Article Marketing Predictions for 2010


Article Marketing Predictions 2010

Article marketing has been a proven strategy for many years to build traffic, backlinks and search engine rankings. In the beginning one article could easily generate a lot of traffic however as article marketing went main stream you had to write and publish lots more articles to stand out from the crowd.

My predictions for 2010

1. Big companies submitting to article directories

Large companies will be hiring thousands of writers to write millions of articles that will get added to article directories.

2. Article writing software increases

There are software programs that spin your article into 1000 variations. They are then submitted to the article directories. Often the content doesn’t make sense and clutter the search engines with article spam. Because of the demand, more of this type of software will get produced.

3. Search engines filtering out spam articles

When web site owners tried to build 1000s of backlinks with link farms the search engines eventually penalized these sites by removing them from the search engines. The same may happen with article spam because search engines want to return the highest quality results to their consumers.

How to prepare for 2010

1. Increase the amount of unique articles you write and publish.

If you wrote and submitted 120 articles this year, make a goal of doubling your output. Outsource the writing if you don’t have the time to do it yourself. It’s going to take more articles to generate a steady stream of traffic.

2. Write longer quality articles

Longer articles of 400-800 words receive more clicks than shorter ones (250-300 words). Ezine publishers prefer high quality articles over poorly written ones so make sure you research the material thoroughly before writing about it.

3. Be consistent

Make a plan to write and submit several articles each week instead of when you feel like it. If you can’t do this commit to one article per week. The key is to do it consistently. Think of article marketing as your advertising agent. If you stop marketing your business you’ll stop attracting business.

4. Repurpose your content

Search engines prefer to see links coming from multiple sources instead of just one source. Convert your article into audio and video content then submit it podcast directories and video sharing sites. You will reach a wider audience.

5. Monitor article statistics

Ezinearticles is the most popular article directory because it provides article reports that track click through rate, views and the keywords used to find your article. It continually provides more ways to maximize the traffic to your articles. By monitoring your statistics you can work on improving your content to you get more visitors reading it and clicking the URL in the resource box.

By making preparations based on these article marketing predictions for 2010 you’ll stay ahead of your competitors and reap the benefits in your online business.

Also read Article Marketing: Year in Review 2009
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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing Strategies.

Article Click Through Rate (CTR) – How to measure the effectiveness of your articles

Ezinearticles now includes the CTR statistic in your article reports. It measures the effectiveness of your articles by viewing the percentage of people that clicked on the links within your article or resource box. The more clicks you receive the higher your percentage.

Article Click Through Rate

Example

One of my articles titled 7 Ways to Get Backlinks to Your Website received 85 views and 3 clicks with a CTR of 3.5%. This metric will change over time as more people read the article.

Comparison of Per Per Click CTR with Article CTR

With Pay Per Click (PPC) ads 1% is considered a good CTR. This means you receive 1 click for every 100 people viewing your ad (impressions). If your articles get higher CTRs than 1% it means your articles are more effective than PPC ads.

You should aim for a CTR of 2-12% or more. If it’s higher your articles are being more effective.

3 Ways to Improve the Click Through Rate (CTR) of Your Articles

1. Create an attention grabbing headline

Your headline is what visitors read first. If they find it interesting enough they’ll read the rest of the article. It should include what the article is about and how will it benefit them. That’s why the title “How to win friends and influence people.” is one of the most famous. It tells you what the article is about (how to win friends) and the benefit it brings (influence people).

2. Write what you promised in the headline

Create several bullet points in the article body that expands upon your headline so it keeps the visitor’s interest. Split up your content into short paragraphs to make it easy to read.

3. Create a compelling resource box

Your resource box is where you offer your product or service. To receive the most clicks offer a sample of one of your products. It could be a free report or software. Make sure it contains a lot of value so your visitor will want to receive more of what you have to offer.

4. Include anchor text

You’re allowed 2 links in the resource box. One should be the full web site address and the other hyperlinked text (anchor text). Both should link to the same location. If your article gets placed in an ezine the full URL will be seen whereas the anchor text won’t. Including the anchor text in your original article helps get it ranked in the search engines.

Tips
Test different resource boxes to see which one receives the highest CTR. By improving your CTR you’ll have a greater potential of making more sales from your website.

Proofread your article before submitting it for publication. Grammar and spelling mistakes will turn off your readers.

Also read Article Marketing Metrics

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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing Strategies.

My Article Marketing Formula

My Article Marketing Formula
Writing and publishing articles is a highly effective method to attract a constant stream of traffic to your web site. Approximately 85% of people never go beyond 10 articles. This means that most people give up because they don’t see the fruits of their labors.

Receiving traffic from your articles occurs over time as they appear in article directories, search engines, web sites and ezines. Your web traffic may start with a trickle of visitors then increases as more articles get published.

My Article Marketing Formula

1. Create well written content

Place yourself in your customers shoes so you can think from their perspective instead of your own. Ask yourself what are their wants, needs and desires? Don’t worry about your article having perfect grammar and sentence structure. Just make sure it reads well and has no spelling mistakes then submit it for publication. It’s better to write more articles than to spend hours trying to perfect your article.

2. Make a plan

Without following a clear article marketing plan you are bound to fail. Decide how many articles you will write and submit each week then stick to it. If you can only commit to one article per week do that however it will take a long time to build substantial traffic. Try to commit or build up to 3 articles per week. This will generate over 150 articles per year. The beauty of this strategy is that they’ll keep working for you for years to come without touching them. It’s like getting free advertising.

3. Generate continuous traffic

One article is like having an employee that works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout the year without getting tired or complaining. The more articles you write the more employees you will have working for you. As your articles get published all over the Web your traffic will continue to increase and it won’t stop even if you take a break.

Instead of spending time and money on discovering the magic formula for generating traffic, focus on article marketing. It will cost you time but it will give a great return on your investment.

Also read Article Marketing Metrics

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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing Strategies.

Article Marketing Metrics – How to Monitor Your Visitors

web site statistics
If you want to increase the effectiveness of your articles you need to know how many visitors your articles are receiving, where the they are coming from and what keywords are being used to find your articles. Once you identify these parameters you’ll have a clearer idea where to focus your article marketing efforts.

3 Ways to Monitor Article Visitors

1. Ezinearticle statistics

This top article directory provides reports within your membership panel for:

  • Number of views
  • Number of URL clicks
  • Number of EzinePublishers that chose your article
  • Number of people that emailed your article to others
  • No of comments
  • No of votes
  • Rating (number of stars)

Every month they send you an email showing which articles performed the best and what keywords were used to find your content.

At the bottom of each article in this directory are displayed the 14 most viewed articles and the 14 most published articles in your category for the last 60 days.

2. Web Site Statistics

Every web hosting account usually includes a statistics program like AWStats. This is a gold mine of information that shows you where your traffic is coming from. Some of the metrics it includes are:

  • number of unique visits, hits, pages per day, week, month, year
  • top countries
  • top search engines
  • number of referral URLS
  • operating systems
  • browsers
  • number of links from external sites
  • keyword phrases people used to find your site

3. Google Analytics

If your web hosting account doesn’t have a statistics program sign up for a Google Analytics account. It will give you similar data.

  • Top search queries
  • Crawl errors
  • Number of links to your site

Tips

Identify the topics that received the most visits then write more articles related to this topic because there’s clear evidence your visitors are interested.

Identify the keyword phrases that are not receiving many visits then write articles focused on these keywords to raise your rankings and improve traffic.

By analyzing your article marketing metrics you can monitor and improve the effectiveness of your content.

Also read Article Click Through Rate (CTR) – How to measure the effectiveness of your articles

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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing and Marketing Strategies.

How to Use Articles for Link Building


How to Use Articles for Link Building
Link building is a highly effective method for generating traffic to your web site or blog. A link from a high quality site will boost your search engine rankings. For example if CNN featured your business on their site you would receive a sudden boost in traffic. Getting back links from high traffic sites is not easy because most people don’t exchange links anymore.

Another method is to get lots of sites linking to yours. The more links you receive the better your rankings. This can be a very time consuming process.

Benefits of Articles for Link Building

Writing articles kills 2 birds with one stone. You get high quality links from article directories plus the more articles you write and submit the more links you generate. The top article directories receive millions of visitors every week so you will receive some of those visitors. Ezine publishers or site owners may select your article for their ezine or add it to their web page thus multiplying your link power.

How to Use Articles for Link Building

  • Choose a niche you’re passionate about.
  • Create a list of keywords on your niche topic
  • Write a 400-500 word article for each keyword.
  • Weave the keyword into your title, introductory paragraph, article body and resource box.
  • The 2 links in the resource box should include anchor text using the keyword plus your full web site address.
  • Submit your article(s) to the top article directories.

Repurpose your articles to build more links

Create a short report

If you write a series of articles, create a short report by bundling them together. Submit your report to ebook directories. Offer it for free to other site owners and ezine publishers. The links within your report will spread virally throughout the net.

Publish it to your blog or web site

Continually adding content to your blog or web site causes search engines to spider it. It also increases the stickiness of your site for visitors. They’ll want to link to your articles.

Be a guest blogger
Search for bloggers in your niche and offer exclusive rights to your article. If it’s a very popular blog you’ll get lots of links and traffic from people reading your article and finding your site from the link in your resource box.

Publish to social media sites

Add your article to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Hubpages, etc. By varying the locations you receive links from, assures search engines you’re not spamming them by generating links from one source.

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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing and Marketing Strategies.

How to Convert Your Article to a Press Release


how to convert your article to a press release
Press releases are a highly effective method for building traffic to your product or service. It’s not used much by online marketers so you can use it to stand out from your competitors. The biggest problem in getting started is writing the press release however the steps below will show you how to convert the content you’ve already written into a press release for your business.

1. Release instructions

This is placed at the top of your document . Mention if it’s for “immediate release” or “for release on some future date.”

2. Create a newsworthy headline

Press release distribution sites are looking for stories that will capture the attention of their audience. Look at the articles written in newspapers. They often begin with a story to capture the attention of the reader.

Example

Instead of your title saying “How to Convert Your Article to A Press Release” write “Mary shows you how to gain free publicity by converting your article to a press release”

3. Create a summary

Write 2 or 3 sentences that expand on your headline. It should summarize what your press release (article) is about.

4. Add your main content

This should consist of 400-500 words maximum explaining the significance of your topic and how it will help your audience. For example if you were to take the topic of this article you could describe how press releases help attract traffic, build your brand and get high rankings in the search engines.

If your article contains how to information that sounds boring spice it up a little to make it more newsworthy. Try to make your story relevant and create a sense of urgency. This will help it get accepted by the media.

5. Create an about section

This should summarize what your company is about. Include a call to action by introducing your product or service, where the business is located and web site address.

6. Include contact information

This is added to the end of your press release so media can contact you for any questions. Include the contact person, their position, name of the company, phone number and email address.

7. The ending

End your press release by adding ### centered at the bottom.

Google “free press release websites” to find locations online where you can submit your document.

If you’re introducing a new product, service or have redesigned your web site consider sending a press release to let people know about it. It’s a fast and easy way to generate immediate traffic.

Also read Top 7 benefits of a press release

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Attract a endless streams of NEW visitors to
your website by picking up a copy of
Article Writing & Marketing Strategies

Marketing Articles – Benefits of Submitting Blog Posts to Article Directories


marketing articles
If you have an online business you need to constantly market it to attract web traffic. Article marketing is one of the best strategies for creating content that produces a constant stream of traffic. For example if one article achieves a top ranking in the search engines it will keep driving traffic to your site as long as it maintains its rankings.

If you’ve been blogging for a while you probably have blog posts (articles) written years ago that can be submitted to article directories. Look through your blog archives and select articles that contain valuable content for your readers.

Benefits of submitting blog posts to article directories

1. Reach a larger audience

Content on your blog gets read by people finding your blog through your newsletter, RSS feed, search engines or social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. The top article directories such as ezinearticles receive over one million visitors a day. Submitting your blog article to them enables you to receive some of that traffic. If an ezine publisher selects your article from the directory and publishes it in an ezine with 1000s of subscribers you’ll receive an instant boost in web traffic.

2. Build backlinks to your web site

Receiving quality backlinks boosts your search engine rankings. Including a link back to your web site in the resource box at the end of your article redirects visitors from the directory to your site.

3. Increase presence of low ranking blog articles

If you check your web site statistics you’ll find certain keywords attain high rankings and get lots of traffic whereas many of them don’t rank at all. This is because blog posts generally have little or no links pointing to them. To help them get better traction in the search engines link to those articles within your article resource box using anchor text (hyperlinked keyword). This will improve the traffic to your blog.

Action step
Find 10 blog articles, submit them to ezinearticles and link back to your blog in the resource box then monitor your statistics for a month.

You will be pleasantly surprised.

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Learn how to attract a continuous stream of NEW visitors
to your website by picking up a copy of Article Writing & Marketing Strategies

Herman Drost is the CEO of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Web Design, Hosting, SEO.

Article Writing Template – Tell a Story to Personalize Your Content


article writing template
Have you ever been captivated by an article in the newspaper because it began with a story?
It immediately draws you into the content making you want to read more. You can do the same when writing your own article. It makes you stand out from the competing articles in your niche and provides a great template for writing articles on any subject.

Here’s an example of writing an article based on a story:

How to build your article writing muscles so you can write faster and easier

Last year I was playing soccer several times a week on a local community team and was hoping to complete the season without injuries. Well, half way through the season I developed a severe case of tendonitis in my right ankle. It became painful to walk and was unable to run or play soccer anymore. I even had to hobble to the bathroom when getting up in the morning.

Several weeks passed but the pain wouldn’t subside so I called my doctor and he gave me some stretching and muscle strengthening exercises to try out. I diligently and consistently followed them for several months (plus switched to bicycling). After 6 months my ankle tendonitis had disappeared.

What I learnt
To prevent muscle or ligament injuries strengthen and stretch the muscles (and surrounding ones) specific to your sport. Keep in mind it will take a lot of perseverance and patience.

This story applies to article writing as well. It my be very difficult to write your first article. You’ll try to find all kinds of excuses to procrastinate. You may suffer from anxiety and frustration because you know all the powerful benefits of article marketiing but you can’t get your article finished.

You develop your article muscles by practicing every day (even though it initially may be painful) until you can quickly and easily write several articles in one sitting or churn out a 300-500 word article in 30 minutes or less.

Use this article template to write or rewrite articles based on telling a story. It helps illustrate the main point you wish to make and keeps the attention of your readers.
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Learn how to quickly and easily write an article a day
by getting a copy of my ebook:
Article Marketing Strategies

How to Write a 300 Word Article in 30 Minutes or Less


300 word article
To make article marketing work you need to write lots of articles quickly. The days of just writing one article, publishing it and receiving a torrent of traffic are gone. Now there is lots of competition. Site owners realize that article marketing works so many are using that strategy to market their web sites.

In order to stand out from your competition you need to work harder and be creative. This means writing faster to produce more content, publishing it though different channels and repurposing it for audio and video distribution.

Here are the steps to write a 300 word article in 30 minutes or less

1. Pick a topic

This should be a topic you are very familiar with. A topic that requires research is not going to get completed in 30 minutes.

2. Record your time

Write down the current time on paper before you start writing. Alternatively you can use an online stop watch (Google it to find the address) or an egg timer. This helps focus your mind.

3. Eliminate distractions

It’s difficult to focus if your mind is constantly distracted by other things demanding your attention so don’t respond to emails, answer the phone or do other tasks. It will help get you into your writing zone.

4. Let your writing flow

Just start writing without worrying about correct punctuation, spelling or grammar mistakes. This allows your thoughts to flow freely from your mind. Only stop when you’ve run out of ideas. Some ideas can be used to generate their own articles so jot them down so you remember to go back to them.

5. Edit your article

Correct your article only after you’ve finished writing it. After proofreading and correcting obvious errors let it sit for a few hours then review it again. You’ll view it from a fresh prespective and improve it’s quality.

Your first few articles may take longer than 30 minutes but with practice you’ll be able to write your articles faster and easier. Those of you who are speed typists may be able to write your content under 30 minutes.

This article took exactly 30 minutes to write.
Now take action and write your own.

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Learn how to quickly and easily write an article a day
by getting a copy of my ebook:
Article Marketing Strategies

Write an Article a Day – Top 7 Benefits


write an article a day
When you try to write an article a day it may seem like a huge hurdle to jump over but once you’ve accomplished that goal many opportunities open up to you.

Let me make an analogy.

The beginning of summer I could hardly swim a length before running out of breath. Every day I tried to swim a little further to build up my stamina. By the end of summer I could easily swim non-stop for 1 hour. I could even swim a whole length underwater in one breath.

The same applies to your article writing. You start by writing your first article then increase it to 3 articles per week until you can write one a day. You have to build up your article writing muscles.

7 Benefits of Writing an Article a Day

1. Create lots of content

You need content for your web site, blog, social media sites, ecourses, article directories, newsletters so you get reach more customers.

2. Build backlinks

You are allowed 2 links in the resource box of your article. The more articles you write the more backlinks you acquire.

3. Pre-sell your products

Articles place your customers in a buying mood because you help them make an informed decision. For instance if you write a review comparing different products it will help your client make the best selection.

4. Increase search engine rankings

If you write several articles about your product and include links to your product page it will boost its rankings. If the product page achieves a first page listing its traffic will increase and you’ll make more sales.

5. Expand your audience

As your articles get published all over the Web and if you continue to do this for several years, your customers will find you everywhere. By repurposing your articles into audio and video files you’ll reach people who prefer to access content in that format.

6. Improve your writing skills

To become excellent at anything you need to practice profusely. Writing an article a day will become quicker and easier as you practice more. You can extend your writing skills to include press releases, copy writing, creating sales pages or getting hired as a ghostwriter.

7. Become recognized as an expert in your niche

Writing an article every day enables you to create content for your own information products such as reports, ebooks, newsletters and membership sites. These products can be used to build your own information empire.

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Learn how to quickly and easily write an article a day
by getting a copy of my ebook:
Article Marketing Strategies