Promoting Affiliate Showcase thru Article Marketing It can often take months to get a site naturally listed in the main search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. That's because it generally takes a while for a new website to earn a "reputation" with the search engines.
But... If you write an article and submit it to an established Article Directory site, your article will live on that site and get indexed very quickly.
With Article Marketing, you leverage the power of large established directory sites to get top natural listings for your articles.
We're going describe exactly what you need to know to get a top listing under the keywords of your choice, and how you can profit with this free technique.
Article Marketing Techniques
You can use these techniques to market your product successfully without having a website to publish your articles on.
1: How It Works All you need to do is write an article focused on a keyword phrase that you want to get listed under. You then submit your article to a free article submission site and wait to be listed. There aren't any guarantees that your article will be listed but if you follow these guidelines you'll have a much better chance:
- 350-500 words in length
- 3-7 occurrences of the keyword phrase you're targeting
- Use the keyword phrase in the title of your article
- Write an enticing author bio or resource box that includes your affiliate link to Affiliate Showcase
2: Research Your Topic Before you begin writing an article, you should try to determine if there is potential to receive traffic, how much competition there is, and what keyword phrases to optimize for maximum results. There are a number of ways to search for keyword niches.
Nichebot.com is a great resource for keyword research. Just type a keyword phrase into nichebot.com and you'll get results on the number of searches and how much competition there is for that phrase. From these, you can get a good idea of whether a keyword phrase will be too competitive to write an article about.
Typically you'll find that longer phrases (3 - 5 words) will have a less competitive ratio of searches/results, but you can use these as a good starting point:
3: Writing Your Article Once you've decided on a keyword phrase to focus your article on, it's time to start writing.
Your articles should be 350 - 500 words long and they don't have to be literary masterpieces. Use basic grammar, short sentences, and fairly simple words. Let your personality shine through in your writing. If you bore your readers, they won't read to the end and will never see your resource box with the link to your site.
If you wind up with an article that's longer than 500 or so words, you might want to break it down into smaller articles and submit them separately.
Decide on a title, keyword phrases, and a description of the article, as some article directories will allow you to submit those to help with search engine ranking of the final article on their site.
Make sure you include a headline (or <h1> tag) that contains the keyword phrases you are trying to obtain positioning on, and put it right at the beginning of the article!
A great way to captivate your audience is to tell them a story, something they can relate to - or review a product or service. Provide enough information that they feel satisfied, and create curiosity in your resource box so they'll click on your link.
To get a "personal" tone, forget that you're writing an article. Instead, pretend that you are writing a letter to a friend. Make it easy to read, and add your personal appeal. It's much easier to connect with a visitor on an emotional level if you let your own personality show a little.
In an article of 350 - 500 words, make sure that your main keyword phrase appears between 3 - 7 times. More than that will look like spam to the search engines, and less than that will make it difficult for your article to rank high in the search engine results for that phrase.
Here's a quick checklist to use when writing an article:
Include your keyword phrase in the title of the article Use your keyword phrase in a heading tag at the very beginning of the article <h1>keyword phrase</h1> Include your keyword phrase in the opening paragraph Include your keyword phrase in the closing paragraph Limit your article to between 350 and 500 words Use your keyword phrase 3 - 7 times in the article.
4: Submit Your Articles You can submit articles as you finish writing them. No need to wait. The search engines (Google in particular) tend to ignore content that is duplicated, so you should only submit each article to one site. If you want to submit the same article to multiple article directories then you should change the content around so they really become completely different articles.
Here is a list of the top article submission directories:
EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
USFreeAds.com
iSnare.com
ArticleDashboard.com
ArticleCity.com
EasyArticles.com
Amazines.com
ValuableContent.com
ArticlesBase.com
Info-Syndicate.com
ezau.com
http://sitepronews.comYou can find more directories by searching on Google. But we highly recommend you start with the list above.
5: Final Thoughts If you're new to Internet Marketing, you may have more time than money. If so, Article Marketing can be one of the best ways to generate some profits with no out-of-pocket expense. As you get a little income flowing, you can use that to fund any paid advertising campaigns.
Article Marketing does take some work, but "sweat equity" may be all you can afford right now. Like anything else in life, the more effort you invest, the more successful you will be.
Set aside enough time each day to write at least one article and by the end of the month you'll have 30 articles bringing you traffic (and hopefully sales). The great thing about article marketing is that you don't have to be a professional to write an article, and it is FREE.
tip: You can use Article Marketing to promote not just Affiliate Showcase - but any affiliate program that you join from your Affiliate Showcase site.
