Article Marketing can be a very hit and miss form of promotion, so here are some article marketing tips to ensure you get the results you are chasing. It is an affordable yet very effective marketing technique when properly put into practice. Submitting articles linking to your pages all over the web has several advantages, but also a few downsides…

Article marketing is a great way to promote your business and generate free traffic to your site. This is a major advantage you can have over your competitors as not every online business (effectively) uses article marketing. Article sites have millions of visitors every day and some of them are even among the most visited sites on the web!

These sites give you the chance to build high quality inbound links to your online presence. Why are they high quality links? Simply because the topic on the page is directly related to the topic of your online presence and this means a lot to search engines. Make sure the links are dofollow though, as nofollow links have far less value for search engines.

However, writing articles may be time-consuming if you aren’t good at copywriting. With practice, things should get easier for you though. To overcome the few downsides, make sure you continue reading as you will find article marketing tips and resources on how to make the most of your article marketing strategy.

For example, you should only submit articles that are related to the topic of your business. If you sell an MLM product, you will be writing and publishing articles about MLM… The topic must be related (at least to some extent) to the topic of your online presence.

Choose a relevant, keyword-rich anchor text for your links as this can help a lot for search engine rankings. Try to place your links early in the body content (when possible) so they are more likely to be found by search engines. Don’t stuff your articles with outbound links though or they could get penalized (to be overly promotional). Just a few links should be more than enough…

Here is a non-exhaustive list of article and user-generated content sites ranked by traffic:

• Ezine Articles PR 6

• Squidoo PR 8

• HubPages PR 5

• Articles Base PR 6

• Buzzle PR 5

• Go Articles PR 6

• Article Dashboard PR 5

• Article Alley PR 5

• Idea Marketers PR 3

• Self Growth PR 6

• Search Warp PR 5

• Article City PR 5

• Isnare PR 6

• Article Database PR 3

Highly recommended sites:

If you don’t really know how to write articles, simply follow these few basics: (1) a great, keyword-rich subject line to catch the reader’s attention but also for search engines, (2) a short, interesting introduction that makes the reader want to continue reading, (3) a body part with useful information on the topic you’re covering and (4) a short, analytical conclusion that ideally makes the reader want to learn more.

As previously mentioned, the links should ideally be placed at the top but this is not always possible as some article sites like Ezine Articles only allow you to place them at the bottom. No big deal though, your links will still count! You may even want to add a title to them when possible so a tooltip shows up when readers hover them. Don’t add more than 2 to 3 links (to different landing pages) per article.

However, make sure you don’t fall into plagiarism… Some sites like Ezine Articles, Squidoo and HubPages are very strict on duplicate content and may even ban you for submitting duplicate articles. Some of them may just flag your articles for being overly promotional. In that case, edit them a little and remove a few links.

If you get inspired from already existing articles, use Copyscape to verify whether or not they will be considered as duplicate content. If they pass the test, they’re good to go! If not, edit them before you publish them. Search engines will not penalize your articles if they are duplicate but will simply not rank them well, as their content is already available elsewhere. Now you know the basics, you can publish articles without moderation!

Article Marketing Programs – Recommendations

If you’re after programs that can help you with article writing, rewriting and submission, you should give My Article Network, SEOLinkVine (highly recommended), Free Traffic System and ezArticleLink a try. Submit your articles to these article networks and they will be spread all over the web automatically building inbound links to your pages. You may even open your own blog for content submission. These programs are very easy to use and can greatly help you build inbound links to your pages and thus rank better in search engines.

Article marketing – and internet marketing in general – may require some work, but here are a few beginner tips on how to set up a successful internet marketing business for you.

This blog post is part of a series of hot topics for making money online. Stay tuned for more and feel free to share your own experience on article marketing with us!

If you missed out on the first four hot topics, here they are:
Hot Topic #1: Keyword Research Tips and Tools
Hot Topic #2: Choosing a Web Host: ViralHosts vs HostGator
Hot Topic #3: Autoresponder Marketing Strategy
Hot Topic #4: Choosing a Theme: Squeeze Theme vs Thesis Theme

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