Top Ten Tips to Make Article Marketing Work for You

One of the most effective ways to build your credibility, attain search presence and create quality backlinks to your website is through ‘Article Marketing’. Article marketing involves writing a series of well crafted, knowledgeable articles within your area of business expertise and publishing them not only on your own website but also in various high profile places across the Internet, in order to establish credibility, “Become The Expert” and help to increase your search engine positions.

However, there is a certain set of rules to help you to use Article Marketing to promote your services, products and website, so here are my Top 10 Tips on Writing and Publishing your own Marketing Articles:

TIP ONE: Don’t Sell – Give It Away – This type of article is not sales copy. The aim is not to sell your goods or services, but to give away your knowledge for free. Sounds crazy, but the more you give away, the more potential business you’ll receive back. Demonstrate your range of knowledge and you’ll see your online credibility building.

The more free knowledge you give away, the more people will see you as the expert in the field. When those people need what you’re selling, they’re much more likely to come directly to you.

TIP THREE: Paragraph – Make your paragraphs short and to the point. Try to avoid paragraphs larger than five lines if you can help it. Think about writing for Internet readers who like to scan for the best bits, so make it easy for them to read.

TIP FOUR: Keywords – You should carefully and strategically plant your best SEO keywords or keyphrases throughout your articles, but it’s vital that they do not obscure the meaning of the sentences or make the article less enjoyable to read.

Don’t make the article just about the keywords; just naturally allow the keywords or keyphrases to be used throughout the article. Use a keyword tool to find the most relevant keywords or phrases to suit your needs.

TIP FIVE: Publish – Internet publishing isn’t like the restricted environment of printed media publishing. The Internet is a great democratic space that allows anyone to get published. When thinking about where you want to publish your articles on the Internet, start with your own website(s).

Next, stake out a few Article Directories such as EzineArticles.com and take a look at their article submission policies. Work out the FIVE or so article directories where you might put your work and make that part of your publishing process. Finally, look at the social networking or business forum sites and consider publishing your articles if their terms and conditions allow.

TIP SEVEN: Tasters/Hooks – Some of the article directories allow you to put a short taster paragraph as part of the submission. This is great, but it’s better to use that same taster idea elsewhere. Post a ‘hook’ or ‘taster’ paragraph up on a forum with a link to the article on your own website. Make the taster drive the reader to your site where they can become a potential client or customer.

Doing this will create a backlink that will improve your SEO and since the forum will probably be optimised too, your article hook will come up on the Search Engines too.

Writing a good taster means giving just enough information to tempt the reader into wanting to finish reading the article. So when writing an article ‘hook’ it’s a balance between giving too much or too little information away.

TIP NINE: - Topic – Choose the kind of topics that people are likely to search for. Imagine that all people using a Search Engine are looking for a solution to a particular problem. Consider how you provide a range of solutions to potential customer problems. Write your article questions or Top 10s around those problems and solutions. When someone uses a Search Engine to find a solution, they should find your article as a potential answer to their problem. Topic choice should be driven by this philosophy.

TIP TEN: Outsource - Consider employing an article writer to produce the high quality content you need. This can often save you time and money and keeps the flow of articles coming for as long as you have the budget to pay for the service.

Not everyone has the confidence or ability to write articles, don’t miss out on the value of article marketing just because you lack time, confidence or aptitude. When choosing to outsource your articles to a professional content writer, make sure that they demonstrate to you the ability to write on your topic area and always, ALWAYS choose someone whose English is better than yours.

Writing and publishing your own articles online will provide you with some very valuable exposure across the Internet. The more high quality articles that you write, the more potential traffic you could receive and the stronger your credibility will be.

For further information on how to use article marketing to boost the number of visitors that your website receives and increases your profile and credibility, speak to Nikki by emailing Nikki@NikkiPilkington.com or visit www.nikkipilkington.com.