An effective article marketing strategy to build your business.

  If you are not using an article marketing strategy to promote your business you are likely missing out on some of the best, targeted traffic to your website available. And the best part of doing this is the process is totally free and the number of articles you write is truly unlimited. There are dozens of quality article directories very willing and ready to accept your articles for publication throughout the web, and at not charge to you.

What is article marketing?

   

Simply put, article marketing is the writing and submission of a document to an article directory with the possibility of driving targeted traffic to your website. The size of the article varies from directory to directory but generally consist of 400 - 800 words per document. Having a good article marketing strategy will be an essential element in building a successful affiliate marketing business. 

 Each article should target a specific audience by providing a specific benefit and information to the reader. Finding your article in a search will be done with the use of certain key words and phrases in the title and body of the article. More on that in a moment. Note: Your article is not a sales page but a source of information to the reader.

Benefits of article marketing.

The advantage of having a good article marketing strategy serve many purposes.

• Targeted traffic. Your articles will drive a specific audience to your web pages.
• It's Green. Generally what you write today will still be a source of traffic for many years.
• SEO Benefits. Links are allowed within the article or author bio that point to your web pages, giving those pages more authority and increasing page rank in the search engines.
• High Ranking. Generally through proper use of key words and phrases, articles rank very well in search engines.
• It's FREE. How cool is that.
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Preparing and composing your article.

A vital step to your article marketing strategy is research. Research the subject of your article. Research the audience that will relate with your article. Research the key words and phrases to use in your article.

Who will be your target audience. 

 

  

Too often when starting an affiliate marketing business, marketers will choose a product then try to  market that product without knowing the real needs of the consumer. Visit forums, article directories, and any other media and see what others are interested in. What are their problems. What are their needs. What are they asking about. What solutions are they looking for. Understanding the needs of those you are marketing to is vital to a successful marketing campaign and product sales. Find the need first, then fill that need with a chosen product.

Keyword research.

 

To be found by others your article must contain certain key words and phrases so a search engine will find your article and decide if it is relevant. Don't guess at what key phrases others may use in a search query. When others perform a search in Google or other search engines they will be using certain key phrases in that search. By using those relevant key phrases in your article will be how your information will be picked up in a search




To learn a little more about keyword research, take a look at my Keyword Research Guide. During your research choose the most relevant key phrase to use in your article. For a good article marketing strategyyou will want to use that phrase in the following area of your document.

• In URL. Try to use your main key phrase in the url of your document.
• In Subject. Very important.
• In body. Try to use your main key phrase in the first sentence and occasionally throughout your document.

Keyword use in the body of your article is very important. If too few keywords are used then in may not be picked up by a search engine. To many and the search engines my drop the article for keyword stuffing. Keyword density can be found by counting your relevant key words or phrases and dividing that by total number of words in the article. A density of around 2- 3% is a good average to shoot for.

Writing your article.

 

As mentioned earlier, your article is not a sales page but a source of information to be viewed by the reader. Write your article as if you are talking to the person. Speak with authority. You want to appear to be very knowledgeable or an expert in your niche. You goal is to develop a relationship and trust with the reader. No long paragraphs. Break your article into short easy to read sections. Use headings and subheadings to highlight various points in your article.

You may read a novel word for word but folks browsing the internet more often scan over your page, picking out the various topics that are of interest to them. There are many little things you can do to help hold the readers interest. Writing for the web is a little different than a sales letter you may get in the mail. I have an article on Writing For The Web Format that may give you ideas and examples that help increase and hold reader interest.

Submitting your article.

 

There are literally hundreds of article directories scattered throughout the internet. A good article marketing strategy is to only use the ones with high page rank. Page rank values run between PR 0 - PR 10.





Try to use ones with at least PR 3 and up. Using these will give more authority to your pages through backlinks. Submitting your article is a fairly simple process. Just choose an article directory and register for their service. Different directories have varying guidelines so read their terms of service for article submissions. Most will have a minimum length of at least 400 words per article. It may take a few hours and maybe even a few days for your article to be approved and published so don't be concerned if you don't see your article go live immediately.

Don't forget the links to your pages.

 

Different directories have different rules for adding links back to your website. Some will allow links as anchor text within the article while others will only allow links in your author bio of the directory. When adding your link as anchor text or in your bio a good article marketing strategy is to always vary the words use in either.

I know one marketer that was using good white hat practices of promoting his business and website but had his site de-indexed by Google. Turns out he used the same exact bio in all of his article submissions and was hit for duplicate content by the Google Panda updates. Note: Don't have all your links pointing to just one page on your site. Vary the links to point to different pages within your website as long as it is relevant to the article.

In conclusion.

 

When I first started article marketing it was recommended I use a pen name when submitting my article, so I did. That's up to you. If you would like to view some of my article go to: StreetArticles.com and search for author Kevin Strike. Or just look in the right column of this page for my RSS feed. Also browsing some of the other articles and subjects that interest you will give more ideas on writing your articles. Planning a good article marketing strategy will do wonders for your business. In my opinion writing and submitting articles is the best and free way of building your affiliate marketing business. Why not start now!

Here are a few article directories to get you started.

 

• Street Articles PR-3 My favorite article directory.
• Ezine Articles PR-4
• Article Base PR-6
• Buzzle PR-6
• Article Alley PR-4

 Other resources to help with your affiliate marketing business. Wealth Affiliate University. This is an organization keyed to helping the affiliate marketer learn all aspects of marketing a business on the internet. They offer a FREE 10 day membership to check the organization out. No obligation or credit card required for full membership privileges. One Week Marketing is a guide by a lady who calls herself PotPieGirl. You can download the first 18 pages of her guide FREE for review. No obligation or credit card required.