Article Marketing And Search Engine Optimization

It has become increasingly difficult to get to the top of the major search engines in recent years as the likes of Google and Yahoo! have changed their criteria for how they rank websites. Many old techniques such as metatags and reciprocal links have lost their effectiveness. However, despite these changes, article submission remains one of the most effective ways to gain incoming links that will boost your website's popularity among the major search engines.

While there are many other aspects to search engine optimization (SEO), article submission can be a cheap and effective way to help you get that coveted spot on the first page of the search engine results for keywords relating to your business.

First let's look at how article marketing works in relation to improving SEO. Basically, every time a link to your website is published on another website your popularity with the search engines increases. These are known as backlinks. In every marketing article you submit to an article directory you can include a resource box with information about you or your product, and a backlink to your website.

So, even just by submitting to article directories you are already increasing the number of backlinks to your website. However, the real value from submitting these articles is that they can be picked up and published anywhere on the web. Every time an article is published you get another backlink to your website. If your articles are published enough times you could see your search engine page ranking rocket. Bear in mind though, that the effectiveness of your campaign will depend on where the articles appear. A backlink from a website that itself has a high search engine page ranking will carry more weight than a backlink from a site with a poor ranking.

Keywords vs quality

Carefully choosing keywords is an essential part of article marketing for a number of reasons. First, you want your articles to be easily found in article directories. If they remain buried under similar articles they will never be published on other websites and your efforts will have been wasted.

Also, you want your articles to get good results on the search engines themselves. If your articles find their way onto the front pages of the search engines you will increase exposure to your website or product, and increase your reputation as an article writer.

However, there is more to successful article marketing than keywords. There has been an ongoing difference of opinion among SEO experts as to whether the quality of articles can be sacrificed for the sake of high keyword density within the text. While it is important to put keywords in the text to help with SEO, quality content is king when it comes to article marketing.

The main aim of article marketing is to get your articles published on as many websites as possible. Quality content is at a premium on the internet so if you can provide good articles that people want to read you will be successful. If you stuff your articles with keywords websites will not publish them and readers will rarely read beyond the first paragraph. So, keep keywords to about two per every 100 words of text and do not let them disrupt the flow and the meaning of the article.

Know your neighbor

The most successful article marketers are the ones who gain a reputation as experts in their chosen field, so try to find your niche and work to your strengths. If you write authoratively and enthusiastically about a subject that you know about you are much more likely to attract readers.

If, for example, you have a website that sells Mac software you could write about new releases and trends in this field. However, you could also boost your profile by becoming involved in the general online Mac community by posting on forums or even creating your own blog. These can provide extra opportunities for creating backlinks and driving traffic to your website, and as you become better known in your field you will find your articles will be more used more often and more widely.

New Web 2.0 social bookmarking websites are also giving article marketers new opportunities for improving SEO and increasing traffic to their website. If you come up with an article you think could be very popular on the web you could publish it on your website and submit it to websites like Digg and Reddit. If it gains popularity on these sites it could go viral and bring thousands of hits to your site.

Article marketing offers excellent opportunities to promote your product while improving the SEO of your website. Even if you do not have the time or the will to write articles yourself, you should look into having a freelance writer doing the job for you.

Affordable search engine optimization explained

How do you define affordable search engine optimization ?

Search engine optimization that is cheap can certainly not be defined as affordable search engine optimization as such low cost services that are provided are either not 100% effective or do not cover all the aspects of SEO.

According to me an affordable seo service is one which not only fits your budget but also covers all the aspects of seo that are required to be done on your website to improve its search engine ranking.

So how do you decide which search engine optimization service is best for you.

I. Go for a company that has been there for a long time. Go for a company that is reliable. You can do this by checking the Company details :

a) How long their domain has been registered - The older the better.

b) Does the company provide email id and telephone numbers - A company that just offers you a contact/feedback form is not good enough. Email can be hidden for spam purposes but some details have to be provided.

c) Check history - Has the company ever indulged itself into BlackHat Seo - Avoid such companies.

II. Check to see what all things are covered in your package.

a) See thoroughly what all is covered in your Seo package. Shortlist sites and do a comparison.

b) Time period - How much time will it take for the SEO to be done.

c) Testimonials - It is best to read and check what other people are telling about the Seo company rather than reading the claims and guarantee webpage of the search engine optimization company. Moreover if there is any company that boasts itself by saying they can provide a top ranking then avoid it , no company can guarantee you rankings. Read 'beware of fake seo' article here.

III. Check to see what all areas are covered.

a) Is it only for Google ? - Go for a company that does overall Seo for all search engines.

b) Make sure the techniques followed are according to Webmaster guidelines provided by major search engines.

c) Latest trends and areas need to be covered – Example currently the areas are blogging, article writing, social bookmarking etc.

An Optimization That Can Please Your Customers AND The Search Engines

WHAT KIND OF VISITORS WILL THE OPTIMISATION OF WEBSITE PAGES PROVIDE YOU?

How do the visitors to your website find you?

There´s a big difference between hits to your site and qualified visitors to your site!

Hits are just a showing of your site´s home page that you can get by the thousands with pop under scripts and exit-exchange programs.

Qualified Visitors are people who looks for information, that found your site through a link on other site, or through a search on the Search Engines.

If a person knows your web site´s URL he can just type in on his browser and will find you, but MOST of your visitors won´t know that you exist before they find you, and they will find you thanks to the optimisation of website pages.

The big difference between the hits and the qualified visitors, is that the qualified or targeted visitors are looking for the contents of your web site, and that from every 200 bulk untargeted visitors you will only get 1 qualified visitor, so you definitely need to go for the qualified targeted visitors.

Most of the places that talk about optimisation of website pages will teach you tricks to get a better ranking on the Search Engines, they will teach you how to manipulate the relevancy algorithms of the Search Engines, to receive a better placement on a keyword search, but I think that the effort must not be put on the tricks, but on the quality of the content.

Why?

* Every trick that you use will be discovered sooner or later by the Search Engines
* If the Search Engines discover you, they will ban your entire web site
* Search Engines evolve month after month, and they become more and more complex to cheat
* Search Engines keep on changing their algorithm
* Your web pages must please the Search Engines AND your visitor (or they will click away as soon as they arrive)

And what pleases the Search Engines AND the visitors?

RELEVANT AND GOOD CONTENT about the keyword that they came looking for.

Do not waste your time in the optimisation of website pages with the goal of manipulating the Search Engine´s algorithms, you will have to work too hard on the wrong part of your pages.

Work on your business instead, and write more optimised theme pages.

THEME PAGES

It´s a fact that you mustn´t just go for visitors to your home page, because although your targeted visitors match the content of your web site, they have never seen your site before, they don´t know that your site exists, and they will arrive to your website through a search about a very specific theme.

Your home page will have many different offers, and a lot of information that not everybody wants to read about. Then your targeted traffic campaign should never be based on your home page, because your visitors will read it for not more than 6 seconds, and either you catch their attention or they´ll be moving to another web site.

You need to write many theme pages specially designed, and this is where the optimization of website pages is needed.

Your theme pages must:

* Load fast
* They must not have pop ups or pop under
* They must show your unique selling proposition or give the information in a flash
* They must offer such a good content that will compel your viewers to read your other pages, or go to your site´s home page
* They must have a clear call to action
* They must provide an easy way to bookmark them

THE CONTENT

Your theme pages must have enough hooks to call the attention of the Search Engines.

The hooks are the specific keywords of each page (concentrating on only one keyword per page will do well).
Write every week a new web page and blend your hook (keyword) with excellent content about an specific theme.

You must make sure that you put your keyword...

* On the title tag
* On the keywords tag
* On the web page description
* On the body title
* On a comment
* On an image alt tag
* Bolded at any place of the body
* At the beginning, the middle and the end of your text

TWEAK AND TESTING

In every advertising campaign you have to do testing, and when you are in an optimisation of website pages campaign, you could tweak your pages, and test them changing the headlines, the meta tags, the length of the body, the colors, the web page layout, etc.

But my advice is that you must concentrate on creating new good content.

Once you have written a web page, make sure that your content has all the topics mentioned on the content´s title and then stop the testing there, don´t tweak, just build more content, and once you have 20+ web pages, start a links exchange campaign.

And as you build more good content for more keywords, and start getting more and more inbound links from your links exchange campaign, your keywords will start to rank higher and higher without endless tweaking and testing.

And persevere! Keep on building good content pages and exchanging links, it may take months to see the results, but it´s like a snow ball, just start rolling it and..

YOU WILL SUCCEED!

* Your less competitive keywords will rank better first
* Your links exchange campaign will give you some links to start
* Then people will start writing you asking to exchange links
* Then your most competitive keywords will rank better

So the optimisation of website pages, boils down to only three steps.

STEP 1: Build more and more web pages with good quality content, about keywords related with your web site´s theme
STEP 2: Start a links exchange campaign
STEP 3: Keep on building more web pages, and exchanging links, until you reach success

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi