Most people that have even the most basic understanding of the world wide web know that content about your business or expertise in several places is a ‘good thing’. People who know a bit more about search engines know that the more content you have on the web that is relevant and linked to your website, the higher up the search engine rankings you are likely to be. The challenge is – how do you get all this copy out there?
There are many options and they include a blog, guest blogs, articles and other websites. Today we’re going to talk about article marketing.
What this means is that you write an article that shares your expertise and then publish it, not only on your website, but also on other websites that are set up for just this purpose.
The biggest article marketing sites are Ezine articles, Idea Marketers and ISnare – but there are dozens of others too.
This all seems quite straightforward – except that, if you read the ‘instructions’ on some of these sites, you’ll quickly realise that posting the same article on several sites is not permitted. It has to be a unique article. For anyone who isn’t a prolific writer that can be a huge challenge, but it’s not as bad as it appears.
You don’t need to write a completely new article, you just need to edit the article you’ve already written so it’s at least 20% different from the original. That can include rearranging paragraphs and using the richness of the English language to present the same thought in different words.
Aim for a handful of sites, start with one and then add others as editing time allows – and always post your articles on your own website too to build up the relevant content your site has. That will contribute to being found by the search engines too.
A word of warning – an article is not a marketing piece, it’s a knowledge or information item that gives value to the reader in some way. It might share your knowledge of a specialist area, give them a series of tips, be a ‘how to’ explanation, present a case study so they can see the whole situation from start to finish. Most article sites allow you to put your web link and a short bio on the end, but if you try to include much blatant promotion in the body of the article it won’t appear.
Start small and work up!
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