will result in higher rankings for your site. The answer is obvious.

Initially, article marketers submit the same article to all the article directories to build links. As duplicate content gets a lot of attention, especially from major webmaster news sources, the good old way of article marketing is fast fading away.

Now, the new generation of article marketers ask for more sophisticated features like macro articles. They think that macro articles can help them rank better than their competitors.

But eventually, they will come to realize that they are in fact, getting the same results. And when they do, they will go back to creating one useful article at a time, and submitting that same article to all the article directories. They have ran a full circle, and finally got back to where they started.

For affordable Article Distribution Service starting from $6, please visit our distribution site - List of Article Directories

Article marketing has been around for years. It has worked for many, and will continue to work for others. The concept of article marketing is simple. You have an online business that you want to promote. Now you need to get the word out.

On the Internet, getting the word out means letting potential customers find out where your website is. In other words, it’s all about links. The more links you have on external sites, the easier it is for others to find you. So what does that got to do with article marketing?

You see, when you write and submit articles, article directories allow you to promote your own websites in the author resource box. Usually, you are allowed to leave up to 2 live links in your author signature. Whenever someone reads your articles, and like what you have to say, they will click on the links and visit your website. Here is when you try to sell them your wares.

But before you get to enjoy the benefits of article marketing, you first have to know how to get your articles published. Fortunately, article marketing is so simple that even a fifteen year old can do it. All you need is an ability to write decent articles, and an Internet connection so that you can submit the articles for publication.

The only problem with this traffic generation technique is that it takes up way too much time. If you are a prolific writer, you can write a 300 word article in less than 15 minutes. However, not everyone is a prolific writer. Some are not even comfortable writing in English. So how can these people get into article marketing?

The solution is simple: outsource.

The process of article marketing is time consuming by its very nature. You need time to write articles, and you need even more time to submit your articles to hundreds of article directories. As an online business owner, you have lots of important work to do, like developing partnerships or product development. You hardly have time to sit down and write articles for distribution. So to give your internet business the kick start that it needs, outsource your article marketing activities. In other words, leave the grunt work to professional service providers.

When you do that, two things will happen. One, you find that you don’t have to worry about doing it wrong. You can skip the learning curve for article marketing altogether and head straight towards your goal, which is to bring in the traffic. Professional article distribution service providers will be able to write search engine optimized articles for you to help you promote your business. They will also create your author resource box for you so that the articles contain live links to your site.

Secondly, you now find that you are free to work on other aspects of your business. This has been mentioned earlier but it’s so important that it’s worth mentioning again. You absolutely has to spend your precious time working on business development. You are the owner of the business. If you don’t develop your business, no one is going to do it for you. So spend your energy where it’s most needed.

When done right, article marketing can bring a steady stream of visitors to your website. How you want to monetize this traffic is up to you.

Author: Darren Chow is a full time article marketer. His latest project is an Article Distribution Service where bloggers can promote their own blogs by submitting articles. The Article Submission Services are at affordable rates to help bloggers succeed.

I often see new Internet marketers make this mistake. I too have been a new Internet marketer myself, and I understand how this mistake comes about. I’m talking about losing focus. You see, the problem with Internet marketing is that when you are just starting out, there are just too many aspects of the business that need your attention.

You need to create a website. you need to source for products to sell or create your own products. You need to figure out how to drive traffic to the website. It’s an uphill battle through and through. That’s why many Internet marketers give up before they see results.

To make things worse, information about Internet marketing can be overwhelming. There are so many different ways to drive traffic. You can drive traffic from Ezine promotions, joint ventures, SEO, PPC, etc. Now you have web 2.0 - social bookmarking and social networking. No wonder new marketers get confused.

The only way to avoid this problem, is to stay focused. That is easier said than done. I see so many new marketers lose their focus. Whenever a new course comes up, they jump on it. They write one article, submit it to a few directories, see no results, and they move on to something else. That kind of strategy is doomed to failure from day one.

The key here is focus. If you are into article marketing, stick with it. Observe what the more experienced article marketers do, and learn from them. Article marketing has been around for years, and there are reasons why it has continued to work for years. Your job, is to figure out what those reasons are.

Even if at the beginning, you can’t figure out why, it’s ok to just stick with article marketing. After all, there are tons of real live examples of successful article marketers around. They are living proof that article marketing works.

So as you continue to execute your article marketing, learn quickly along the way. Ask questions whenever you can, and if you have to buy a course to shorten the process, buy only article marketing related courses. You don’t go off course until you see the fruits of your labor. That is a winning strategy. If you are persistent enough and take on article marketing with tenacity, you cannot lose.

Once you see traffic coming to your site, then things really start to happen. You can test your sales copy. You can sell more products. You can ask for feedback to help fine tune your products and so on.

Once you have tweaked your site and have gotten decent conversion rates, you may then aim for more traffic. How do you get more traffic? That’s right, focus on article marketing! Search for new keywords to optimize and keep on writing and distributing articles.

A website with thousands of back links is worth a lot of money. If you can’t get the site to work, you can always sell it away so that other marketers pick up from where you left off. That way, you still make money. Your article marketing efforts will never go to waste.

For affordable Article Distribution Service starting from $6, please visit our distribution site - List of Article Directories

Have you ever thought about why so many website owners are interested in article distribution and article writing? Creating content and having a love for writing is one thing. But that’s why most site owners are interested in article writing. When you combine distribution and writing, what do you get? You get back links.

You see, the majority of the site owners are trying whatever they can to promote their own websites. The more articles they write and distribute, the more inbound links they get. And hopefully, they get more traffic. How does this work?

In brief, whenever you write and submit an article, you are allowed to place two to three active links on the article itself. You can link to any URL you want as long as they don’t contain excess profanity. Readers will then find the articles, and if they are interested in your content, they can find you through the links that you have placed out there.

But if you want to go down this route, you want to be able to do this quickly and painlessly. The problem with article distribution is that it takes up a lot of your precious time. It takes time to write a one hundred percent unique article. And it takes time for you to distribute the articles to several hundred article directories.

The first thing you need to do, is to figure out how to write articles quickly. Ultimately, it comes down to two things. One, your ideas. And two, your typing speed. Many writers find themselves getting stuck because they run out of ideas. So they sit there staring at a blank screen, wasting precious time. Before long, they give up.

To prevent that from happening, make sure that you conduct brain storming sessions. Write down all the ideas that come to your head. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad ideas. Just write. You can always go back and choose the ones that you want to write on later. The moment you have a boat load of ideas, you are halfway there.

Now all you need to do is to elaborate on those ideas. Have a fixed style of writing. There is no need for flowery language. You are not trying to impress anyone with your writing. You are trying to build links. You need to have a fixed template for writing because that will help you as you type. With a template, your typing flows naturally, and you don’t have to stop and think about the style you want to adopt.

So how long do you think you need to completed typing an article? The fastest typing speed recorded to date is about 150 words per minute. That’s super fast! Most people are lucky to achieve speeds of 50 to 60 words per minute. You are likely to average around that speed.

Once you have completed your writing, it’s time to distribute your article.

Professional article writing service and article distribution service available. Fully featured - Fast turnaround, back up articles to local hard drive and more!

Have you ever thought about why so many website owners are interested in article distribution and article writing? Creating content and having a love for writing is one thing. But that’s why most site owners are interested in article writing. When you combine distribution and writing, what do you get? You get back links.

You see, the majority of the site owners are trying whatever they can to promote their own websites. The more articles they write and distribute, the more inbound links they get. And hopefully, they get more traffic. How does this work?

In brief, whenever you write and submit an article, you are allowed to place two to three active links on the article itself. You can link to any URL you want as long as they don’t contain excess profanity. Readers will then find the articles, and if they are interested in your content, they can find you through the links that you have placed out there.

But if you want to go down this route, you want to be able to do this quickly and painlessly. The problem with article distribution is that it takes up a lot of your precious time. It takes time to write a one hundred percent unique article. And it takes time for you to distribute the articles to several hundred article directories.

The first thing you need to do, is to figure out how to write articles quickly. Ultimately, it comes down to two things. One, your ideas. And two, your typing speed. Many writers find themselves getting stuck because they run out of ideas. So they sit there staring at a blank screen, wasting precious time. Before long, they give up.

To prevent that from happening, make sure that you conduct brain storming sessions. Write down all the ideas that come to your head. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad ideas. Just write. You can always go back and choose the ones that you want to write on later. The moment you have a boat load of ideas, you are halfway there.

Now all you need to do is to elaborate on those ideas. Have a fixed style of writing. There is no need for flowery language. You are not trying to impress anyone with your writing. You are trying to build links. You need to have a fixed template for writing because that will help you as you type. With a template, your typing flows naturally, and you don’t have to stop and think about the style you want to adopt.

So how long do you think you need to completed typing an article? The fastest typing speed recorded to date is about 150 words per minute. That’s super fast! Most people are lucky to achieve speeds of 50 to 60 words per minute. You are likely to average around that speed.

Once you have completed your writing, it’s time to distribute your article.

Professional article writing service and article distribution service available. Fully featured - Fast turnaround, back up articles to local hard drive and more!