It's not enough to scatter your articles across the internet - you've got to measure what you're doing so you can be sure that you're getting value from your effort.Here are some of my preliminary thoughts on what's measurable in regards to article marketing, (and what you measure should depend on your predefined article marketing goals, but you knew that already):Number of new of links to your siteThis is a big one of course, and just about the easiest to measure with a simple "link:" search in the major engines.Since I submitted "Build Links and Your Brand: Article Marketing Delivers" to 8 directories on January 26th Google has logged 24 instances of my article (I did have a little help from search engine expert Andy Beal's mention in his blog), MSN search shows 59 instances and Yahoo has me down for 10.Now, all those mentions aren't links... just instances of my article title.Google currently shows no links to my main blog site. Yahoo and MSN both show 14 to http://articlemarketing.blogspot.com.I'm also currently ranked 3rd in Yahoo for the term article marketing - woo hoo! Not bad for only 3 days. We'll see how long I stay there - things may change dramatically after an update. I'm currently nowhere to be found in MSN. Ditto for Google, except the post from Andy's blog about my article marketing blog that puts me at 4th for "article marketing."To give some idea of scale, here are the number of millions of results for article marketing per engine: 12 million in Yahoo; 17 million in MSN; 27 million in Google. I don't think Article Marketing is a phrase that currently generates much competition.Article submission sites like EzineArticles get the freshbot treatment because of their regularly updated content and I think that speeds indexing.Article submitted 1-26-05, searches conducted 1-29-05.Number of readers/impressionsTo borrow a bit from the world of online advertising you can measure impressions, that is, the estimated number of readers/site visitors who had the opportunity to at least read your article title and, let's hope, associate it with your business name.To get an idea of how many impressions your article may have gotten talk with those who republish your article. If you submit to EzineArticles you can see how many writers and editors have viewed your article's page.It's great to have your impressions high, but it's better to have them targeted to your audience (and by audience I mean customers... here are my thoughts on client as audience). The more care you give your content creation process the more your content will appeal to your target audience.Which brings us to...Placement in previously identified key industry mediaIf at the beginning of your article marketing campaign you identify key industry publications you'd like to be published in... and you get published or don't get published, that's something you can measure.This is more of a branding initiative than a linking initiative, though it can certainly generate at least one solid link. And once your article's been published and your editor says "go" you can submit it to your article submission directories of choice. And then measure links.Lead generation through reader inquiriesThis is a fun one. There are specific industries and products that are likely to sell well through article marketing... namely information products. If your primary goal for article marketing is sales though you should construct your article campaign in a particular way. Many of the same rules still apply, but the strategy needs to be a little different. Let me know if you have questions about creating sales generating articles. And you still have to follow responsible article writing guidelines.Email addresses gathered for newsletter signup/downloads/free serviceYeah you're being published in someone else's email newsletter but that doesn't mean you can't try to drive signups to your own newsletter! We had this happen when I worked at WebProNews, where we published all free content. One author's article marketing strategy focused on driving subscribers to her newsletter. I think, but I'm not sure, that it was Dianna Huff, who specializes in B2B article marketing. As an aside, be sure to check out her site.Pageviews to info pages on your siteIf you link out of your article to more info pages on your site you can measure for an increase in traffic on those pages. Have some kind of call to action on these pages though. Don't just boost page views for the sake of having higher page views. Get them to do something on that page, such as give you an email address or visit your products or services page.Requests from editors for articlesIf it's your goal to have more involvement with your target market then be sure to accept all requests from editors for new articles. In fact, cultivate any relationship with an editor you can. This is one fantastic way of staying in front of your target audience and getting new ideas for articles.How can you increase this likelihood? Contact editors from publications within your target market. In addition, include a mention in your author bio that you'd like to work with editors to help them have happier, more engaged readers.Audience involvement/questionsThis is another fun one, and something I tried to promote during my time at WPN. The level of reader feedback I received led to my creation of the "Ask the Expert" section of WPN (now untended) as well as my proposal for the WebProWorld forums, now with over 50,000 members. (To be fair iEntry had rolled out forums before - they were just scattered across all our publications rather than targetted on the flagship. WebProWorld was definitely a home run.)So if you'd like to establish more of a relationship with the online audience in your publications contact their editor and see if you can field audience questions.What else is measurable?

Those are a few of my thoughts for article marketing measurables. Did I miss any? Let me know your measurable ideas and if I use them in an upcoming article I'll throw you a link with your link text of choice.Want to build links to your site and enhance your brand? Send article marketing questions to GFrench@gmail.com for free article marketing brainstorm, including article topic suggestions and key industry media identification. Garrett French is a search engine marketing copy writer for Websourced and conducts branding and link building research on his article marketing blog. If you wish to publish this article, please retain all links.

MS: John, you must be one of the most prolific Ezine
Writers on the Web - I see your articles nearly everyday in
the article lists and in dozens of Newsletters. How long
have you been writing Ezine Articles?JC: I first started writing ezine articles around 1999.MS: What are the main topics that you write about in your
Ezine Articles?JC: I mainly write two types of articles, (i) Marketing and
promotion, (ii) Success and motivation.MS: John, how important have Ezine articles been in
promoting your website?JC: I sometimes use paid advertising, but my main method of
promotion is writing and submitting articles.MS: John, what sort of Articles have you had most success
with? In your experience, what kind of Articles are most in
demand?JC: I get the most feedback on articles about success and
motivationMS: Some Ezine Writers promote a product or service in
their Resource Box, while others aim only to get a
subscription to their free Newsletter. What would your
advice be for getting maximum results from your Resource
Box?JC: I usually promote my newsletter and free ebook in the
resource box. Sometimes I promote a product, but mainly the
newsletter.MS: What have you found to be the most effective ways of
getting your Articles published?JC: Persistence. I've set up a weekly mailing to
publishers. Most publishers get a lot of submissions, so
getting them to notice you article will take some time.
Once they start using your articles, they are more likely
to start reading your submissions.MS: Apart from getting your Articles published in
Newsletters, are there any other ways you use your Articles
to promote your website? (such as turning them into a free
E-Book)?JC: I created my free ebook Street Smart Secrets Of Success
from a collection of my success and motivation articles:
http://www.internet-profits4u.com/streetsmart.exe. I was
also contacted by a publisher who read the free ebook to
create a free e-course for his ebook Autoresponder Gold. So
from the articles I've created my ebook and the 7 Days To A
Turbo Charged Mind email course:
johncolanzi@freeautobot.comMS: Some people are discouraged from writing Ezine articles
because it seems that everything has already been written
about. What's your view on that?JC: Every writer brings their own style to a subject. You
may read about it 100 times, but a certain writer's way of
presenting the information, may be the article that gets
you to take action.MS: Yes, that's an important point. What's the single most
important style tip for writing a good Ezine Article?JC: Write to one person. Make the ideas personal to the
reader.MS: How important have Ezine Articles been in achieving
your success in online business?JC: Every good thing that's happened to me online has been
a result of someone seeing an article.MS: And finally John, what would be your advice to someone
who wants to write Ezine Articles but has never written for
the Internet before?JC: Write the same way you would explain something to your
best friend. Write to inform, don't write a sales letter
and try to pass it off as an article.MS: Thank you John.------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://ezine-writer.com/
------------------------------------------------------------

Publishing articles on the Internet is a tremendous way to increase the number of inbound links to your site. As articles are assimilated into search engine indexes, they also begin to act as landing pages generating traffic for your site. Whenever possible, you should publish articles to promote your site.Article ContentThe content of your articles should be directed to the most basic elements of your product or service. Whenever possible, try to write "how to" or "introduction to" articles. Topics like these will garner the biggest interest and be picked up by other sites. Articles that cover finer points of a subject work as well, but you should expect a smaller readership.Article ToneYour articles should be packed with information, not sales pitches. When writing articles, one tends to concentrate on how to get potential readers to visit your site. This approach is a mistake. You have to think of both the readers AND webmasters that will be looking for articles.Image you are a Webmaster that needs content for your site. You go to one of the article directories looking for material to add to your site. Are you going to select articles that are sales pitches designed to take your visitors to another site? No. You are going to select articles that provide your visitors with some valuable information. Don't write sales pitches!LinksArticles are a great way to quickly build the link counts for sites. The search engines universally appear to like them, a rare event these days. So, what's the best strategy for using links in your articles?The best linking strategy for articles involves putting not more than two links in your byline. This is admittedly a personal preference, but I find more than two links looks "clunky" and many depositories won't allow any more than two.Regardless, the two links in the byline of your articles should go to two distinct pages of your site. The first might be to your home page, while the second goes to a page that is related to the subject of the article. With each new article, you should change the links to new pages. This allows you to build link popularity for both your home page and internal pages of your site. I have found Google, in particular, heavily favors sites that multiple pages with high link counts.HTML v. Text LinksWith some depositories, you have the opportunity to place html code in your bylines. This, of course, lets you avoid typing out the URLs for your site pages, but should you? I would encourage you to type out the URLS for one reason. It is important to make it as easy as possible for Webmasters to republish your article on their site. Don't make them figure out the domains of your hyperlinked text, particularly sub-domains.In ClosingI have used article campaigns to market many sites. As long as you go about it correctly, you should be able to do the same thing for your site.Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company. Visit our article section - http://www.marketingtitan.com/internet_marketing_articles - to read more internet marketing articles.

The biggest challenge facing any online business today is how to generate enough traffic and leads for the business to succeed.By the time the online business owner is through with paying to establish their new business, there is hardly any cash left for the most important task that has to be undertaken by every brand new enterprise, which is advertising to generate leads and ultimately badly needed customers and clients for the new online business to take off.It gets worse because many people, who launch online businesses like joining lucrative affiliate programs, do so without spending any money and also expect to succeed without ever having to reach for their wallets.And even if the online business entrepreneur were to have a generous advertising budget for their brand new online business, most of the initial efforts would mostly end up being a waste. This is because in most cases the entrepreneur will not know enough about the business at this stage.The answer to both situations is posting free articles all over the net with a well written resource box that has all the information to help lead loads of traffic to your site.Posting articles has taught me a lot about what works and what does not work. I must admit that it continues to be both an entertaining as well as a highly profitable experience for me. And it can be for any online business entrepreneur. All it requires is that you ensure that you install a meter on your web site or blog to carefully track the traffic that you are attracting with your articles.Then you must really be prepared to test and test and test again. Even when you start to experience some minor successes with your articles, that is in fact the time you should increase the number of tests you are carrying out with your free articles marketing campaign.Tests teach you a lot and with each new test you introduce, you learn something new and valuable that you can use to improve your business even more.And what is more, when you have found a way to build up your opt-in email list as you go along (this can easily be done by offering some valuable information or e-course available only via email) you will actually be growing your client data base. Growing the list of your prospects and clients whom you can email regular updates to later is extremely important.It is important to ensure that your articles are both interesting and useful to your target market. Avoid any sales letter-approach here. In fact the more you sound like an expert genuinely out to help, the more successful your articles marketing campaign will be.You can of course find loads of valuable information on how to write articles (even if you are not a writer) and where to post them at my blog. See the resource box of this article for the address.Christopher Kyalo is a writer/marketing expert who has made money online only by posting free articles. Visit his blog NOW which is loaded with valuable free information at; http://www.big-online-story.blogspot.com

Article Marketing Builds Momentum and TrafficWhen I started submitting articles to ezines and directories
I was happy just to get an occasional article written and
widely posted online. I assumed that was the point. But I've
since learned about equally important considerations--like
the Page Rank of the site where it appears.Each article was written to inform and appeal to the human
readers. Search engines were incidental in my mind. I wasn't
systematic about submitting new ones on a regular basis so
they built momentum. Nor was I careful to emphasize my
website's keywords and principal theme. But I do now--it
matters. Despite that, the articles already posted have been
hard at work for me.My list of places for submitting keeps expanding. And it's
further refined with every article posted. After a year and
a half, that's a large list (nearly a thousand). And I'm a
known quantity with sites and ezines that consistently post
my contributions. My best-received article to date shows 181
Google mentions (with their related incoming links).Starting from Zero Online VisibilityI launched a new website mid-June, 2004, using article
marketing as the primary traffic-building strategy (Yellow
Page Sage, getting your Yellow Page ad and website working
together). The first article was a strong one, getting 135
Google cites.Over the next three months I wrote and posted seven articles
related to Yellow Pages or Local Search. The website also
provided extensive information about Yellow Page advertising
by other authors--making it very sticky and content-rich.Creating an Article 12-packAfter they were submitted to my list, I combined those seven
articles with five of my prior marketing articles - twelve
in all (with a link to each article). Instead of offering
them as onesees, I now send the whole batch (letting the
receiver pick what they want).I prepared a letter offering the 12-pack, asking if they want
to receive similar future ones. That letter is only sent to
websites I've visited. I'd never offer it to a site unless
there's a good fit. Sending out the 12-pack is an ongoing
activity, and another way to expand my list. Some websites
have posted the whole set - twelve return links from one
letter!Surprise! Google Noticed me!Since I was busy getting the site polished and launched, it
caught me by surprise that in two months my Google Page Rank
was 3/10 (the first time I checked). And the following month
it had climbed to PR 4/10 - without doing anything but post
seven articles. I didn't yet realize it was getting extra
mileage because of the strength of my list. So moving to PR
5/10 can't be too far off, can it?Then I started paying serious attention to Page Rank--the
posting site's AND mine. Page Rank shows the extra
importance that Google gives to the number and popularity of
websites linking to yours. Links from higher Page Rank pages
elevate your Page Rank.Two Things I didn't Know When I Started Posting ArticlesFirst - I posted my articles to get website traffic and
incoming links (via the Sig at the end of each article). I
treated every article appearance as equivalent. But Google
doesn't. All those articles appearing in high-Page-Rank
directories were giving an extra boost to my score.So I've re-assessed my list. Websites with higher Page Rank
are now my "A List." Articles that they publish are doing my
Page Rank way more good than other places. Of course, I
still need to post widely and pursue both types of links.Second - I didn't realize that the "Page Rank of a website"
doesn't exist. Every page on a site has its own Page Rank.
(Although there are ways to make every page on the website
share the same Page Rank, it's not widely done.) So a home
page with PR 7/10 that links to mine from a PR 3/10 interior
page only provides a PR 3/10 link. That awareness influences
who and how I link with other websites anymore. And it
dictates the way I organize external links on my own
websites.Get a Free a Page Rank ToolTo assess other sites, you need a Page Rank tool. You can
compare multiple sites athttp://www.phplivesupport.com/google_pagerank.phpLilengine.com provides a free Page Rank Tool. Use theirs, or
you can post it on your own website.http://www.lilengine.com/tools/pagerank-tool.phpArticles Give your Ideas a High Profile all Over the
InternetThe benefits of article marketing are well documented. And
if it can build your Page Rank as well, it's even a better
use of your time. Start writing and posting articles that
show your expertise. And start getting the traffic and
attention you'd been wishing for.--Dr. Lynella Grant http://www.promotewitharticles.com Use posted articles to build your business Expert in the "body language of printed materials" Author, The Business Card Book and Yellow Page Smarts grant@promotewitharticles.com (719) 395-9450

Publicity?you're business can survive without it, but it certainly won't thrive without it. Maybe you've seen your competition at it - their website was featured on a major newspaper or television show. Or perhaps you heard them mentioned on your favorite morning radio show on the way to the office. The point is, when it comes to publicity, some businesses are getting it. And here comes the real shocker - some of them are getting it for free! Yep, there really is such a thing as free publicity, and we're going to show you a very simple way that you can start getting it.But first, let's take a moment to discuss what publicity is. According to www.dictionary.com, publicity is "Information that concerns a person, group, event, or product and that is disseminated through various media to attract public notice." Did you see what I just did? Through this article, www.dictionary.com just got free publicity (they'll need it, so you can look up "disseminated"). Articles are just one of many ways that you can spread the word about your business, but it's the one of the easiest to use.Free Online ArticlesThe number one way to get free publicity (and to establish yourself as an expert in your field) is through writing and submitting free online articles that relate in some way to your business. Now before you throw your hands up in disgust, saying something like "I'm not a writer, I'm a business owner!" just wait a minute. The chances are, your business's new or existing product, service or upcoming event is something that the rest of the world cares about (otherwise, you wouldn't BE in business). As obscure as it may be, you'd be amazed at the number of people out there who are yearning to learn more about something that your business makes you an expert about.If you don't believe me, narrow your business down to a list of ten keywords that come to mind when you describe your profession. Now, do a Google search on each of those ten keywords (see, I slipped in yet another instance of free publicity, and through your articles, you can do the same!) The top ten or twenty results are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sites that could be featuring your articles.You may be asking yourself "Sure, the readers get something out of these free articles, but what about me?" Well, despite the fact that no one is paying you to publish your articles, free articles come with an incredibly valuable thing?it's known as the resource box.The resource box is where you get to promote yourself and your business! You can include a brief biography about yourself or business along with a link to your website or affiliate program, your address, phone number, email address,? whatever! The point is, when your readers get done with your article and they want to know more, the first place they'll go to is your resource box! The next place they go is?well, where ever you want them to!What Do You Write About?Well, just about anything. The first place you should go for inspiration is your Frequently Asked Questions. If you don't have a FAQ section of your website, check out your competitor's sites (really, it's okay, as long as you don't copy it down word for word?) If your FAQ's are truly that, and not just a list of questions that you hope and pray that people would ask but they never do, then you'll have plenty of possibilities.Whatever you write about, make sure it's something that people are genuinely interested in. Because if it's something people are interested in, then it's something that the websites that cater to those people will be interested in. And don't worry, there's no need to write a novel, nearly all web content articles are within a 300-1000 word range.Also, make sure to follow the basic rules of grammar and spelling. Even if your article is worthy of a Pulitzer, it'll never earn one if it's full of careless mistakes and spelling errors.Once you've checked your spelling and grammar make sure to read the article aloud. This will give you a chance to make sure that the article flows smoothly and logically.Getting Your Article PublishedOnce you've written and edited your article, the next step is to get the word out. And unlike articles that are written for pay, it's really not that hard to find webmasters and ezine editors willing to publish your piece. Since they don't have to pay you for the content, they're more than happy to provide you with free publicity.If you have a lot of professional and Internet connections in your industry, don't be afraid to take advantage of them at this point. Not only will it give you more exposure, you'll be doing your friends a favor! Once you've contacted them, you're next stop will be to submit your article to free online article databases. Here are a few to help you get started:? www.articlecity.com? www.ezinearticles.com (requires free membership)? www.thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/? www.businessknowhow.com/newsletter/articleguidelines.htm? www.expertarticles.com (requires free membership)? Or, just go here www.bellaonline.com/articles/art12838.asp for an extensive list of places willing to publish your work on their site or publication!Now, you're armed with all you need to know to start getting the free publicity that you've been dreaming of. Better yet, no one will be able to pinch and wake you up!About the Author:
If your website could use some fresh, custom content but you don't have the extra money in your budget, there's no need to worry. Jennifer Gibbs (http://www.JenniferGibbs.com), a 5 star freelance professional from South Georgia is more than happy to provide your site with original, tailored and EXCLUSIVE content in exchange for free products, services and/or membership access. For more information, send your request (along with your website URL) to: info@jennifergibbs.com.

The goal of free publicity is to get your name in front of as many people as possible. So if you write an article, don't bury it on your web site.Why hide it? You want as many eyes as possible to see your intelligent professional advice. So offer that article to other web sites.Articles you author that appear on someone else's web site ? a professional association's, another organization's, your target market's news and resource sites ? are powerful publicity tools. Get on them. When prospective clients find your article on someone else's site, you can drive them right over to your site by telling them they will find deeper information there.Not only does having articles on other web sites bring web users directly to your site, it also helps improve your search engine ranking. The major search engines now rank sites based on how many other sites link to it. The more places a link to your site appears, the higher you will appear on the search engines.I've gotten to the top of a search engine search page on the strength of just one article linked to my site. So many people search for services on the Internet now, anything that pushes you up the rankings is a major marketing boon.Ned Steele works with people in professional services who want to build their practice and accelerate their growth. The president of Ned Steele's MediaImpact, he is the author of 102 Publicity Tips To Grow a Business or Practice. To learn more visit http://www.MediaImpact.biz or call 212-243-8383.

Finding something to write about can be frustrating for all writers from time to time.I have made a list of a few suggestions for those days when the well seems to be running dry...I hope these ideas may provide some inspiration to get your creative juices flowing again.Some of these suggestions are based on personal experience and the incredible gift that God gave women of being able to bear children, which makes us uniquely qualified to write about some topics that nobody but mothers can truly understand and utilize as potential article topics.

Ideas Just For Mothers

Themes associated pregnancy, labor, post-partum issues, breastfeeding, potty training, motherhood, and similar subjects related to children and parenting in general. Most of our experiences as mothers can be transformed into articles of interest to other mothers and publications that target this specialized market.Think about how you felt the day you went into labor, what you learned from your pre-pregnancy classes, how you successfully taught your child to feed himself or give up diapers, how you overcame your initial fears of being a good mother, how your discipline techniques worked or didn

Many successful authors close their mind to learning HTML because they figure they don't need to know it. I've been in technology, marketing and writing on the Internet for a decade+ now and I too shut my mind to learning HTML... until earlier this year. My thinking was that HTML coders only make $8-$10/hr and why would I want to learn a skill that I can outsource to someone who specializes in HTML coding?

Guess what? You don't have to learn more than 15 minutes of HTML knowledge to significantly improve the quality of your articles. In today's issue, I'm going to show you the top 7 easy-to-learn essential HTML skills that can help any article author make better looking articles before the day is over.

The 7 HTML "MUST KNOW" article author skills include how to format a URL or an email address, how to enhance your text with BOLD, ITALICS, or the UNDERLINE font attribute and how to set up a bullet or numbered list in HTML.

How To Make A URL/Website Address "Linkable":

This: http://EzineArticles.com/ will create this: http://EzineArticles.com/

Just substitute your website address from the above code and now you know how to "link" up a website address. Some like to create anchor text links or what I call, "keyword stuffing." Here is the code to create links out of keywords:

Ezine Articles will create this: Ezine Articles

One Note: Use anchor text links sparingly when submitting articles to directories as some have limitations on the number of times the same URL can be linked up. For example, with EzineArticles.com, you are only allowed to have one URL in a given article that is the same and your article could be rejected if you have two links to the same URL regardless as to whether you linked it up like the first and/or second example above.

How To Make Your Email Address "Linkable":

This: youraddress@your-domain-name.tld will create this: youraddress@your-domain-name.tld

One Note: It is never a good idea to put your email address in your article because your email address will get harvested by spammers who use web email extractor bots to scour the Internet. Better to put a link to your contact information if you must.

How To Make Something BOLD:
This: Make my words bold will create this: Make my words bold

How To Make Something ITALICS:
This: Make my words italics will create this: Make my words italics

How To Make Something UNDERLINED:
This: Make my words underlined will create this: Make my words underlined

How To Make A Bullet Point List:

This: First bulletSecond bulletThird bullet will create this:

First bulletSecond bulletThird bullet

How To Make A Numbered List:

This:
First point
Second point
Third point
will create this:

First pointSecond pointThird point

By opening up your mind to allow yourself to learn the above 7 essential HTML tips for article authors, you can improve the quality of your articles immediately.

About The Author:Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic EzineArticles.com directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/

You submit it, that's what you do! And submit it to as many article directories as you can. (More submissions = more exposure) The more directories you submit to, the better your chance of having the right ezine, newsletter, or website publisher reading your article and using it.If you're not up for submitting your article manually to over 100 sites, you should pick up a copy of ArticleAnnouncer. It will submit your site to a ton of article directories, and you won't have to do much work at all. If you plan on writing articles to increase your traffic, you NEED ArticleAnnouncer.Or, if you don't want to spend the money, you can submit to the top 5 sites: (I want to stress that you should submit your articles to as many sites as possible in order to get the most traffic and publicity)http://www.EzineArticles.com
http://www.Content-Articles.com
http://www.ArticleDepot.co.uk
http://www.ArticlesFactory.com
http://www.GoArticles.comIf you want to submit by hand, and want to submit to more than the 5 sites listed above, head to http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html and there's a list of 100 (as of the date this article was submitted). However, not all article sites are created equally. Here are my 6 tips of things to look for when you're choosing which directories to submit to.Tip #1 ? Make sure the site allows for SEO
- Do they allow you to choose your own keywords? If the directory doesn't allow you to choose keywords, you could possibly lose some SE traffic because of untargeted or less-targeted results. Entering your own keywords also helps with searches within the site, if the search operates on keywords.- Do they put your keywords and article summary into meta tags? Yet again, this ability is great for SEO. It allows the search engines to index your article more effectively, giving you the best traffic you can get to your article.- Do the major search engines index the site regularly? If a site isn't indexed regularly, your article will take awhile to show up in search results. Not a huge deal, but it could delay some traffic.Tip #2 ? Make sure the site offers RSS feeds
- Do they allow your article's content to be syndicated? RSS Syndication is a big thing right now, because it makes it very easy for another site to feature your article's title, body, and author. If a site doesn't offer RSS, you may not want to waste your time posting there, as you probably won't get as much traffic from them.- Is syndication by category only, or can more parameters be submitted? Some sites allow the RSS feeds to be customized by category only. Others allow syndication by any combination of category, submission date, and author. This is very beneficial to you, because 1) your article could remain on a syndicated "archives" page, where the site gets the specific date RSS feed, and 2) you can have all of your work syndicated ? sites can choose to be fed only your articles!Tip #3 ? Make sure the site is easy to use
- Can visitors to the site find articles quickly, or do they have to dig around? I'm sure you've been to sites that have horrible navigation. The same is true for some article submission sites. When you get there, make sure the articles are easy to find. If they're not, don't waste your time.- Does the site have a category list and search function? Make sure the site has both, as some users will want to use the categories, others will search, and still others will do both.Tip #4 ? Make sure it's easy to submit your article
- Can you submit articles quickly and easily? Some require you to login, which is okay, because then you'll probably have an "author page" where you can add a bit more information about yourself, and people can find a list of all of your articles. However, if the site makes you enter very much personal information, confirm more than once (most will require you to confirm your email address) or scan your fingerprint (haha, that'll be the day), you can probably skip them. You don't want to do that every time you want to submit an article, especially if you're submitting to more than 5 directories.- If they proofread your article, how long does it take? Some sites proof-read your articles, which is okay, as long as it doesn't take more than 24 hours for your article to be approved and made active on their site.Tip #5 ? Is the site popular?
- Have many articles been posted in the past few weeks? If the site hasn't has submissions for a few weeks, or they're trickling in, chances are that's because it's dead. Do keep in mind, though, that submitting to a brand new site is always great, because chances are the owner is promoting it as much as possible, which means great exposure for your articles.Tip #6 ? Do they offer a large list of categories?
- How many categories do they have? Most sites have quite a few categories, or they're targeted to one area (like Internet Marketing). That's perfect. But if you come across a directory that isn't targeted, and doesn't have many categories, skip it. Publishers probably won't pay it much attention because less categories means less targeting, and more articles to sift through to find what they want.Congratulations you on choosing article writing to boost your online exposure! It's an easy technique that, if done correctly, will more than pay for the time you spent writing the articles. Ok, now go out there and start submitting!Jason is an Internet marketer and owner of Premier MicroSolutions, LLC. Submit your articles right now to Content-Articles.com - The Free Web Site Content Article Directory