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By Steve Shaw in Featured

Have you heard of “blank page syndrome”?

That’s when you sit down to write and the absolute blankness of the page becomes overwhelming to the point where you just can’t think of anything to write.

For a writer, there is nothing worse than starting out writing with a blank page.

I’ve heard that professional writers will purposefully end their writing day in the middle of expressing an idea, so that when they start writing the next morning they just pick up with the thought they left off on, rather than starting a new idea from scratch.

That is a writing trick that allows you to keep your momentum flowing so that you don’t have to go through “blank page syndrome”.

When you’re doing article marketing, you need to produce a steady stream of articles every month. That means that you will be writing pretty regularly, and you’ll have to find a way to contend with “blank page syndrome”.

I’ve got some good news for you–in the same way that professional writers create a cycle of writing momentum by arranging their writing so that they never (or rarely) have to look at a blank page, so you can use what I call an “article skeleton” to rid yourself of the dreaded blank page syndrome.

An article skeleton is the bare bones of a future article. It can be a title, an intro paragraph, or just a few points to more fully elaborate at a later date.

If you can get in the habit of creating article skeletons, your will relieve much stress from the writing process, make it easier to write articles faster, and even have some fun with the whole process!

Here’s how to create an article skeleton:

  1. Set aside some time to spend on brainstorming. The purpose of this session is not to write a complete article, but rather come up with several ideas for future articles.
  2. You may already have some ideas–quickly start writing down makeshift titles and major points to cover. I find that sometimes the intro paragraph writes itself. The power behind coming up with article skeletons is that the pressure is off–you do not need to do anything final. You are just coming up with ideas, possible intros, and points to cover. The ironic thing is that once there is no pressure to produce a great piece of writing, your writing will often improve along with your creativity. Many times when I look back at an article skeleton I find that I’m very happy with what I’ve written and don’t need to change a thing. Then the little bit that I have already written just propels me to finish out the article.
  3. Come up with as many article skeletons as you can–don’t spend too much time on it though. You should not be thinking too much about this or laboring over wording or crafting sentences. A good time limit for each article skeleton is about 5 minutes.
  4. Get the skeleton in place and then set it aside for a rainy day.
  5. When you sit down to write and are drawing a blank, look through your collection of article skeletons. Look at the titles and see what topic catches your attention. When you open the draft and see that you already have a head start, it’s a huge relief! It’s much easier to write the article once it’s already started.

I’ve got several dozen of these ‘article skeletons’, and it’s always a joy to open one up to find that the article is already started for me. Articles get written so much faster when you don’t have to deal with the “How should I start writing this article?” feeling.

Are you ready to kiss “blank page syndrome” goodbye? Will you try this technique of creating a reserve of article skeletons?

Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert, and founder of the popular articles submitter, SubmitYOURArticle.com, used by thousands of business owners. Discover how to use the power of article marketing to reach thousands of potential prospects for your website – download a powerful free report on successful article marketing from http://www.submityourarticle.com/report

By Riley West in Featured

As an avid user of Squidoo it became clear to me that there must be a million Squidoo lenses.

That’s what squids (Squidoo users) call a FREE domain and website at Squidoo.

Very impressive, really.

And these sites are touted as perfect for affiliate marketing, and I think they are.

Just remember to pick the right offer and keywords.

Come to think about it, it’s a little like that everywhere. After all, there IS competition.

So, just for sake of example lets say you have picked an affiliate offer from clickbank and it’s for FREE home electricity from solar panels called Solar Panels HQ. It’s purely for example but in case you don’t know this is a fairly hot topic and it will probably grow.

One of the most popular ways affiliate marketers get traffic to their offer sites is by article marketing with good, traffic producing content and the automatic SEO improvement by means of keyword text links in the authors resource box.

It’s just a GREAT two-for-one!

But there’s a catch to the great free site and domains you can get at Squidoo.

The catch 22 here is that Google will usually only show one Squidoo site in the top ten results. Sometimes, but rarely, two.

In order for Google to show YOUR Squidoo lens you’ll have to make your lens the best one in your group.

Think of it this way…Typically, Google will only pick ONE squidoo lens and ONE Ezinearticles and ONE video.

Having the product name in the title is one of the best things you can do so that Google will want to rank the site for “Solar panels.” Now, we can check out our competition! which is just another way of saying find out who we are up against.

I typed in this search in the Google search box. Type in… site: Squidoo.com “solar panels” and you will see approximately…. �Results 1 – 10 of about 21,400 for site: Squidoo.com “Solar Panels”. (0.27 seconds)�

Gee. That’s a lot. 21,000 or more sites mention “solar panels.”

So how many Squidoo sites are actually targeting that phrase?

Type in allintitle: “solar panels” site:squidoo.com – Results 1 – 10 of about 466 from squidoo.com for allintitle:”Solar panels”. (0.17 seconds)�

Well. That’s less competition. but still quite a few.

Note: I picked one a few months back that came up with 775 in this search and I’m doing OK. But I would prefer LESS!

So I typed in “Home made solar panels” and got, with the allintitle search Results 1 – 1 of 1 from squidoo.com for allintitle:”Home Made Solar panels”. (0.16 seconds)�

DUDE!!! Only ONE COMPETITOR AT Squidoo for Home Made Solar Panels! Amazon (among others) has an affiliate program for solar panels! Some of you aspiring affiliate marketers might want to get going on this!

Checking further I went to Google keywords Tool (type google keyword tool into Google search – you can learn a TON from Google searches) and got 2600 searches per month for “home made solar panels” and “home made solar panel.” You can’t get it much more targeted than that! The best key phrase would have to be “buy home made solar panels” which is a strong indicator of buying intention.

I checked the page one Google results for those terms and I saw that the results were filled with PR3 and PR4 sites.

You can handle those guys! Competition? Nada! You would want to get a few links from .gov and .edu PR 5 and 6 sites and I think you’ll soar right past them with a well targeted Squidoo lens and find yourself with the Holy Grail of Internet marketing. Which would be FREE TARGETED TRAFFIC direct to your offer by way of Google and the other search engines.

It really can’t get much better than that.

This real plan is current at 5PM Dec 24th 2009.

You might want to get moving!

Riley West has been happily telling people about simple affiliate marketing for quite a while now. The formula is Web Page with Offer + Traffic = Sales. You do need a place to put your offer, after all! See this spelled out at Squidoo Marketing and don’t miss out on the unique description of a simplified affiliate marketing plan at One Week Marketing.

By Dave Davies in Featured

website-promotionWelcome to part three of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last two articles we discussed the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO as well as an assortment of other free or affordable SEO tools. In this article we’ll discuss some of the resources you’ll want to access on a regular basis to keep up to date and informed on the goings-on in the search engine and SEO realm.

We’re doing to cover a few different types of resources below and I’m going to try to keep this article to a reasonable length so let’s begin …

By Steve Shaw in Featured

Do you ever dread sitting down to write because you’re just not sure what to write about?

When you’re doing article marketing, you need to create a steady flow of articles. You may be just getting started and haven’t gotten into a writing groove yet. Or maybe you’ve written tons of articles and are feeling like you’ve written about your topic in every way you possibly can.

I assure you–you have more creative writing ideas in you. You just need a little help in looking at your topic in a new way to come up with new writing ideas.

Use these 15 article ideas to start your next brainstorming session:

  1. Use a keyword suggestion tool such as WordTracker to look up searches that people are doing related to your topic. When you find a search term that is popular for your topic, then write an article to satisfy that term.
  2. Take a look at your website stats and see what people have been typing into search engines to reach your site. Write articles to satisfy those searches.
  3. Forums: Look at popular forums in our niche and see what topics are hot. Pick out some questions that people are asking that you think your target market might also be wondering, and then write an article that answers that question.
  4. Blogs: Start following some popular blogs in your niche, and see what topics strike a nerve with the readers. You can usually tell what topics are hot by how many comments the post has. Sometimes just looking at the comments on a topic is enough to spark ideas for new articles.
  5. Newsletters: Subscribe to newsletters in your niche and see what catches your eye. Use a compelling newsletter topic as a jump start for your next article.
  6. Google Alerts: Create Google Alerts for each of your keywords and see what other folks are writing about your topic. The idea is to just catch an idea–you can cover the same or similar topic in a new way, with a new perspective, and with different information.
  7. Solicit questions. If you have a blog or a newsletter list, ask your readers if they have any questions for you. Take the best questions and write articles that provide answers.
  8. How To articles. What can you teach your readers? Think of a specific lesson, technique, or skill that your target market needs to know in order to succeed in your niche, and then walk them step-by-step through how to do it. Numbering each step helps readers follow your instructions more easily.
  9. Top Tips articles, or any list article. All articles do not have to be in essay form–some articles can be lists. Be sure to include an intro and concluding paragraph and to choose an overarching theme that your readers would be interested in. For example, this article is a list article. My overarching theme is “article topic ideas”. All of the elements of my list contribute to that theme.
  10. Got an e-book that you’ve written? You can break your e-book(s) up into articles. You can also use your table of contents as an article idea list.
  11. Look at your newsletter messages–turn them into articles.
  12. If you’ve done any audio interviews, you can turn them into articles. Just re-listen to the interview, take notes, and then create articles based on the information you covered in the interview.
  13. Customer support replies–have you ever written a customer support reply that was so thorough, instructional, and useful that you thought you should share it with all of your readers? Some customer support replies are worthy of being turned into articles.
  14. Forum replies and blog comments. If you leave really insightful, helpful, and knowledgeable blog comments, consider turning them into articles. Now, these comments have to have some depth and meat to them. You might have to develop the idea further to make it into an article.
  15. Write a “Top 7″ article and then bounce an article off of each of the 7 items. That way you get 8 articles out of one Top 7 list!

Use this article idea list to brainstorm your next 15 (or more!) articles. How many article ideas were you able to come up with from this list?

Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert, and founder of the popular article submission service, SubmitYOURArticle.com, used by thousands of business owners. Discover how to use the power of article marketing to reach thousands of potential prospects for your website – download a powerful free report on successful article marketing from http://www.submityourarticle.com/report

By Richard Legg in Featured

If you ask the question of how to get more website traffic, you’ll often get this response – ‘go viral’.

Sounds great, but do you know what the term actually involves? How does it work, and is it effective?

That’s three solid questions that need answering, so let’s get started…

A virus, in medical terms, is something that is able to self-replicate and duplicate it’s genetic code to grow and spread. Once it does this, it becomes incredibly difficult to stop. Hence the term in the marketing world ‘viral marketing’. Offline businesses have used the concepts behind viral marketing, even before the internet was around.

Here’s the basis of how it works … you give something of value to other people for free. Whatever it is you give away has links to your website, or needs people to use your product. Through the giveaway people enjoy the product and are encouraged to pass it on to more people that they may know.

The chain of people passing it on self perpetuates, all the time with your website being a core element of the giveaway. It means your marketing message or website can be seen by a number of people that you cannot predict, and cannot control.

An effective viral marketing campaign will bring a huge amount of visitors back to your product or website, which is virtually impossible to stop!

So this all sounds good, but can it really be effective?

The simple answer is that yes it can (and does) work, and work very well – for some companies, viral traffic is the main source of traffic to their business websites.

You may choose to give away a product, a report maybe on the subject matter of your market. You may choose to give away a service, maybe providing a neat twist to a software application. You may choose to use a video, and this can really be exciting.

On the biggest and most well known video sharing site, YouTube, they give you magical help to make your video go viral. Their videos are easily shared to other users either online or through email.

You could make a short video about your subject, or even screen shots, and once you’ve uploaded it to You Tube, people have the chance to make comments on it. If you can start an argument, you’ll have people falling over themselves to watch your video!

The video is free and easy to put on other websites, which all encourages people to share the videos in anyway that they can.

After watching the video, the user is also presented with a simple button that they can click to instantly share the video with as many of their friends as they want.

This is almost too good to be true, but it is all there, and crushingly simple, quick and free to do, it just takes some of your time. Let’s not make any false claims, the first few times you do it, you’ll make mistakes and take a bit longer to produce your video, but once you get the technique sorted, you can use video to go viral, and get a huge amount more website traffic.

Richard Legg – Discover more info on how you can make money online with the my traffic business bonus site here: http://www.mytrafficbusinessbonus.org

By Neil Stafford in Featured

Website-TrafficCreating good, meaningful, content is something every Internet Marketer needs to master. These are some of the ideas and tips that I use in my own business that will help you to do exactly that.

1. Have a purpose. Of course you need great content to bring traffic to your blog or website but there is something you must do first.

It’s essential to have a goal before you start writing anything at all. You need to know what you want to get out of what you produce, whether that’s to drive more visitors to your site or to educate and inform your market.

By Eric Gruber in Featured

Instant article writing templates such as those found at StartWritingArticlesFaster.com can help you overcome writer’s block. In many cases, with the right article templates, you can write your articles in 30 minutes or less.

Notice the keywords there – “with the right article templates.”

If you do a Google search for “instant article writing templates”, “instant article templates”, “article writing templates”, “free article templates” and “article templates”— underneath my websites and my articles you find hundreds of other resources. Some sites even give you free article templates.

Heck, I even give you 3 free article templates at http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

Here’s the problem…most article templates are not designed to help you write better articles faster. Now, the creators of these article templates had good intentions. However, if you use the wrong article templates, you will find yourself even more confused.

The 3 Biggest Problems with Most Instant Article Writing Templates

1. Most article templates do not give you the structure and organization you need. In fact, here’s a sampling of what one article template provider offers…

Article Writing Template – What I Learned From….

This one is simply a bulleted list of what you have learned from any number of things or events such as what I learned from my parents, my sister, my brother, my son, my daughter, from my third grade teacher, from September 11th, from watching a TV show, etc.

Bullet 1-

Bullet 2-

Bullet 3-

And, so on…

Now, to me this is not a workable template. Templates are supposed to be worksheets that guide you throughout the process. For example, I put my “Instant Article Writing Templates” in MS Word format. Each template is in chart format. All you have to do is put the information that’s in your head and put it exactly where I ask you to. Once the template is complete, all you have to do is copy each section and paste it into a new document – and you’ll have a finished article.

2. Most article templates don’t keep you, the article writer, focused. If I don’t use my article templates, I find myself rambling, going from one topic to another. And, I’m the article writing and article marketing expert. When you have a workable template that provides you with structure and organization, your copy will automatically become more focused. It becomes an easier, better read for your readers. However, most templates like the example I showed you above do not give you a structure and organization to follow. And, they allow you to bounce from one idea to another without any kind of transition.

3. Most article template resources do not provide real article examples from a wide number of industries. If there are any article examples provided along with the article templates, you’ll just find articles that the creator wrote. So, you’ll just find Internet marketing articles that promote the creator’s other products and services. You want to look for article resources that provide actual article examples of those in your niche. For example, in my Instant Article Writing Templates Kit, I not only share with you some of my own articles, but I share with articles that are written by my clients who are authors, speakers and entrepreneurs dealing with a wide number of business, finance, relationship and parenting issues.

Again, I do not mean to mock or offend those in my industry. I just want to help you write your articles faster. Now, that you aware of the problems that most instant article writing templates have – you can choose wisely.

About the Author:

Article Marketing Expert Eric Gruber uses the power of articles to create online opportunities for Internet marketers, small business owners, authors, entrepreneurs and speakers who want more publicity, prospects and profits. Now, you can get 3 of his favorite his instant article writing templates that will help you overcome writer’s block and write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Get your free article templates now: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

By Neil Stafford in Featured

businessIf you are want to expand your product development skills, then here are my top seven tips that are quick and easy to implement. This will give you a ‘to do’ list that will help you quickly expand your business.

Whatever your topic, niche or passion sometimes learning from other market places can give you inspirational ideas. In fact if you will just walk around with your head up and your eyes wide open then you will see that opportunities are presenting themselves to you all the time.

These ideas will help stimulate some ideas for you:

By Mel Strocen in Featured

Internet marketers using article marketing as a traffic building strategy have a new tool in their arsenal. GoArticles.com, one of the Net’s largest article directories, has joined forces with Content Crooner.

12/23/09 (Castro Valley, CA)— Combine the distribution reach and power of a leading article distribution platform with the credibility and readership of one of the Net’s largest article directories, and what do you get?

More exposure, in all the right places, according to Kenneth Vogt, CEO of Content Crooner.

“GoArticles is the perfect partner for us in this venture,” explains Vogt. “Our authors are looking for widespread syndication, which we provide with our article distribution service. They also want deep exposure into particular niches, which is exactly what GoArticles offers through this new feature placement.”

The partnership allows Content Crooner’s clients to not only post their articles into the GoArticles.com directory at no cost, but to purchase additional feature placement in specific categories. This feature placement puts their articles front and center to the site’s visitors who are looking for fresh content on specific topics.

GoArticles.com sees an average of over 7 ½ million search requests a month and over 15,000 unique visitors each day, many of them looking for fresh content for their own content sites, newsletters, blogs and ezines. And those visitors find more than 500 new articles daily from ContentCrooner.com, categorized and ready for publication.

Mel Strocen, president of Jayde Online Inc. and parent company of GoArticles.com, sees huge value in this innovative partnership.

“As content syndication evolves, so do the tools to make it happen. Take an existing service like Content Crooner, build in a great exposure opportunity like the GoArticles feature, and you’ve got a perfect model for leveraging resources to maximum advantage,” says Strocen.

Current customers of Content Crooner can access this new feature directly from their account page. New customers of the article distribution service will have this feature available when they submit and distribute their first articles.

About the Company:

To learn more about Content Crooner, article marketing automation, and content syndication visit: http://ContentCrooner.com. Call the number provided to arrange an interview with Kenneth Vogt.

# # #

www.ContentCrooner.com
POC: Carol Palmatier
1-810-746-0011
20885 Redwood Rd. #307
Castro Valley, CA 94546

By Julie Ann Ross in Featured

Video SEO is a largely overlooked search marketing strategy. Even as videos continue to gain significant traction in the search engines’ natural listings, most companies either ignore them, or remain completely unaware of their potency. That oversight represents a valuable edge your company can use to leapfrog your competitors in the organic rankings.

The strategy blends traditional search optimization tactics with a relatively new platform. With the rise of YouTube, Revver, Blip, and similar video sites, consumption patterns have driven the search engines to provide these sites with greater ranking authority. As long as your primary objective is clearly established, a video SEO campaign can have a dramatic effect on your exposure in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

In this article, we’ll explain why you should integrate video SEO into your current search marketing strategy. We will also provide a few ingredients that will help you avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Last, you will learn what to look out for when choosing a video SEO company that can drive traffic and conversions.

How Video SEO Improves Your Search Exposure

Before Google released their Universal Search platform in May 2007, their natural listings were dominated by text-based pages. Videos were rare in the top positions. Universal Search changed the way Google displayed their primary index. Google, Yahoo, and Bing now include entries from their respective video search platforms. What’s more, popular video-sharing sites have been given higher ranking authority and increased link weight (we’ll describe this latter point in a moment).

Video SEO gives you greater exposure in the search engines through two levers. First, it caters to the algorithm used for Universal Search. By allowing syndication of your videos to authoritative video-sharing sites, you will enjoy more exposure through their increased ranking authority. In effect, those sites will rank higher, drawing more people to your videos.

Second, videos that are placed on your site (as opposed to syndicating them) attract links – both directly and indirectly. As your videos gain popularity, direct links will naturally build, pointing to the pages on your site that host the videos. Indirect links will point from other sites whose owners have embedded your videos. As a result, your inbound link profile will continue to grow and strengthen, lifting your site higher within the search engines’ organic listings.

3 SEO Video Tips To Capture Higher Search Positions

  1. Your video SEO campaign can only be effective if you recognize the limitations of the search engines. First, their algorithms cannot read lips. In order to rank for your target keywords, they must be available to the search engines’ spiders in text form. If you’re placing videos on your site, optimize your titles and surrounding text, and include an edited transcript of the video. If you’re syndicating them, optimize your external titles and tags.
  2. Second, focus on inbound links. An effective video SEO campaign relies on contextually related links pointing from a wide breadth of sites. Videos that spark a groundswell of attention – whether through entertainment, information, or controversy – can achieve this easily.
  3. Third, integrate a social media sharing component. You want viewers to share your videos with their friends on Facebook. You want them to “Tweet” about your videos on Twitter. You want them to bookmark your videos on StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious. These social media sites can form the backbone of your video SEO campaign, driving waves of inbound links to your site.

Key Factors In Choosing A Video SEO Company

Traditional search optimization is a mature strategy. SEO specialists have honed their craft for more than a decade. By contrast, video SEO is still an evolving science. Even though it leverages the core tenets of a traditional optimization campaign, the rise of social media and video-sharing sites has infused video SEO with enormous complexity. Hiring a video SEO company removes the need to keep up with the roiling landscape. The key is using the right criteria to identify a proficient firm.

A professional video SEO company should have an established track record that shows a keen grasp of the search engines’ organic algorithms. That track record should also demonstrate an ability to evolve as the algorithms change. Many search optimization experts were completely unprepared for the debut of Universal Search. By extension, so too, were their clients.

Leveraging Video SEO For More Traffic And Higher Conversions

A carefully executed video SEO campaign can sharply increase your exposure within the search engine’s natural listings. When implemented as a component of a multi-pronged search engine marketing campaign, it can drive more targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic translates into higher conversions. If you are not yet utilizing video SEO for your site, your current organic rankings may be more vulnerable than you realize.

About the Author:

With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Reagor Smith is on the cutting edge. Combining Social Media Optimization with more traditional SEO and SEM methods, RRS is a consulting firm specializing in enhancing clients’ online presence and managing their public relations online. SEO, SEM and ORM, Online Reputation Management, are combined in this successful formula. http://www.RostinReagorSmith.com

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