Article Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide

Guest Post:  By Steve Shaw in Writing

With Article Marketing you write articles on the topic of your niche and submit them to online publishers such as article directories, ezine editors, and article announcement lists. Along with each article you include a resource box, which is basically a short author bio that includes a link back to your website.

This resource box is the key to everything–this is the one spot where you can talk about yourself and your website and provide a link to your website. Every time your article is re-published, your article gains exposure and you gain a backlink to your website.

An increase in backlinks can elevate your Google ranking, and a higher ranking can dramatically increase the traffic your website receives over the long term.

WHY DO PEOPLE DO IT?

Website owners want and need visitors to their websites, and article marketing delivers. You can receive visitors directly from the articles and also from search engines.

Additionally, an article marketing campaign does a great job of establishing an author as an expert in his field, and also bringing publicity for a business or website.

Through the article, the author has the chance to teach his target readers valuable information, which can build customer confidence and increase the likelihood of making a sale.

WHAT ARE THE PERKS OF ARTICLE MARKETING?

Article marketing is perhaps the most popular marketing tool for the average website owner for two simple reasons:

1. It’s easy (anyone can do it).
2. It works.

Every business owner nowadays needs a website, but very few business owners have the time and technical know-how to learn the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO).

In fact, the average website owner probably doesn’t care about the technical reasons behind how search engines work–all they want is targeted leads coming to their website.

Article marketing makes everything very simple:

• Just write articles on the topic of your niche.
• Write a resource box and include a link back to your website.
• Submit the articles.
• Repeat this process every month.

And you’re all set–you are doing search engine optimization for your website, whether your realize it or not!

You’re just doing what you already know how to do–writing. In fact, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a great writer you can still construct a decent article and reap the rewards of article marketing.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES?

By far the biggest challenge of article marketing is being consistent in your article submissions. For best results, you will submit articles each month over the lifetime of your website. I recommend submitting 8 per month.

The second biggest challenge is coming up with a steady stream of topics to write about. Some people have an easier time with this than others, but it can be done.

The third biggest challenge is being patient–as with any tool designed to increase search engine ranking, it will likely take several months before you start to see an impact from your efforts. Search engines re-evaluate rankings every 3-4 months, so in the first few months you will likely not see much of a change. Be patient though, and your discipline will pay off.

IT’S EASY TO GET STARTED

If you are new to website marketing, I encourage you to get your feet wet with Article Marketing. Many website owners use Article Marketing as their primary marketing tool and see excellent results. So why not start writing your first article today?

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Article Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide

Get More Click Throughs To Your Website: 7 Best Resource Box Lures

Guest Post: By Steve Shaw

You’ve just written an eloquent, intelligent, and enlightening article. Your title is great, your topic is timeless, and the quality is top notch.

But wait a second–you’re not done yet. You need to create a resource box that will get the reader from your article on over to your website.

Article marketing is not just about the article–having a compelling resource box is crucial to your success!

Remember, you shouldn’t be talking about your own website or business in the article body, but you can (and should!) talk about your business and website in the resource box. Along with your name, brief bio info, and your website URL, you need to give the reader a reason to hop from your article on over to your website.

When you give the reader a great reason to click the link in your resource box leading to your website, you will generate more traffic to your site, which is what you’re after, right?

Use one of these top 7 resource box lures, and you’ll maximize your click throughs:

1) A free e-book

Your free e-book should be on the topic of your website (as all your articles should be), so any reader who likes one of your articles would be interested in a book with additional info.

In your resource box, be sure to say that the e-book is free, as anything free is very attractive to readers! If the e-book is of a longer length (let’s say 50 pages or so), you might want to put that bit of info in your resource box as well, as it lets the reader know that it’s a significant amount of info (and that would be more of a lure).

Your e-book doesn’t have to be of epic length though–even a book that is only 10 pages long and jam packed with helpful information would be valuable to a reader.

2) A newsletter

If you have a newsletter, you already have a wonderful reason for readers to click through to your website from your resource box. Instead of saying “For more info, visit my website”, it would be more effective to say, “Sign up for a free newsletter offering weekly tips on this topic” and then give your website URL.

3) An e-course

An e-course is basically a series of emails that teaches the reader something. It’s different than a newsletter because usually e-courses are of limited duration and are very specific in what they teach.

They’re effective because people love to learn, especially for free!

In your resource box you could say, “Claim your free 10 part e-course on [some specific aspect of your niche]” and then give your website URL.

4) In depth content

Most articles are limited in length to about 1500 words or less, so it’s hard to get super in depth in your article content.

Since you’re an expert in the topic of your website, why not create a page on your website that offers a continuation of the information you condensed in your article?

5) A great product or service

This is an easy one–if you’ve got a unique, stellar, stand out type of service or product, you have a build in reason for folks to click through to your site. Be sure that you explain in your resource box what your product is and what the benefits are. This approach works best if what you’re selling really is unique and there aren’t a whole bunch of other folks with the same type of product or service.

6) A discount

People LOVE feeling like they’re saving money and getting a good deal (the only thing people love more is getting stuff for free!). If you have a product based site, you might want to come up with some sort of offer that will allow your readers to get a discount on a purchase.

7) A blog

To be an effective resource box lure, the blog must be well-tended, offering fresh and useful information on the topic of your website. It depends on your niche, but I think a blog offering mostly ‘how to’ posts is most attractive to readers. A blog not only gives readers a reason to click through to your website from your article, but it also gives them a reason to continue visiting your site–you’re offering a steady stream of useful content, which is quite an incentive!

Now you’ve got 7 ideas for resource box lures that will give readers a reason to hop from your article over to your website. For each resource box, you only need one “lure”, but you can switch things up and try different reasons to click through for different articles.

Experiment and see which lure works the best for you!

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Steve Shaw – Want to drive even more traffic to your website with article marketing? You can save time and increase your exposure by using an article submission service like SubmitYOURArticle.com – distribute your articles to hundreds of targeted publishers in an instant. For more information go to=> http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com

Get More Click Throughs To Your Website: 7 Best Resource Box Lures