Please check out my latest guest article over at BizChickBlogs.com. It’s all about the 10 things that I’ve learned about article marketing in 2010. I never think of writing these types of “reflective” articles, so it was great fun writing this one. Look out for big things in 2011 for this site:)
The wonderful thing about writing articles is that you can use them for so many other things than just one site submission. You can use them over and over, and I wrote a guest article over on one of my favorite blogging sites (FamousBloggers.net) about how to do just that.
Many people like to start new businesses, blogs, and other entrepreneurial adventures at the top of the year. I myself am one who is big on “fresh starts” as well. So if you are going to be creating a new blog for business or for fun this year, I want to show you how to quickly add your site’s url to Google and get it indexed quickly.
There are a couple of ways that you can go about doing this easily and properly – which I’m going to quickly cover in a mini article series. There is a method to my madness, so here it goes:)
When you submit your url to Google manually, you are submitting your web address to Google so that their “spiders” can come take a look at your site, crawl some or all of your pages, and then count the site as one of the millions of websites on the internet.
If your site is not indexed by Google or any other search engine (Yahoo, Bing), then people will only be able to gain access to your website if they have your direct address. They will not be able to find you during a basic search engine search and that would be disastrous for your business. Organic traffic (free traffic) is the best!
The pros about manual submission is that it is a direct path into the index. No middle men. No freebie submission service doing it for you. You are in control. The cons about manual submission is that you really have no control over how long it will take Google to crawl and index your website. This is a problem for some people – but it really wasn’t for me. I was never in a rush to get indexed, because I was busy building my content, products, etc. By the time I was ready for a little free traffic, my sites were indexed.
Submitting your URL to Google is fast and easy…
1. Go to: http://www.google.com/addurl/ (at Google’s Webmaster Tools)
2. Here you will add your full url address [http://LisaAngelettie.com] including the prefix (http://)
3. Make sure you add the top page of your site (the home page), not another page on the site.
4. Make sure that you are submitting the actual url of the website, not a domain name that you are using for forwarding.
5. There is a comment section where you can submit keywords related to your website. Google says that this doesn’t make a difference in your submission approval, but I think it’s a good idea to add a few keywords here. For example, if I were submitting my site, I would add “article marketing” in the comment section.
6. It’s optional, but I think Google gives a slight preference to human submitted sites – so fill out the captcha information before you click the ADD URL button. There are software bots that can submit your site for you, so they want to differentiate whether your submission was made by a human or a bot.
7. That’s it! After you’ve submitted your url to Google, you just have to periodically do a Google search for your site and see if it’s listed. Until such time – work on your articles – especially for your site. Google loves websites with content and it’s my experience that they get indexed a little faster:)
Do you have any tips on manual url submissions to Google? Let us know in the comments section below, we’d love to hear them!
* Next Article – How To Fast Track Submitting Your URL to Search Engines
Not so long ago, I noticed that I use a lot of article marketing terms in my articles, and while I do attract intermediate and advance article marketing clients, I get a tremendous amount of article marketing beginners as well. So I thought it would be a good idea to get everyone on the same page, and make sure you know what I’m referring to when I use these terms.
Article Marketing
The online marketing strategy for using articles to promote a product, service, or website.
Article Marketing Directory
Websites where you can submit articles for more exposure, traffic, syndication, republishing, etc.
Search Engines
These are sites that people use to search for internet for information. Examples include: Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
Search Engine Optimizaton (SEO)
This is a technique used for making your content, in this instance our articles, more favorable and appealing to the search engines. This is what will help improve your ranking the search engines.
Search Engine Ranking
This is the position or spot your website or individual articles holds when someone searches for your keyword terms. For example, at the time of this writing when you search for the keywords “article marketing strategies” in Google, my site ranks #1.
Search Terms
These are the words that person types into a search box to find information. This is important to marketers like us, because we want to optimize our articles for the search terms that people typically use to find our content.
Link
A connection from one web page to another. This connection is made by using a url address. For example, http://Articology.com is a link to my article marketing course for beginners. That url address will connect you from this page to that page. Links are important to us because when you write and publish articles, each article you create will have it’s own individual link. A connection created for the reader to find your content.
URL
A url is a web address that you will see or type in the top of your web browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) to go to a website. The letters stand for Uniform Resource Locator. When you publish an article, it will have a unique url, such as this one: http://lisaangelettieblog.com/top-21-wordpress-plugins-for-article-marketing/
Backlink
This is an outside or incoming link that is made from an external website to your content. Backlinks are important because search engines like Google base your site’s importance on the number of backlinks to your content. Also, when you publish an article to an article directory or 3rd party blog or website, and you have a link to your site in the resource box, you are creating a backlink to your site from that directory or website.
Keyword
Keywords help identify what a website (or articles) is about to the search engines. What keywords you choose are quite important because they help Google and the other search engines determine where to place your content in the search engine rankings. For example, if your article is about Christmas Trees, then you should optimize your article (in the title and the body) for the keyword term Christmas Trees.
Long Tail Keywords
These are keyword terms that are typically 4 or more words. These keywords are usually easier to rank for in the search engines because there is less competition for them.
Traffic
This is the number of visitors to your article or website.
Qualified Traffic
This is the term I typically use in my articles to describe traffic that is looking specifically for your content. This is the best kind of traffic because they are visitors that are already interested in your topic, in other words “warm prospects”.
As an online marketer, I have researched and looked at various marketing strategies to attract traffic and convert that traffic into members and paying customers. While I have been using article marketing for many years, I have also taken a look at, researched, and tried pay per click marketing (PPC) as an alternative. These are the some of the pros and cons I see with these marketing methods, and you can decide for yourself, which strategy may be the best for you.
Learning How To Do Article Marketing Versus Pay Per Click
Article marketing is great for beginners because there isn’t that much of a learning curve. You just have to be able to write something about your topic and publish it somewhere. Preferably where there is a lot of traffic. Learning how to publish articles is simple these days because there are so many article directories where they do all the work, all you have to do is write and submit.
If you choose to learn pay per click, there is a bit of a steeper learning curve. You have to know what keywords to target, how to write a good ad, and you need to make sure that you target keywords that are in your budget (for example 3¢ per click versus 12¢ per click). Of course there is an “art” to using both. You need to learn certain tricks of the trade to maximize the potential of using either strategy, but writing articles about things you already know is easier than writing ads that make people want to click on them. That’s called copywriting — and that is a separate skill on its own which people take years to master.
The Cost Of Article Marketing Versus Pay Per Click
One of the huge allures to article marketing for most folks is that there is only an investment of time. No money. Which is great when you are on a shoestring budget or you are testing various marketing methods. You can write the articles yourself. You can publish them for free to various high-traffic sources. Also, if you write an article that fails to bring you traffic, all you have done is wasted about 30 minutes of your time writing.
With pay per click, there is a definite investment of cash, because the whole idea is that you are paying for traffic. You run your classified ad, and everytime someone clicks on your ad and travels to your website, you pay the company that runs the ad for you (Google Adwords or Yahoo). What you pay for the “clicks” is based on the popularity of the keywords that you use. So if it costs 7¢ per click to run an ad with the keyword of “Dog Training” and you get 1000 clicks in one month, then you will pay $70 for that one ad. Just one. If that ad doesn’t work, then you’ve lost $70 that month.
How Hard Do You Have To Work Using Article Marketing vs. Pay Per Click?
One of the attractions to PPC marketing is the fact that you can attract traffic almost overnight. Once you have your ad live, people can click and come visit your site. So the effort is minimal, once you’ve done the initial work of writing the right ad for your market. Sounds a bit easier than writing 25 articles and waiting for the traffic to come in huh? Well not necessarily.
While you may need to write and publish a good amount of articles to bring in a steady stream of traffic, you certainly don’t have to “wait” for the traffic. Luckily for entrepreneurs in this day and age, you can PUSH your articles in front of existing traffic. This is done via social media sites, and the traffic comes instantly.
So as you can see, there are many ways to get traffic. You can attract it. You can buy it. Or you can step in front of it. One way is free and the other can cost you. I’ve used both and have found that they both have their strengths and weaknesses, but as an overall long-term strategy, I have and continue to choose article marketing.
I work with a lot of different entrepreneurs. They are in many different niches and sometimes I run across a business owner who doesn’t believe that article marketing will work for them because there is no directory out there where he can publish articles for the folks in his marketplace. That’s absolutely not true. Not when EzineArticles has over 631 article categories or niches.
In fact, EzineArticles has just added 27 new categories. Know that these subcategories are not added just because they can, they are added because they have found enough activity on the web and to their site to warrant the addition of a category. I do this myself when I see a lot of new activity for one topic on my website. So without further ado, here are the latest niches or categories added to EzineArticles.com
BUSINESS
BOOK-REVIEWS
COMMUNICATIONS
FINANCE
HEALTH AND FITNESS
HOME AND FAMILY
HOME IMPROVEMENT
List of new categories excerpted from: http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2010/05/27-new-subcategories.html
Thank you for your interest in article marketing and writing articles. Perhaps you have been thinking about using article marketing as a serious strategy in your business or maybe you just want to learn a little more about it before you do.
Well, that’s why I’d love for you to try a free lesson of my Articology article marketing training course, so you can sample the absolute tremendous information and value you will receive with each and every lesson in the course.
Already ready to join? Great, you can sign up right here. Otherwise…
Please sign up to receive your complimentary Articology lesson via email using the form below:
*You will also receive a complimentary subscription to my weekly marketing articles. Enjoy:)
Are you an Amazon.com affiliate? Isn’t everybody:) If you are and you love article marketing or writing articles, then it should be a no-brainer to promote article marketing tips and strategies to your Kindle readers.
Even with the competition heating up (iPad, Nook, Sony Reader), Kindle sales are still great and people are slowly using their Kindles for more than reading novels. They are subscribing to newspapers, blogs, and reading their favorite PDF files. (I read many of my information products on my Kindle:)
Also, I can tell by my slowly increasing income from folks who have subscribed to my blog, that interest is picking up. So as you are promoting books, products, etc., think about also promoting CONTENT. While you will not pay your mortgage with the money you make:), my argument is that it’s something new and fresh to offer your members AND something you may want to learn more about so that you can promote your own content as well. Just a few quick steps…
1. Sign up as an affiliate over on the Amazon site
2. Get your code to promote my Article Marketing Tips blog subscription
3. To find the product in amazon, you can use my direct link or you can do a search for “article marketing tips” on Amazon.
4. Talk about it on Twitter
5. Spread the news on Facebook
6. Write an article about it on your site, for your ezine, or for an article directory.