Article Marketing Strategies: Selecting The Best Sites & Ezines For Your Article Marketing Campaign

Writing and marketing articles online is probably the most effective, most cost-effective way to publicize your website, and promote your products and services online. The Web is a printing press with an insatiable appetite for articles written by experts. There are literally millions of websites and ezines that are begging for good articles. They want people to submit good articles to them. They even search sites on the web for permission to use articles.
So, How Do You Know Which Sites To Select?

Through my years of experience, and many conversations with the top Internet Marketers, in order to have the greatest impact, you need to use a 3-tiered article marketing approach targeting:

1. The major article directories like Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, Ideamarketers.com and Articledashboard.com

2. Smaller niche directory sites that are related to your content

3. Niche ezine and website publishers who need and want quality related content that will add value to their website or email newsletter audience

My consulting clients ask me many times, "What is the best way to find ezines and websites that are the most read so my article gets the most exposure?" That should not be the first question you ask yourself. Yes, you do want to find websites that are highly visited and ezines that are the most read - but more importantly, you want to focus on finding websites and ezine publishers within your specific niche that have strong emotional connections to their audience.

Most likely, you are already visiting their websites or subscribing to their ezines. If you don't know who has a great ezine related to your industry niche, there are plenty of ezine directories like bestezines.com on the net that can guide you.

Other Strategies Include:

1. Research your competitors - where are their articles being published?

2. Perform a Google search. Just type in your industry or article topic followed by the words article submission. That's how I helped our client's book jump to the #2 spot on the NY Times Best Sellers List. I typed into Google, "health article submissions", "medical article submissions", and "thyroid dysfunctions article submissions" and discovered (among many other sites) the contact information for an About.com editor - one of the top 50 sites on the net today. After receiving the submission, the editor blasted an email book promotion to her entire list, giving Mark Hyman MD 1500 additional opt-in subscribers and much higher sales in just one day.

3. Think about which organizations, your audience may belong to. If you're a sales lead expert, like our client, Mac McIntosh, then the chances of your audience belonging to an organization such as the American Marketing Association are very, very high. With more than 200,000 registered users and more than 2 million visits each year from a wide range of influential decision makers, Mac McIntosh's soon to be published article on the American Marketing Association's website will provide him with an excellent opportunity to connect with the marketing community.

4. And, don't forget to check sites for magazines within your niche. More and more publications, are looking for fresh, new content for their website, to drive traffic up in order to sell more print magazines in the long run. This constant updating of articles found only on the website and not in their print publications means more opportunities for writers and experts. An article written by you published on sites like Entrepreneur Magazine and Mothering Magazine will give your company the vast amount of exposure and credibility it needs.

Follow these strategies and you will have a sound article marketing campaign.

Article Source: www.articleonlinedirectory.com


Article Source: http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com

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About the Author:

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Eric Gruber, Director of the http://www.prleads.com/article.htm target=_blank>PR LEADS Article Marketing Service and co-creator of the all-in-one branding, customer acquisition, and search engine marketing system has learned everything there is to know about article marketing programs. He has cut down on your research time, by developing a sort-able, customized list just for you. http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=439122 target=_blank>Buy it here, or if you want Eric Gruber to handle all of your article marketing campaign needs, then check out: http://www.prleads.com/article.htm target=_blank>http://www.prleads.com/article.htm

10 Secrets To Improving Your Website's Conversion Ratio

According to the so-called experts, a decent conversion
ratio is right around one percent. In other words, one out
of every one hundred visitors to your website converts to a
sale.

Personally, I think you should ignore what the experts say,
and strive to achieve as high a conversion ratio as
possible. You should never be satisfied. You should always
be looking for ways to improve your conversion ratio. My
website consistently converts anywhere from 3 to 5 percent,
and often converts as high as ten percent!

Unless you're selling a big-ticket item and making $100
or more per sale, it's extremely difficult to make any real
money with only a one percent conversion ratio.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and if your
website is attracting hundreds or even thousands of visitors
a day, then obviously you can do quite well with a one
percent or lower conversion ratio.

But what if you don't have that kind of traffic--and most
websites don't. Then what? What if you're selling a $20 e-
book and you're only attracting a hundred visitors a day to
your website? With a one percent conversion ratio, that
means your website is making a measly $20 a day. And believe
me, that's much more common than you realize.

However, what if you could improve your conversion ratio to
3 percent? 5 percent? All of a sudden, you're making $60 to
$100 a day with the same amount of traffic. Improve your
conversion ratio to ten percent and voila, that $100 a day
turns into $200 a day!

So, how do you go about improving your website's conversion
ratio? Here are some tips that should help:

1. Make sure your visitors know what you do, the instant
they land on your website. Don't make them have to guess.
Tell them right up front with a benefits-laden headline.

2. Make sure the design of your website is up to par? Make it easy to navigate. Get rid of distracting flash or
stupid, meaningless graphics that are a waste of everybody's
time and take forever to load? Simplify your website. Get
rid of the flash, graphics and pop-ups!

3. Use psychologically effective colors. The color blue
suggests quality, trustworthiness, success, seriousness,
calmness--the perfect choice for sales pages. Avoid purple,
which connotes uncertainty and ambiguity, and only use
yellow to highlight key words and phrases. In addition, try
to have as much white space as possible. This makes for a much cleaner looking, easier to read website.

4. Get your own domain name. URL's that contain names
like, "Geocities", "Angelfire" or "Tripod" have amateur
written all over them.

5. Prove what you say. Back up your claims with cold, hard,
indisputable and verifiable facts?

6. Put your name, telephone number and street address
on your website?

7. Use authentic customer testimonials, complete with
first and last names? Just make sure you get your customers
permission first.

8. Offer a fair and reasonable money-back guarantee? Thirty
days is good. Sixty or ninety days is better!

9. Make it easy for your customers to pay. And offer a
variety of payment options. I can assure you, if you're
using Paypal only, you're losing sales. There are a lot of
people out there, myself included, that just won't do
business with Paypal. It's too much of a hassle!

10. And last but not least, make sure you have a powerful
sales letter. A strong and effective sales letter can blast
your earnings into the upper stratosphere!

If you aren't capable of writing that type of sales letter
yourself, hire a copywriting expert to write it for you.

Article Source: http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com

About the Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer,
publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be
reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

4 of the Top 5 Search Engine Benefits to Article Marketing

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

You've probably heard by now that article marketing can help you build links back to your site.

But there's a lot more to it than that. Articles aren't only good for leveraging yourself stronger positions in Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other big search engines, though that's what we'll be focusing on today. Keep in mind that learning a more balanced view of promotion and marketing with articles can help you reap all the perks with essentially the same amount of work.

For now, let's start with four of the top five search engine benefits.

1- The One-Way Link of a Resource Box backlink is More Powerful.

A link from a site that you're not linked back to has more value than one where you may be required to link back to, simply because changes in the way search engines rank sites now include an adjustment for exchanged links.

The logic is that this would make the voting power of a link that points in one direction weigh more heavily than one that is traded. In theory, this makes it easier for sites that have earned link popularity to get more credit than those who have bought or traded for it.

Of course, over time, this effect may be adjusted and partially dampened so that articles that are just being submitted to resources with no editorial process will count less than those that don't undergo this process. So make sure you're not submitting junk content for the purpose of linking alone.

2- Article Resource Box Links Back to You Are Relevant

If you write articles that stay on the topic of your site, the page where your article appears is more effective as a page that links back because it is more relevant. Again, depending on the search engine, the more topical the environment where you are linked, the more credit your site gets for the link itself, particularly if you're submitting to an online directory which allows you to make better use of linking.

There are a few little changes you can make that will make your links and articles more topically relevant than 90% of other articles, merely because other authors don't think to balance the search engine benefits of article promotion with its value as content, rather than favoring one or the other.

3- Many of Your Articles Appear on Pages with High Google PR

If you take a look at your Google Site Information page, you'll probably notice that Google seems to pick up only sites that have high page rank under the listing for sites that link to you.

Then, of course all the sites that use the text of your site URL, hyperlinked or not, can be found under the last setting for sites that contain your link.

Google Page Rank is typically not something to get in a frenzy over, but it does have an importance that can affect your bottom line for two main reasons.

First, on the occasions that Google Page Rank can help you get better search engine positioning, the process of being linked from these sites can help bring you more targeted traffic, which can lead to more sales. Again, this has to be part of an overall strategy, not your sole reason for submitting articles.

Second, if links from sites with higher page rank get are being spidered more frequently than your site, your link on these sites can also get crawled faster. If you have unique content on your site, this can give you a competitive edge when your content gets included more rapidly.

4- These links back to your site are permanent.

That means that instead of buying a link on a site that appears there for three months and disappears, you are getting a free, topically relevant link pointing back to your site that may be archived, but not dropped.

Over time, if you submit articles on a regular schedule, each effort towards publication is building on previous exposure, helping you brand yourself and your company, as well as build a strong link campaign pointing back towards your site that is free.

As the quality of your articles improve, you can also get qualified leads from the process, an increase in traffic and sales, and publication in resources who have stronger brands than you do, which you may then leverage for additional exposure.

Just remember, the search engine benefits of promoting your site with articles represent only the tip of the iceberg. With articles you can also brand yourself, use your knowledge to establish yourself as an expert, network, develop relationships and increase your leads, sales and traffic.

Article Source: http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com

About the Author


What is the Fifth Search Engine Benefit to Article Marketing and Promotion? Find out in the free e-course on Article Promotion at: http://www.freetraffictip.com/2-article-marketing/tips-am2.php