SEO Tips and Tricks - Online Marketing Strategy

Every SEO site you visit will tell you that article marketing is a powerful tool for inbound link building.

Writing an article takes a lot of time and effort, and you want to get the most out of your hard work. But if you don’t understand how to use article marketing the right way, your site will not reap all the benefits it should.

During the next three days, I’m going to show you how to write and market your articles so you will get inbound keyword links that are search engine (especially Google) friendly and will help increase the rankings of your website.

Article Marketing = Increasing the Knowledge Base

Are you old enough to remember Encyclopedia Britannica? When I was was growing up pre-World Wide Web, I loved to read articles from our family set, and actually read through every one of the 26 volumes. The Internet is like a massive encyclopedia that contains the combined knowledge of millions of people from all over the world.

To create inbound links to your site that will be considered Google-friendly and that will help increase your site’s search engine rankings, you need to take the time and make the effort to add to this knowledge base.

What makes the Internet so cool is that you get the viewpoints of many different people about any given topic. So yes, whatever you write about has most likely been said before, but you have a unique perspective and way of of explaining or describing your area of expertise that is like no other individual’s. This is what makes your article unique and interesting.

Your Article Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect

Some people have a gift for writing, but you don’t have to be a great writer to share content that will be meaningful to others. After all, you’re the expert!

Unsure of yourself? Just do it – sit down and write out what you want to say. A few tips:

1. Don’t write a sales pitch – who wants to read that? By the same token, don’t use industry jargon – a conversational tone usually works best. I sometimes have to go back and remove  “agency-speak” from my blog articles.
2. Don’t worry about cramming keywords in your article; make it natural. Write it like you’re talking to another person. If you and I were having a conversation, I wouldn’t say “I’d like to help you with your article marketing because article marketing will make your site rank better and I have a lot of experience with article marketing.”
3. Take a different approach and have some fun with it. Instead of rehashing what everyone else has said, go with a unique viewpoint. Throw in your own thoughts, add a quote, give an example, or tell a story.
4. Make sure your article provides value by answering a question or solving a problem for the reader. If you need ideas, ask your friends and family what they’d like to know about your business and then write about that.
5. Make it current – stay on top of what’s happening in your industry and take advantage of it. One of our articles hit #3 on Google and brought hundreds of visitors within a few days because it answered a question about a new law that had just been passed in Arizona.

After you’ve finished hammering out a rough draft you can polish it up – do a little rewriting where it’s needed, move sentences and paragraphs around to make the article more cohesive, but don’t freak out about it. Sometimes “good enough” is fine. Whatever you do though, don’t forget to check grammar and run spell check!

Next:

Article Marketing Part 2: Keywords, Links, and Your Resource Box

Article Marketing Part 3: Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles