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Thursday, April 17, 2008

How to Promote a Web Site on $100 and 2 Hours per Week

Recently, I responded to a question on LinkedIn (or it could have been Yahoo!) where someone had asked the best way to promote a web site if all you had was $100 per month and a few hours of time. I thought it was an interesting question, but one that I felt I had a good answer for.

Based on our experience, here is what I would do with $100 and 2 hours per week:

With the money, purchase some links from a link broker. You should be able to get quite a few links in the area of PR3, which will help your link count.

With the time, I would suggest writing articles. 2 hours per week is enough time to write and distribute at least one article. Over time, links from those articles will really build up. However, to get the greatest distribution possible, I would also highly advise that you use an article distribution service. I suggest articlemarketer.com. However, you will probably need to subtract $10 or $20 from your $100 monthly budget to pay for that.

To make this work, you need to have one or at most two specific keywords in mind for which you want your site to rank. That keyword then needs to be used in your paid links and in at least one link in the article (or the article author box).

There are other factors that affect your rankings, of course - the age of the domain name, the competitiveness of the industry, how well-optimized your site content and code is - but a strategy as described above will make a significant difference, all else being equal.

If you need some help with search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, article writing, articles, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings

Friday, March 07, 2008

Top 5 Article Writing Tips for Making an Immediate Impact

In the last few weeks, I've been doing a ton of article writing. It has definitely moved to the top of my list of favored strategies. Article writing serves two major purposes: branding and SEO. From a branding perspective, a well-written article can create the impression that you are a true professional in your field. From an SEO standpoint, it can result in lots of keyword-loaded links back to your web site. If you want to use article writing as a strategy for promoting your web site, here are some tips that will give you more impact.

1. Edit and proof-read your articles carefully. An article can end up on hundreds of web sites, and it never goes away. It basically lives forever as a symbol of who you are and what you represent. So it's pretty important that the article be well-written and grammatically correct. It is a reflection of your professionalism.

2. Try to write in a Web-friendly manner. Reading on screen is more difficult than reading something on paper. So use a snappy writing style with lots of short paragraphs. One structural style that works very well for the Web is a top ten list. It doesn't really have to have ten items. Right now, for some reason, top seven lists are hot.

3. Write in a conversational tone. Use the word "you" a lot to engage the reader.

4. Use an article distribution service. I recommend articlemarketer.com. In the past, I have used isnare.com. Isnare is cheaper, at just $2 or less per article distributed, but articlemarketer.com seems to offer wider distribution and much better reporting as to where your articles have been sent.

5. Use an author box that contains a keyword-rich link back to your web site. This gets to the heart of the power of article writing. If you have an article on lots of web sites that all have a link back to your web site, that is good. However, if the text used in those links contains a keyword for which you wish to rank highly, that's even better. For instance, let's say you sell ostrich skin cowboy boots on your web site. If you write an article and distribute it with a link back to your web site in the author box that says "ostrich skin cowboy boots", that will help boost your search engine rankings for that phrase. You would not get the same boost if all of the links simply had
your web site address.

Obviously, to make article marketing work, you need to have something to write about and you need to be able to write reasonably well. If you have difficulty in this area, seek out an article writer to do it for you. We would be glad to help. Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Search Engine Marketing: Hot Tips for Writing Better Articles

Article writing continues to be one of the most effective search engine marketing techniques in existence. It has two major benefits: it is a good branding move because it makes you appear like an expert in your field; and it generates one-way links to your web site which often contain specific keywords in the link text. If you write articles regularly, you will do yourself a lot of good. But there's good...and then there's GOOD.

So how do you write a GOOD article?

We're not really talking about good in the sense of writing that is compelling and interesting. I mean, if you can do that, then that is a huge bonus. We're really talking more about writing that will improve your search engine rankings and close business.

First off, you should have a specific keyword in mind when writing the article for which you would like to improve your search engine rankings. If you don't already have a specific keyword in mind, you might want to visit http://Nichebot.com or a similar service to look for keywords that get a lot (or at least some) traffic that are relevant to your business. It doesn't do you nearly as much good to write an article focused on a keyword that nobody ever uses.

Once you have decided on a keyword, then you need to try and use the keyword in the title (if it makes sense), the article body, and most importantly, in the author's box. The author's box is where you can actually make a hyperlink out of a keyword. If you can insert a hyperlink in the body text, that's even better, but that is often frowned upon.

As far as the content for the article, one easy way to create content is to pull it from your blog (you do blog, don't you?). For example, I just authored an article based on two blog posts. Each blog post discussed a real life example of poor web site marketing at the local level. So I combined the blog posts, re-wrote some sections of it, and titled it "Two Examples of the Damage Done by Poor Local Web Site Marketing".

Now I'm going give you a power tip, so pay attention. When conducting online research for an article, I use Google Notebook to collect snippets of information into a single page where I can view it all. Basically, I'm creating notes on the fly from different sites that I can use as the basis for my article. This technique could save you a lot of time.

When writing your article, use proper grammar and spelling. You can write the article in a conversational tone (which is good), but you don't want to appear ignorant. Remember, there is a branding component at work here. You want to come off as a true professional in your industry.

Once the article is written, it needs to be distributed to article directories. You can do this manually, one at a time, or you can use a directory submission service. The manual way is best, but it takes oh so long to do. You will probably want to use some kind of automation to get your article out to as many places as you can.

If you see the power of article marketing but just don't want to do it yourself, Work Media offers an article writing service. Call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, copywriting, internet marketing, search engine marketing, seo

Friday, February 02, 2007

Getting Started Distributing Articles to Promote Your Web Site

Today we thought we would talk a little bit about where to distribute articles for Internet marketing purposes. If you've read much of our blog, then you know we are huge proponents of article distribution as a way to drive traffic to your web site. The key word there is DISTRIBUTION. You need to get it out there.

Here are some article directories to get you started:

http://ezinearticles.com
http://articledashboard.com
http://easyarticles.com
http://buzzle.com
http://article99.com
http://articlealley.com
http://articleexpress.com
http://articledash.com
http://articlenexus.com

All of the above sites require membership with the site to post articles. There is software that claims to distribute your article to lots of these kinds of sites at once. It's probably worth investing in, although the surest way to get it done is manually.

One other article site we really like is http://isnare.com. It has a feature whereby you can have your article distributed to dozens of other sites that are part of its network, so that is a good, low-cost, high percentage way to leverage your efforts and reasonably sure that your article is getting distributed.

If you can write and distribute one article per week, it will have a profound impact on your web site - even more so if you combine article writing with blogging.

For help implementing a content distribution plan for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, articles, content creation, internet marketing