How To Create Paragraph Breaks In Your Articles

October 8, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 5 Comments

I have a client who submitted her first article to a niche article directory. The article was fantastic, and I was so proud that she had written it, because it took her quite a while to get past her “fear” of writing anything.

Unfortunately when I went to read the article on the website, it was one big long run-on sentence. This is because the article directory she submitted it to requires you to use html code in order to create any visual text such as bold, italics, paragraph breaks, and links.

As you write and submit your articles to different article directories, you will find that each directory has it’s own rules etc. for how to submit article to them. You have to make sure that you review these instructions. Do NOT assume that you can submit your articles in the same fashion to every directory. Some sites automatically create paragraph breaks for you when you press RETURN on your keyboard, others like this one require you to type in the html code.

How to create paragraph breaks in your articles:
All you have to do to create a paragraph break is to type the html code:

Sometimes the code can look like this:

Either way will be fine. Remember if you only use one it will only go to the next line right under what you just typed. You need two of the to create a space between one paragraph and another.

Article Marketing Directory: How Often Should You Submit Articles?

October 6, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 9 Comments

If I had a dollar for every time a new client asked me how often they should submit their articles to an article marketing directory, I’d be a wealthy mama! What’s interesting is that I think there is always more behind the question then what it appears to be.

Most authors don’t just want to know how often they should submit articles, but what they really want to know is how many article submissions are just enough to see tangible results OR where is the line for submitting too many articles – too often?

Most people want to do just enough to get by while also staying clear of Google penalties, but there are a couple of issues you need to be aware of when submitting to an article marketing directory…

Find Your Natural Rhythm
It’s more important that you find your own personal natural rhythm of writing articles. If that means you write 5 articles a day – fine. If that means you write 5 articles a month – also fine. I find that most people do not write enough articles to come close to raising the Google red flag on too many article submissions (backlinks) to their sites. So don’t get caught up in the “hype” about submitting too often.

Avoid Submission Software
Trust me when I say that it would have been easy for me to recommend that you use article submission software as an easy shortcut. There are plenty of them out there – all with affiliate programs. But the truth is – is that I’ve tested most – free and paid and they are seriously flawed. In fact, if you are concerned about how many sites you submit each of your articles to then avoiding article submission software would be your best bet. They submit your one article to hundreds of low ranking, dummy blogs and directories that are a complete waste of your money and ultimately your time.

So How Often Should You Submit To Article Directories?
The answer is different for every writer. The key is to write and submit articles at your own natural pace. Worry more about being consistent. Search engines love frequency and consistency. Also, make sure that you don’t use article submission software which will create an unnatural linking pattern to your website while also creating an endless amount of article submissions that will never get seen in search engine results so therefore won’t be read, shared, or re-published by people.

But Wait Lisa – How Often Do I Need To Submit Articles To See Results?
Again – this is all relative to the types of articles you write, your niche, and your consistency. Article marketing is absolutely a numbers game – so the more you write – the better. But I have seen just one of my articles drive a tremendous amount of traffic to my site. So while one can do amazing things – imagine how much traffic I see, now that I have written 20 more just like it. So how often should you submit your articles? As often as you naturally can.

Business Article Marketing: How To Boost Your Credibility & Build Your Business

October 2, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 11 Comments

It is a known fact that any business owner has to have a certain amount of credibility in order to begin to instill trust in potential prospects. The problem is that when you are a solopreneur, mompreneur, or other type of small business, you have a lot of competitors who already have a big head start on the credibility factor. So what’s an entrepreneur to do?

Well, I’m about to show you how to boost your credibility and build your business quickly by using business article marketing on a regular and consistent basis. It’s easier then you think. Welcome to business article marketing…

1. Every business should have a blog. The days of deciding whether or not to have a blog or just a 5 page site are over. The bottom line is that search engines love fresh content, and nobody delivers that better then a blog format — especially a WordPress blog. This is an essential element of business article marketing.

2. Every business should create a blog writing schedule and stick to it. This is the most labor intensive part of effective business article marketing, I promise! But it’s well worth it. Whether you decide to write 3 days a week, every other day, or everyday — the key is to find the right writing schedule for you (or whoever writes your content) and stick to it. The search engine spiders love it when they can expect you to publish articles. That way they make sure they are their to come gobble it up and show it in search engine results.

3. Every business article marketer should write articles on the blog that can help visitors to your site and potential prospects solve a problem. If you want to start building a fan base and therefore boost your credibility in your marketplace, you have to be seen as a source of information. As a trusted expert.

4. Every business owner needs to deliver these info-packed articles on a regular basis to people who join your list. This a really crucial part of business article marketing, because while many people will stop by and visit your site based on a search or a referral – they may not come by to read your articles every time you publish. That’s why they join your list. Email marketing is still alive and well. It is free and one of the most direct forms of reaching people interested in what you do.

It would be best if you used this to your advantage, by combining the power of articles AND email marketing by creating an Automatic Article Ezine. An automatic article ezine is an electronic newsletter that contains several of your blog articles and is sent to your subscribers on a regular basis. I send mine out weekly. It can be customized with your header, colors, advertisements, text, etc. but the articles will be automatically pulled from whatever articles you have published on your blog via your RSS feed.

The fantastic thing about an Automatic Article Ezine is that it only has to be set up once and then it automatically sends your newest articles to subscribers as often as you like. Set it up once and forget it! This is a virtually untapped strategy by most people (your competitors) using business article marketing.

The fact that you are sending topic-based articles to your subscribers on a regular basis goes a very long way towards building credibility in your market. Deliver on time and often – and you are seen as an expert source. Deliver randomly and sparsely — and you will look like an amateur.

In the next article in this series, I will show you exactly how you can build your own automatic article ezine and put your business on blast! Make sure you subscribe (right hand corner) so you don’t miss the next article.

Write For SearchEnginePeople.com

September 6, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 5 Comments

As another added feature on this site, I want to let my members know what high quality websites are looking for 3rd party content. Remember, this is a great way to add instant visibility, credibility, and more traffic to your site. I know that it’s hard to find prime sites that offer those opportunities for writers, but here’s a nice one that I found:

SearchEnginePeople.com

Alexa Ranking – 29,543

It’s been around since 2002

Submission Details: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/post

Unique Article Marketing: Publish Your Articles At Other High Traffic Sites

August 10, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 2 Comments

There are article marketing basics that everyone should learn online. How to write effectively. Where to publish. How to promote published articles. And how to profit from their articles. Yet once that is learned, there are other unique article marketing strategies that you can use to ramp up all of those results.

One is to publish your articles at other high-traffic or niche specific websites. While some freelance writers turn their noses down at this because they see it as writing on the web for free — that is not really the case. These sorts of writing relationships mean so much more to marketers like us.

I write for several high-traffic “magazine” style websites exclusively for the ability to get high-quality backlinks and a never-ending source of free traffic to my websites. That’s the payoff for me – and the results are better than any sort of one-time freelance check.

When you are choosing websites to build a writing/publishing relationship with – make sure you:

1. Check the PR rating of the website. While I don’t necessarily swear by page rank, it gives you a good idea of the age and status of the website. All this matters when it comes to organic search on the web. I like PR 4 or better. Most of the sites I write for are much higher.

2. Check the traffic ranking of the website. Unless you are writing for a niche specific website where this doesn’t matter as much, the website should hold an Alexa ranking under 100,000. Again – this is not the be all and end all, but gives you an idea of whether you can expect exposure to a decent number of visitors. Again – if you are writing for a niche website, the numbers don’t matter as much as you are writing to a more qualified prospect.

3. Check to see if the website fits your branding image. You will not convert readers into clicks to your site if the site you are writing for isn’t congruent with your overall branding message. If you are are a female spiritual marketer, you probably won’t find too many fans over on one of the all-male, old-school marketing sites. Most visitors there won’t get you. That’s why I write for a lot of women’s magazines and recently I have started writing for a news magazine – with a local slant.

I grew up in Philadelphia, and have recently moved back, so I now write on internet marketing for the City of Philadelphia at examiner.com. Why I enjoy a local slant on this topic, is because this will allow me to create more personal local internet marketing workshops, etc. with people I have already established a relationship with via my articles. An added benefit of this writing gig is that it is a paid one!

So do you think that your business would benefit from writing and publishing your articles at a 3rd party site? How about one with a local slant. As of this writing, I know that The Examiner is still looking to hire editors to cover certain departments in every major city across the U.S. While there is an application process, I think you’ll be please with the payoff.

Here are their Alexa stats:

If you are interested – go to: Write For The Examiner

Article Marketing 101: How Often Should I Publish Articles?

July 18, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 3 Comments

A lot of people seem to ask me how often they should publish articles because of several reasons:

1. They want to write as little as possible and want to know what is the acceptable bare minimum. (ugh!)

2. They want to make sure they don’t publish too many articles at one time, as they have heard that search engines do not like when too many backlinks are created to a site at one given time. (true)

3. They want to estimate the time that they will have to dedicate to writing and publish articles. (fair enough)

4. They want to tell their virtual assistants how often to publish their work. (outsourcing – cool!)

5. They want to create a “writing schedule”, so they can submit articles on a regular basis. (that’s what I’m talking about!)

I typically give any new client the same answer – you should publish articles as often as you can, and this is why…

1. The bare minimum will not be enough to see true results in your article marketing.

2. In order to suffer the typical search engine penalty for creating too many “unnatural backlinks” to your site, you would have to publish your article to hundreds of sites in a 24 hour period. Even the best article submission services know that they need to “stagger” your article submissions for a more natural result.

3. It’s a good idea to get an idea of how much time it takes you to typically write and submit one 500 word article, but know that the more you do it, the faster you will get at it. Article marketing is much like any other skill that you are learning – the more you do it, the better you get at it. So the time that you spend on it per week, per month, will gradually change.

4. It’s always a great idea to outsource as much of your work as you can. A good idea would be to write several articles per week or two week period, and then have your virtual assistant publish them to the various directories and third party sites you choose. She can also stagger the submissions for you, creating a more natural backlinking effect.

5. Writing as many articles as time allows is the best plan, and can really be systematically implemented once you have a “writing schedule” in place. It doesn’t have to be elaborate – it can simply be on Tuesdays and Thursdays I will write two articles. That gives you a nice article schedule of four articles per week, which will result in 208 new articles and backlinks for the year! That’s great – and that’s an easy schedule to follow which will result in a steady increase of traffic to your site.

To put things in the simplest of terms – More Articles = More Traffic. So publish often!

When Is The Best Time To Post To Your Blog?

July 10, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 1 Comment

I’ve had a few people ask me when was the best time or “prime time” to post articles to their blog – in an effort to maximize exposure. I thought that might be a simple answer based on whatever is the peak time for folks to browse the internet at work or at home. But I guess what I’m finding out is that those times can be relatively flexible based on your topic, your audience, etc.

I think that this post on the same topic by Lorelle (WordPress expert) can give you an overall idea of things you need to start tracking and testing to discover the optimal time to publish your own blog articles, because honestly there isn’t one time that’s best for all bloggers. You have to figure it out. This article should help you out…

See Lorelle’s article: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/when-is-the-best-time-and-day-to-publish-a-blog-post/

Article Marketing Tips: Article Marketing Sabotage Part 2

July 8, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 4 Comments

The first thing I ask a client who complains about lack of success with article marketing is how often they publish articles. Think about it. How many articles have you published in the last week, month. or last six months?

That’s what brings me to today’s article marketing sabotage tip…

Tip 2 – You Suffer From A Lack Of Submissions

I took honors science a very long time ago, so excuse me if this metaphor makes no sense:-), but I actually want to compare article marketing success to physics. For every action there is a reaction. Which simply means the more you act on the writing and submission of articles, the more results you will see.

In case no one told you, article marketing is a numbers game.

I know there are “experts” out there that would have you to believe that by writing a few simple articles you can make yourself a traffic magnet — but that’s simply not the case.

You have to write and you have to write often.

Now I’m not trying to scare you away from article marketing. Yes, consistency is key to success but that does not mean you have to be a slave to your computer.

More than a set number of articles to strive for, it’s more important that you find a writing rhythm. Where most people falter, is when they write 10 articles in ten days and then never write anything again.

No, what I want you to concentrate on is finding a writing rhythm that falls naturally into your marketing flow. For instance, there are things I’m sure that you do everyday or every week in your business. What are they?

Do you check email, blog, social network, write and test PPC ads, etc. Find a spot in the week where article marketing can fit into your daily or weekly marketing.

I have always written best at night. Right now it is midnight EST while I am writing this. So this is how I fit writing into my ritual. I work on products, social marketing, and other stuff during the workday, but I always fit in time at night to write my articles.

This is a natural rhythm for me. This is when I write best. And this is a time that I can be the most consistent writer. What time is that for you?

Find your writing rhythm and submit your articles on a consistent basis and the reaction you will see is more qualified traffic reaching your site and making you money.

Do you have any tips on how to help other article marketers find their writing rhythm? Let us know!