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How To Inspire Yourself To Write Articles Others Will Want To Read

06 2008 Tuesday

By Bill Platt in Featured

Anyone engaged in writing articles for offline publications or online business has occasionally struggled with the question of “What to write?”

Methods To Help The Average Person To Start Writing

Maybe I am just an overly optimistic person. I have always believed that anyone committed to writing an article can write an article. The problem is that most individuals simply do not have the belief in their own skills and insight. That is the reason why we ghost writing lot will always have a job. As long as there are people who doubt their own skills or insights, I will always have a job.

One of my good friends, Clinton Douglas IV, learned the lesson of understanding that he had his own abilities and skills that he could utilize to write his own articles. He learned that he could turn his insight into literature worth reading, by simply calling his favorite ghost writer on the phone (me) and sharing his thoughts on a topic. He was always amazed how it seemed like I could read his thoughts and mind and put his thoughts to paper, even the thoughts that he did not mention specifically to me.

Most people simply don’t have a favorite ghost writer on the other end of a telephone call. For them, they should sit down to the computer and type and type and type, with little to no regard for proper spelling, grammar, or storytelling. The first draft should always be used to get one’s thoughts out of the brain and down on paper. Spelling, grammar and wording can be fixed during the editing process.

My friend Clinton utilizes this technique on occasion too. He wrote an article one time, by just spilling his brain onto the page. He wrote from his heart and got his thoughts all out of his head. When done, he sent me his final draft for editing. Sure, there were many words that were fixed, a lot of bad grammar that was corrected, and wording that was massaged, before we found the final product. Once written by him and edited, we put his “3:10 to Yuma” article out on the World Wide Web. Almost immediately, my friend Clinton started receiving compliments for his story. Many said it was very inspirational.

I believe in your ability to write your own articles, even if you do not.

Even if you can never bring yourself to write your own articles, that is fine, since we professional ghost writers are happy to write for you.

How Professional Writers Find Inspiration

When it is time to sit down to write an article, we professionals sit down and start reading. Inspiration is a thought that comes to our mind while we are reading information on our target topic. Our thought is never to rewrite what other writers are talking about. Instead, our inspired thought is often an extension of the words we read that were penned by our peers.

How many times have you been reading something written by someone else, and you felt that the author should have ventured off on a tangent that he or she left hanging? Inspiration often occurs right here in this moment, at that very intersection of this thought.

Once you know the question left unanswered by another writer, then you will have found your own direction and inspiration for writing your next article.

Answer The Unanswered Question and More…

When you want to use articles to promote your online business, it is not enough to answer the unanswered question. You actually need to venture a bit further afield and to ask yourself one very important question: Is the person most likely to buy your product or service also interested in having this question answered?

When you write for promotion purposes, you should always try to speak to the hearts and minds of the people most likely to buy what you are selling. If your potential clients are asking the same questions as you are, then you know what questions you need to answer for your readers. It is in answering questions important to your customers, where you will begin to find real success using promotional articles to promote your business.

Help your customers answer questions they want answered, and they will help you to earn the sales you need to keep your doors open to others.

Final Note About Inspiration and The Writing Process

This article began as a blog post, written in a blog I contribute to weekly (the Article Marketing Tips Blog).

I often write a blog post as my first draft of an idea. Then I massage the message to make it worthy as a promotional article, an article to be read by a larger audience.

Sometimes my first draft is an answer to someone who asked me a question about my service. I answer his or her question from the hip, then I copy-and-paste my answer to a word document and massage the copy for a public audience.

Many times, this first-draft, second-draft process has helped me to create some of the very best articles I have written. Due to the fact that my original article draft is put together as an answer to a question that one of my potential clients had, it permits me to write an article that answers a question that many of my other potential customers may also be thinking.

In answering questions for the larger audience, I have found great success for myself in article marketing. Given a little bit of motivation and commitment, you can make my processes work for you too, to build your own success online.

About The Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article distribution to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ He offers ghost writing and article marketing services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article writing success that can be found at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Article Source: thePhantomWriters Article Submission Service

How to Dominate Google Rankings; Easy as 1, 2, 3!

06 2008 Tuesday

By Scott Jason in Featured

Search engine optimization has changed a lot over the years. What worked a few short years ago can get your site banned from Google today.

Actually, let me rephrase that… Search engine optimization tricks have changed a lot over the years. But in truth, good solid SEO practices have remained stable and work better today than in years past. Why better? Because so many others keep trying to win with tricks that Google hates. This leaves you to reap the rewards of methods that Google loves!

The most important thing to realize is that Google, and other popular search engines place 90% and MORE of their ranking preferences on content and links. Keywords are still important, but only in the content of your pages; not in META tags like the old days.

It’s that simple. And just as simple is how to accomplish that top ranking…

1.) First you need to find the best keywords and place them just right in your page’s content.

2.) Next you need to find, get and manage great inbound links.

3.) Last, you need to closely monitor your progress (and your competition!)

Goal 1: Find the Best Keywords

Let’s use Google’s own keyword database to see what search terms are best to target. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and enter any keyword or keyword phrase you think your future customers are looking for. Now get ready for a LOT of great results!

INSIDER TIP; Use specific and “long tail” keyword phrases whenever possible. One of my client’s is in national floral delivery. Here’s a real example of how my business partner and I put that business at number on Google with the perfect keywords…

The client had been paying per click for the term “flowers” and barely breaking even after spending tens of thousands of dollars per month in PPC costs. We not only gave him much better targetd keywords for his pay per click campaign, at one tenth the cost, but also made jim number one for his new primary keyword using the methods described later in this article. Before we go too deep however, let’s look at the new keywords and the logic used to get there…

Instead of just the word “flowers”, which has 233,000,000 competing pages on Google, we looked at what he really wanted to attract visits for. Although there are lots of possibilities, we will stick with just one example that saves him about $35,000 per month in PPC expenses and gives him another $100,000 per month in profit. We first evaluated “send flowers”, which has 1/10th the number of competing pages. Then we asked him to try “think like people speak” (I.E./ I’m “sending flowers” to my mom.) As it turns out, a lot more people are searching for “sending flowers” than are searching “send flowers” and “sending flowers” has less than 1% of the competing web pages as the search term he started with, “flowers”. Now that’s impressive!

Use this method of keyword determination (get exact and use longer keyord phrases when appropriate) and you have will have an instant advantage over about 99% of your competitors.

Once you have your keywords selected, take the top three or four and list them in order for best to second best and so on.

Goal 2: Develop the Best Possible Content

Content is King! The ability to create search engine friendly web content, optimized for real people, is the key to your success. Modern search engines (especially Google) can read a page just like any person would thanks to natural text algorithms. Now Google can tell in nanoseconds if your web pages were pages for real people or just to get better ranking. With the following tip, you can easily do both!

Step A.) Call a good friend and tell him or her what you want to tell your web visitors. Then immediately write it down as close as you can remember it. If you can record the conversation it’s even better.

Step B.) Now simply review your text and place your top keyword as close to the beginning of the opening sentence or two as possible. Then place your next most important keyword someplace else toward the beginning of that same first paragraph. Try to get your third keyword into the last sentence or two your first paragraph or at the beginning of your next paragraph if it fits better.

Step C.) Now place just one instance of each keyword in the next few paragraphs, anywhere they fit well. So if you have six more paragraphs before the final, each keyword should be three times total (once in paragraph 1, twice in the remaining 6 paragraphs with one mention of a single keyword in each paragraph.)

Step D.) For the last paragraph, do the opposite of what you did for the first paragraph and place your least important keyword toward the beginning of the paragraph and your most important toward the end. This shows the search engine consistency of topic.

Step E.) Last but not least, don’t repeat any keyword more than four times per page and always let the text flow naturally.

Part 3: Get Great Links and Monitor Your Site

Getting and maintaining high quality inbound links typically accounts for more than 75% of today’s search engine optimization success on Google. Getting these links is the crucial step that will get you over the top and keep you there! But you also need to monitor your progress and your site’s status (not just ranking but how search engines REALLY see it). This will tell you more than just where you are but also where you are likely to be. Back in the day we did all link work and monitoring by hand. And I can telly you that it took a long time (My business partner and I spent about sixteen hours each week, per site!) My advice to you is to do what we did and find a good SEO tool that does the heavy lifting and time consuming work for you. Buying the right product is easily the best money you’ll ever spend on your site’s marketing and publicity.

As for products, there are some good ones out there. I used one called WebPosition Pro for a couple years. I ended up switching to another called SEO Elite because it has automated linking, which is the most time-consuming aspect of my SEO efforts. However, both are fantastic products for tracking and reporting.

Number 1 Pick: SEO Elite

http://www.SeoEliteWeb.com

Cost = $167 (lifetime free upgrades and no annual fees)

Personal Results: 121 top 5 rankings on Google in 3 weeks; Mostly 1’s and 2’s

Favorite Features: Finds the best link partners, including special “Authority” link partners that count for more with Google; Automates link process; Provides great Site Monitoring

Comments: I bought SEO Elite in 2005 and have used every upgrade (all are free.) I got rid of my other products since this one did a better job for me and does not have any ongoing fees.

Number 2 Pick: WebPosition

http://www.webposition.com

Cost = $389 WebPosition Pro or $149 Standard (plus $99 per year subscription fees for either)

Personal Results: 44 top 5 rankings in Google in eight weeks; Mostly 3’s and 4’s.

Favorite Features: Site Monitoring; Great reporting; Site Critic

Comments: I stopped using WebPosition because there were no automated linking capabilities and did not want to continue paying the $99 per year in ongoing fees. I did however really like the reporting.

That’s about it. Now you’re ready. Good luck!

Scott Jason has been an SEO professional since 1999 and is the founder of BestSEOcopywriting.com. Over the past nine years he has worked with hundreds of clients he has secured thousands of top placements on Google, Yahoo, MSN and more.

A Design for AI

06 2008 Tuesday

By Robert Cerff in Featured

While creating a website can either be a simple or complex procedure it is always advised that you start simple and add on from there. Once you have a basic design it is a lot easier to add in advanced functionality.Create a standard design that runs through the website, this is usually done by using base templates or include files. The search engines will read each file once per visit. What this does mean is that once the bot has cached the file it won’t need to reload it each time it views a page. More importantly this will also prevent these lines of code being replicated and taking up a good percentage of unique content on each page. Although it is now suggested that the major search engines can now recognise boilerplate content and filter it out for the most part.CSS while being valuable to human visitors as it quickly styles a page with quicker load speeds this advantage can also be carried over to the bots. It has long been speculated that the quicker a page loads the more likely the bot is to continue indexing your website. It would almost seem that a time limit is posed on each visit, the more pages the bot can index in that time frame, the better for the site.