Article Marketing

Strategic Internet Marketing

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marketing-strategyEven during times of recession when it seems like many major companies are focused on downsizing, you can grow your business in such a way that it will thrive once the good times begin rolling again. The internet marketing strategies that you engage in over the next several months will lead you right down the path you want.

Consider this: more than two thirds of all consumers visit the Web for when seeking information on their desired type of product or service. It is due to this reason that the majority of companies have switched their marketing gears over recent years. However, that does not mean that one should focus solely on internet marketing techniques to build their business. Press releases in your local paper and of course stellar customer service are still good ways to grow your clientele.

Email marketing is a strong strategy, especially when the target audience is prior customers or those you may have met at market fairs of some sort. People who have willingly given you their email will be more likely to peruse a usable newsletter full of tips and information that will help make their lives easier. Remember, when you have something of value to offer, your word will be read.

At a time when people are seeing less revenue generated, it may seem like the time to abandon costly pay per click campaigns. I wouldn’t necessarily say stop this practice altogether, because you want to maintain high visibility. However, slower times can be the best times to review and analyze the pay per click campaigns and Adword campaigns you are running. Minimizing to very focused terms may help you gain more relevant and qualified traffic.chart

In fact, investing some time in really taking a good look at all of your internet marketing strategies can give you a good picture of what is really working for you and what is not. Change is inevitable and making changes will definitely be a necessity for you at some point in time. Looking at results from your current efforts should show you the direction you want to focus on in the coming months, and will also show you mistakes you have been making. Mistakes are wonderful learning experiences if you grow from them.

For instance, if you have been submitting articles to directories for the past year and you’re not seeing much traffic come from them, consider changing the location of these articles. Perhaps the same articles would receive more attention if placed in a blog relevant to your niche product or service. Perhaps you need to look at outsourcing blog writing to someone who has the time and expertise to read and respond to blog posts on your behalf. Perhaps creating articles for Squidoo and Hub pages is the way to get more exposure in a social networking manner. The real point is that if you try looking in different directions for your internet marketing, you just may be surprised by some astounding results.

Hubpages Equal Success

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article-3In the lush forest that is ecommerce, internet marketing is like the roots of a tree.  Without nutrients (web traffic) flowing through the roots (internet marketing), the tree (your website) doesn’t grow.  You want your tree to grow.  Therefore, you need to make sure you nurture deep roots from the very onset of planting. Building an ecommerce site is an exhilarating experience full of adventure.  That’s the positive way of saying there are tons of changes to keep up with.  Technology constantly changes; and new ways of getting the word out about your business are emerging with each setting of the sun.  While there are benefits to these changes in internet marketing and social media marketing, there is one major drawback.  You have much more important things to do than follow emerging trends in marketing. You have a business to run. Taking on the task of learning SEO, writing articles to submit to online directories, writing scripts and producing videos is not necessarily the best thing you can spend your time doing.  Creating Hubpages and other social media marketing strategies is something many ecommerce business owners are choosing to hire a professional for.  Now that is the way to increase web traffic!

Hubpages are a marketing tool we hear much about.  These are like mini-sites that can be created on any topic of interest.  Hubpages, like everything else having to do with building a successful website, should be optimized and full of keywords.  They are similar to a Squidoo lens, except for a key point that Hubpages should not and cannot contain outright marketing for your own ecommerce site.  There is incessant gardening going on in these pages and too many links to your own site will get your growing tree pruned very quickly.  Tricky little bugs!

Because the name of the game with Hubpages is originality teamed up with length (the longer the better), stellar writing skills are involved.  Busy CEOs do not have the time to hone their writing chops while also preparing their sites shopping cart, communicating with vendors and dealing with employees.  This is enough to drive you mad before you take your first order! With all that there is to learn about Social Media Marketing and Hubpages, a business owners best bet is to get on board quickly by outsourcing the processing of these pages to a professional, like the team at Start Ranking Now.  Outsourcing not only saves you a great deal of time and frustration, but it also guarantees the success of the writing and submission process. Don’t fret.  Hubpages and Social Media Marketing work wonders to feed the growth of a website.  This internet marketing strategy is great for getting information out to prospective clients.  And with the proper content, you’ll be able to tell right away if you’re headed towards success because these pages are usually indexed by Google in a very short time. Get some help.  Get in the game.  Get your money tree to grow!

Article Marketing Tips

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Our seo services website, www.startrankingnow.com offers the service of writing and submitting original articles to article directories.  As we provide this service, I have seen some of the same errors repeated over and over by our clients.  When we open a new project with a client, we ask them for a list of the keywords and the landing page (url) they would like us to build links to.  Here are some of the common errors we see over and over again:

1. Using multiple keywords for one url.  A common error is to try to build links to one page with multiple keywords.  While it is good to use keyword variations, it is not recommeded to use completely separate keywords when building links to one page.

The correct way to build links is to match the anchor text of the links with the headline and topic of the page you are building links to.  For example, if you had a page on your site that had a headline of “baby swings” then you would want to build links to that page using the anchor text “baby swings”.  You could vary the anchor text so that there were variations of the anchor text such as “cool baby swings” “battery operated baby swings” “baby swings for newborns” and so on.  Note that the anchor text always has the words “baby swings” included but can also include other words.  You would NOT want to build links to the “baby swings” page with the anchor text of “swings for babies” or “baby toys”.  For the keywords “swings for babies” it is not recommended to make another product page on the site with all of the same prouducts as listed on the page of “baby swings”.  The correct way to do this would be to create an article on the site that has the headline of “swings for babies” and is keyword optimized for “swings for babies”.  The exception would be IF the keyword phrase “swings for babies’ was also included somewere in the text of the page “baby swings” and the search volume for “swings for babies” did not justify creating a new article page just for that phrase alone.

2. Building links to duplicate urls.

Most webmasters or site owners do not realize that the urls http://mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com are actually conidered to be TWO domains by google.  The same goes for the page http://www.mydomain.com and http://www.mydomain.com/index.html .  You should choose ONE version of your site… either the one WITH or the one WITHOUT the www and also choose ONE version of the home page… the one with the index.html or the one without the index.html to build links to.  The key is to be consistent in link building.

3. Not including the keyword in the title of the article.

The title of the article is the most important part of the article.  The article title will determine if your article will be read or skipped over.  Getting your article read by customers and more importantly, other webmasters, is the first step to getting your article picked up by other webmasters for placement on their sites.  Of course to be able to include the keyword in the title, the article must be relevant to the keyword.  This is not always possible, especially if you are writing about indirectly related topics.  Whenever possible, it is best to include the keyword in the article title.

4. Not using two links in the author resource box.

If you are going to go to all the trouble of writing an article and submitting it to article directories, why wouldn’t you get the most bang for your buck and have as many links in the author resource box as the article directory allows you to?  You should always read the terms of service by the article directories and put in as many links as possible.

5. Not having one url in the author resource box as a link.

Since most article directories allow for two links, it is best to have one link as an anchor text and the second link as an url.  The second link should be an url because some webmasters will “steal” your articles from the article directories using automated software and post your article to their website without the links.  The software automatically strips out the html deleting the links if you only have anchor text links.  The less sophisticated software however, will sometimes leave the url as a hyperlink.  Even if the software strips out the hyperlink, a potential customer can still see your url and copy and paste it to visit your site if they really liked your article.

6. Using your real name as the author.

Please, please, please, use a pen name.  If you use your real name and later sell your site… which should be the goal for all site owners, then you will one day have your name associated with a site you no longer own or control.  Also, if you own multiple sites you are leaving a footprint to your competitors of all the sites you own.  Another reason to use a pen name is if you are having your articles ghost written and you are not reading them to check the content.  Please don’t put your name next to anything unless you actually wrote it.  Most article directories allow you to have multiple pen names.  It is best to have a different pen name for each web site.

7. Linking to the same site twice in the author resource box.

If you only have one site, it is fine to do this in the beginning.  Once you have multiple sites or multiple web properties, it is always better to spread your link building as much as possible.  You can submit one article to an article directory and link out to two separate web properties.  A good way to do this is to have a blog on a separate domain… or at least on a subdomain of your money site.  You can also build a network of mini sites that are thematically related to a section on your money site.  The article you submit for distribution can then link once to your money site and once to your blog.  You can vary the links so that one article links to the money site with an anchor text link and the next article links to the money site with an url link.

SUPER SECRET TIP

One excellent strategy we have recently started to implement is to have all articles written in sets of three.  A keyword is assigned to the writer and the writer writes three topically related articles of 500 words each.  One article is placed on the main money site.  This article utilizes internal linking strategies to send links to the inner pages of the same site.  A second article is placed on a blog.  The blog article links out to the article placed on the main money site as well as to other topically related web properties. (Think Web 2.0) The third article is submitted to multiple article directories with two links: one to the blog article and one to the article on the main money site.  This strategy is further developed using web 2.0 properties and social bookmarking sites to send traffic to the articles.