Four Terrific Article Marketing Tips

We haven’t talked about article marketing in awhile and that’s a shame, because article marketing with keyword-rich articles really is a terrific way to get free traffic to your business’ website.

So with today’s post, here are four great article marketing tips:

1) The longer your article is, the better. Aim to write articles of at least 500 words in length. Anything shorter than 250 words really won’t do you much good. Four or so keywords in such a short article will come across as “keyword stuffing.” Your article also won’t read very well.

2) Go for quality in your articles, not quantity. Yes, it’s extremely helpful if you can write thoughtful, informative articles of 500 words or so five days a week for a month and then one to three times a week for the next couple of months after that. But if you simply don’t have time, aim for fewer articles of higher quality. What do we mean by quality? Articles that are engaging, well written and offer good, solid information to your target audience.

3) Pay your writers well. Speaking of lack of time (or if you feel you’re not a good writer), consider outsourcing the writing of your articles to a professional. Watch out for writers who will accept $5 (or even less) per 500-word article. You will be paying for junk. The article may be written by people who have no grasp of complex English grammar and syntax. In addition, you risk that the “writer” may simply cut and past someone else’s article and foist it off to you as original. Many professional, highly talented writers can write an article for you for between $25-75 or more (the more would be a for an article on a highly technical topic).

4) Distribute your articles to the big guns. Hundreds of article distribution sites are popping up on the Internet each day. However, we recommend that you distribute your articles to the major players in the article distribution arena: ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, articlesbase.com, articlesnatch. com, etc. (Here’s a list of the top 50). You also can place your article on your own HubPage, Squidoo Lens, AssociatedContent pages, etc.

If you’d like to explore more about how article marketing can bring your website targeted traffic affordably and continually (once the article is distributed, it’s on the Internet — and being found — forever), give GoiMarketing.com a call. We can research the keywords that will work best for your campaign and we can also write and distribute the articles for you. We look forward to hearing from you.

Getting Website Visitors in Five Simple Steps

Sometimes, we just need to see things spelled out for us, plainly and simply.

That being the case, here are what we believe are the five parts that, together, work to give you great search engine optimization “juice” for your business. That is, do these five things and you’re sure to get a lot more traffic to your website.

1) Keyword research is….key. Without good keywords — keywords that aren’t used too much by your competitors but which are used by your target market — all your work to bring traffic will be for naught. You need a) keywords your potential customers use to search for your products and services and b) you need “niche” keywords that get a decent amount of traffic but which aren’t used too much by your competitors.

2) Watch that video! Seriously. Watch it. Video marketing is growing in popularity. Most people who visit your site will watch a video you imbed there. Why? Because for the most part videos are more entertaining and give out information more quickly than reading content.

3) Still, don’t forget your ABCs — as in get the alphabet out there about your company in the form of article marketing! Submit articles you write to the free online article directories (especially EzineArticles), with a great resource/author’s information box at the end with a link to your site, or a landing page on your site, and you’ve just given yourself a free and evergreen marketing tool. Yes, the results won’t be instant. Yes, you’ll need to actually write and write consistently (aim to submit an article at least five times a week for a month and then once or twice a week for the next two months — then weekly after that). Yet article marketing works in two ways. 1) Those how publish online magazines, etc. will pick up your article thus exposing your services to their list. 2) Place your good keywords in those articles and you’ll find that your articles themselves come up in search engine results.

4) Tweet and then tweet some more. Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. will help you gain local followers and supporters of your business. Create a professional “page” on Facebook and profile on Twitter and start participating in and creating conversations. Aim to create online relationships. Don’t worry, the sales will come.

5) Back to writing! Set up a blog on your website and start writing. You can rework some of your articles if you like, but try to write original blog posts about your service or product. Offer advice. Instructions. Content of value, etc. Put a little personal info on there, but not too much. Keep your blog focused on serving the needs of your constituents — your target market.

Let GoiMarketing.com perform steps 1-5 for you. We can set up your blog (and even write it for you). We’ll get you going with Twitter and Facebook. We’ll research the best keywords for you to use. We can even write and distribute articles for you. We can do it all, or just get you started — whatever you decide. Just decide to contact us today!

Four Things to Require of Your SEO Company

When you engage an SEO company to create, revamp and/or optimize a website for you, be sure to ask them for the following services:

Make sure your SEO company submits your site to the three major search engines: Google, Bing/MSN and Yahoo! The company needn’t — in fact, shouldn’t — submit your site to the hundreds of search engines that exist on the Web. Most people only search using the three major search engines and so paying for submission to hundreds is a waste of your money. Be sure your SEO company doesn’t submit your site to more than about 30 search engines. Require that the company send you the list of search engines to which it submitted your site.

2) Ask to be told when your site is indexed by the search engines. Understand that this could take up to three to four months (although a site — rarely — can be indexed within just a few days).

3) Require that the SEO company provide you with a monthly report regarding anything they’ve done to or for your site. This report should include a listing of any on-site SEO performed (more on this in a moment), as well as a list of search engines and web directories to which your site has been submitted. You also should ask for a progress report (monthly) on how your site’s rankings are faring/improving.

4) Finally, and most importantly, your SEO company should create a site or revamp your current one to ensure it’s friendly to the search engines. On-site SEO tasks can and should include: writing informative, engaging keyword optimized content; creating relevant title and meta tags; and peppering each page with relevant html code.

Allow GoiMarketing.com to create a great SEO optimized website for your business, a website that will bring visitors to offerings and convert them into buyers. Contact us today!

 

Four Pillars of SEO

Search Engine Optimization can feel so confusing to people. So many different terms (RSS feeds, off-site vs. on-site, long-tail keywords, meta-tags, etc.), getting a handle on SEO can seem impossible to do.

To help you grasp SEO a little better, we offer you the four basic elements of SEO. They are:

• Good links to your site (backlinks)
• A site that’s friendly to search engines
• Title keywords relevant to your business and SEO
• Good, informative content

 

1) Good links to your site: The more links you have coming to your site the better your own site will rank. A good link is one that comes to your site from a site that’s trusted by search engines. What kind of sites are these? Article directories (ezinearticles.com; goarticles.com, etc.), web directories (Hot Frog and SiteBeSeen, for example), blogs with a large number of followers.

To get these links, write and submit articles to the article directories, with a link to your site in the resource box; list your site in the free and paid web directories. Also get listed in your industry’s professional associations — and even on your local paper’s and chamber’s directories. As for blogs, offer to write guest posts for blogs you admire. You’ll almost always get to have a link on your guest post back to your own site.

2) Search-engine-friendly site: Keep your Flash, dynamic URls and JavaScript navigation links to a minimum on — or completely off — your site. These can slow down search engine spiders.

3) Relevant title keywords: Use relevant keyword phrases for the title of each page of your site. Search engines mostly look at the titles of your web pages to figure out what your site is all about. (The title of your page is located at the top of your browser above your browser’s menu items). Aim to get relevant keywords on each of your page’s titles.

4) Good, informative content: Remember that you’re content really should be written for people, not search engines. Inform your visitors with worthwhile content, video, discount coupons, free downloads — get them motivated to engage with you and your business.

Let us explain what makes good SEO to you in terms you’ll understand. Contact GoiMarketing.com to build or revamp your site so that more visitors will come to your site, visitors who will become customers. We look forward to hearing from you.

Where to Find Keywords

Do you ever find yourself stumped on keywords? Are you using the online keyword search tools but feel you’re not really “getting” all that you could?

Here are some ways to find keywords that you may not have considered. Try them and see what kind of results you have.

• Check your competitors’ sites. This may sound “sneaky,” but believe us, webmasters do this all the time. Make a list of your top competitors, the ones that rank high in search results. Visit their sites and then right click anywhere on a page. A popup with “View Page Source” or “View Source” will appear. Select it and then you’ll see the keywords your competitors use in their meta tags, description and title. Consider using the keyword you find there on your own site.
• Take some time and think of all the keywords you think your target market uses to find your product/service. Then think of the keywords that might be related to your offering. Then think of keywords that might be related to those keywords.
• Take a look at your site’s own logs. If you’re not tracking how you’re being found, you should start now. Check to see how visitors to your site are arriving. Take the keywords they’re using to find you and add these to your site.
• Ask others for ideas. Talk to your friends, family and business associates for keyword ideas. What keywords do they/would they use when looking for your product or service?
• Let your mind wander. Keywords may come to you when you’re not actively searching for them. This is why it’s a good idea to keep a notebook with you. You could be waiting in traffic, in line at the movies, even out for a night on the town when you’ll see or read something related to your offering and a good keyword idea will come to you. Jot it down as soon as you think of it; it’s too easy to forget it otherwise.

 

When you’re having a hard time thinking of good keywords for your website, come to GoiMarketing.com and let our SEO expertise help you build a successful and profitable business. We look forward to being of service.

 

How to Choose Keywords

We’ve been writing here for several weeks now, and have mentioned several times how important it is to find good keywords. Still, we’ve never actually told you how to do so.

Well, we’ve been remiss. So here is Keyword Research 101:

Go to Google’s Free Keyword Tool. Type in a keyword you think your target market uses to find the services/products you offer. For our purposes here, we’re going to use “dog collars.”

If you type in the term, you’ll see that there were about 246,000 “global monthly searches” for that term. Which shows that you don’t want to use the term “dog collars” as a keyword because too many other sites use it. (You should aim for a search volume of between 8,000-30,000 global monthly searches.)

But you’ll also see other keyword phrases. “Dog collars and leashes,” for example has 14,800 global monthly searches (which meets our criteria of between 8-30K in searches).

But let’s see if we can drill down a bit more, because the more keywords we come up with that don’t have a ton of competition, the better.

So let’s type in “dog collars and leashes” in the “Find Keywords” box at the top left of the page. What comes up? “Designer dog collars,” with a global monthly search total of 12,100; “dog collar leashes,” with a 14,800 global monthly search total; “personalized dog collars,” with a global monthly search total of 9,900; and more. All of these would be good terms to use on a website when taking into account our 8K-30K global monthly search numbers mentioned above. (These totals may change if you perform this search as a trial; global monthly search results can change from day to day.)

You’ll also see some search terms that have less than 8,000 monthly search results. “Designer dog collar” and “studded dog collar” each have 4,400 and 5,400 global monthly searches respectively. You could use these as keywords on secondary pages. Or you could even try these keywords on some pages to see how you do.

The results page gives you dozens of different keyword phrases you could use on your website.

Be sure to place keywords you select in your meta title tags. Also use the same keywords in that page’s content, using one keyword/keyword phrase) in your title and in the first 150 words of your copy. You should also aim to have your keywords appear at least two or three additional times (in a 400-500 word page) and be sure to have it appear in your page’s last paragraph.

Let GoiMarketing.com take your keyword research up several notches by allowing us to optimize your website. We’re experts at site optimization and keyword research. Contact us today so that we may get your website to the top of the search engines.