Article Categories

SiteProNews Blogs

7 Great Tips for Writing Articles that Readers Can’t RESIST!

06 2008 Tuesday

By Sharon Sarmiento in Featured

This article will give you 7 key tips for crafting an attention-grabbing article that will be welcomed by quality publishers, bring value to your readers, drive targeted traffic to your website *and* build up those precious one-way links in the process!

Let’s get started…

1) Remember who you’re writing for and why.

The object with article marketing is to write articles that bring value to your readers, that show you to be an expert on your topic, and that inspire your readers to click through to your website. Also keep in mind that your articles need to please the online publishers–after all, if your article doesn’t get picked up for publication, then nobody gets to read your article!

2) Don’t write about your website or business.

This is the part that so many article marketers struggle with! Remember, our articles are geared to meet the needs of our target readers and the online publishers. The minute your article stops sounding educational and starts sounding like an advertisement for your website, your readers will put their guard up and lose interest in your article, which is not what we’re going for! You need to take a more subtle approach. When you’re writing your articles, you are a teacher, an educator, an expert–not a salesperson!

The appropriate place to talk about your business, website or products is your author resource box.

3) Write about your area of expertise.

Your customers can be a constant source of article topic ideas. What are the top 10 questions that customers most frequently ask you? Write those questions down and create an article that answers each question. Remember, you have to be creative and subtle, because you must answer the question without mentioning your own website. Your role as the author of the article is to be a source of information, not a sales person.

4) Write ‘How To’,'7 Tips’ and ‘Top 10′ lists.

We all love a list, don’t we? Instructional ‘How To’ articles and informational ‘Top 10′ (or 7 or 5 or whatever) articles have a knack for catching readers eyes. No matter what the topic of your article, you can find a way to create a ‘How To’ or ‘Top 7′ list. This is an article writing strategy that works, so do it!

5) Always write about the topic of your website.

It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen more than a few authors who have a one track mind about article marketing–they just want to rack up the precious one-way backlinks that article marketing generates, and so they think it’s fine to write articles on any topic under the sun with a link in their resource box going back to their website on a different topic. Don’t do that!

Why? We’re not after just any type of traffic–we’re after *targeted traffic*. Targeted traffic means that the folks you lure to your website are people who would be very likely to be interested in the topic of your website. While you will never write directly about your website, you will definitely want to write about the *topic* of your website.

6) Make a great resource box.

Aha! This is the appropriate place to talk about your business. Writing a great resource box is an art in itself, but just to get you started here are a few tips:

Do include a little biographical information.
Do tell the reader why they should go to your website.
Do ask them to click.
Do customize your resource box to the article.
Do include a link to your site, but don’t go ‘link crazy’. A single link is great. Three or four links is pretty pointless.

7) Don’t forget to have a great website.

This is the part that some folks overlook. They know that in order to increase their search engine rankings for their website that they need to generate incoming links and increased exposure for their site, but what then?

There’s no real benefit to drawing readers to a site that leaves them saying, “Is that all? This isn’t of much help to me.”

So, remember to create valuable content on your website too, so that you have a quality destination to which you’re trying to draw your readers.

The valuable content on your website is also like bait that entices a reader to click through to your site. Be sure to have something on your website that will expand upon the information you’ve just provided in your article.

Article marketing isn’t brain surgery–anyone can do it! Just follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to a successful article marketing campaign!

Interested in putting these 7 tips into action? Sharon Sarmiento is an article marketing expert who enjoys teaching website owners how to write and submit articles for maximum traffic. She’ll guide you step-by-step through the article writing and submission process at the popular blog, Creative Article Marketing => http://www.creativearticlemarketing.com

Using Online PR Distribution Services to Your Advantage

06 2008 Friday

By Susan L Reid in Featured

You have something fabulous to announce to the world! So, what online press release distribution service do you use?

With so many to choose from, it’s hard to know where to start. If you do a search for newswire services it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the possibilities. You might either give up or go overboard, spending lots of unnecessary money and duplicating your efforts.

Before you do either, first consider what you want your press release to do for you. Do you want it to be primarily a public relations tool to get your news out? Or would you rather that it be a search-marketing tool that can provide search-engine visibility and target prospects? If you’re thinking like a savvy businesswoman, the answer is: both.

You will gain excellent visibility if you:

- Optimize your press release through the strategic use of keyword-rich headlines and body copy.

- Include extensive links back to your website or specific landing page.

- Distribute your release through the right online newswire services.

When you optimize your press release, it will also be indexed quickly in the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Also, each time your release is picked up by another website, it also creates a link back to your site.

Once you’ve decided what you want your press release to do for you, the next step is to determine which online newswire service (or combination of more than one) you want to use. Would a free service be best, or would a paid service be better?

Free PR Distribution Services

Some of these newswire agencies are free. Others offer free basic services and then charge fees for expanded services. Fees range from $20 to over $200 and are generally used by small to medium-sized online businesses.

- www.i-newswire.com

- www.pressbox.co.uk

- www.pr.com

- www.prleap.com

- www.prlog.com

- www.prweb.com

- www.theopenpress.com

- www.24-7pressrelease.com

PR Web is on the leading edge of online news releases and is geared towards optimized press releases.

Paid PR Distribution Services to Consider

Most of these paid services offer multiple payment options, depending on your distribution preferences. Commensurately, their services are more expensive ($500 to $700 per 400-word release and can include an annual membership fee of $100+). These are the newswire services that tend to be used by traditional PR agencies for their corporate clients.

- www.businesswire.com

- www.ereleases.com

- www.eworldwire.com

- www.internetnewsbureau.com

- www.marketwire.com

- www.massmediadistribution.com

- www.pressrelease365.com

- www.prnewswire.com

- www.send2press.com

- www.urlwire.com

- www.xpresspress.com

PR Newswire is the world leader in the electronic delivery of news releases and information directly from companies, institutions, and agencies to the media, financial community, and consumers.

Choosing your online press release distribution service doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It’s easy, once you know what you want your press release to do for you. If you just want to get your announcement out, then consider a free PR distribution agency.

If you’d like to be included in major search engines, generating links and targeting prospects, then an expanded fee newswire agency will serve you well. For the highest exposure and maximum visibility, you can’t beat the service of a paid PR distribution

agency. They will get your news seen at the top of major search engines, and their RSS/XML feeds will get your news distributed to thousands of interested journalists.

Take the time now to review the options and decide which PR distribution service is best for you. This way, you’ll leverage your press releases to greatest advantage and position your business for success.

Business Coach & Consultant for entrepreneurial women starting up small businesses, Dr. Susan L Reid is the author of “Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success.” For ideas, tips, and support for your business journey, sign up here for our free e-Zine.

Two Words That Could Make Or Break Your Website

05 2008 Thursday

By Michael Tasker in Featured

Quite simply, it doesn’t matter if you have a blockbuster product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that it exists, forget it, you are not going to attract traffic and make sales. If that happens, then you don’t have a business.

While there are many methods and schemes used by so many websites today, there is still one reliable method that can help you with an extra boost in the constant requirement to attract trageted traffic.

Welcome To Viral Marketing

While the term viral may easily depict a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, do not worry. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares. Viral marketing is legitimate, effective and accepted by the online community as one of the best ways of raising awareness of your website and products.

What Is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of a product or company. It is the use of several forms of media to reach out to potential customers without actually promoting the product. Advertising without directly advertising the product or service.

In a nutshell, in the big wide world of advertising companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and thus open it as well.

This is all very well with large companies with huge advertising budgets, but how can the power and effectiveness of viral marketing help the owner of a website with the promotion of their product of service?

Using Viral Marketing To Your Advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers, ie targeted traffic. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Websites and companies are catching on to the effectivity of viral marketing. Not using it could end your website business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

How To Use Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing is a great way to get people to know about your website. One of the most cost effective means of viral marketing (don’t forget it can be free) is writing articles. In the resource box of your article will be the information about your website. Your article gets distributed and hence your website information then spreads among those who have expressed an interest in what you are writing about.If their interest is stimulated enough, they will then go to the website address that you have given in the resource box and thus, you have a targeted visitor to your website.

Other forms of viral marketing include blogging, becoming active in forums by leaving messages and replies for the particular niche that your website is pitched to, press releases, even utilising the power of Youtube. The more you think about this, the greater the avenues for viral marketing appear.

Viral marketing undertaken in different formats and targeted correctly can create a continual flow of targeted interested visitors to your website who will be more inclined to spend than a casual visitor. And never forget that one of the major benefits of viral marketing is that as a means of targeting your advertising message, using many of the methods it can be free.

Michael Tasker started his information product business last year and it has now expanded to various websites plus direct marketing channels as well. He learned by utilising the extensive quality references that he sourced plus following the advice of those that had already succeeded. He was mentored as anyone who has ambitions to succeed with online marketing should be. Simply put, he followed a tried and tested formula that others had used to succeed.
Find your stepping stones to your work at home internet business success at
http://www.goodbyemoneyworries.com

Turbo-Charge Your Traffic with the Simple Power of Words

05 2008 Tuesday

By Dave Foster in Featured

You have to admit, at no time in the past has it been easier to earn money from writing than it is today… thanks to the power of the internet!

I’m not talking about being paid to write, which (unless you’re Stephen King or J. K. Rowling) is pretty much perceived as a minimum pay service. I’m talking about leveraging your written words to draw readers (like a magnet) to a website that you own, from where you can market, sell and resell numerous information products for profit.

Like everything online, success depends on one thing and one thing only… volume of traffic (ie: the number of people who see your site).

It has emerged that one of the most proven and cost effective traffic generation methods available to website owners also happens to be the one task that most website owners try to avoid… that is writing articles.

Yet, writing articles is one of the very best ways to create a constant flow of targeted traffic to your website. With a little effort and a sound, repeatable formula, you can easily write articles that are guaranteed to:

A: Draw traffic to your website

B: Create Ad copy to sell you products

C: Strengthen your presence and credibility on the internet

Using the following techniques can gain the attention of the search engines and get your products and ideas noticed by real people at the same time.

There’s no mystery about the basic structure for writing articles. Each one should have a beginning (the lead), a middle (the content) and an end (the conclusion)… not too difficult is it?

There is however one added ingredient you need to ensure that your writing is picked up by the search engines and subsequently attract a steady flow of traffic. That extra ingredient is ‘Targeted Keywords’.

Please don’t be put off by the idea of writing an article structured around keywords. The process is very straight forward… you can click on the link in the resource box at the end of this article to view a short video which explains the step by step process in more detail.

Once you’ve done your keyword research and have a final list of words or phrases you want to use throughout your piece, do the following:

1. Use your keyword (or keyword phrase) once in the title

2. Use your keyword (or keyword phrase) once in the lead

3. Use your keyword (or keyword phrase) a couple of times in the first paragraph

4. Use your keyword (or keyword phrase) in a scatter pattern throughout the content of the piece

5. Use your keyword (or keyword phrase) once in the conclusion

Using this basic structure (keyword-focussed title, lead, content and conclusion) will guarantee that your article gets the attention of search engines and also human readers.

This sure-fire structure is your most effective traffic generator yet, but wait, there’s one more thing! A secret weapon which almost no one else on the internet is using… it’s your local library.

A visit to your library to find material you can use within your article structure gives you a massive offline advantage over just about every other internet marketer or writer.

You see, if people are writing articles which include the keywords “japanese garden” for example, and conduct research purely online, they are highly likely to see other very similar articles written by people doing exactly the same research.

Taking your research offline, using books, newspapers and magazines for your source information, provides a totally new perspective which is far less likely to be seen in other online articles, putting you way ahead of the competition.

Use that research material together with your keyword-focussed article writing structure to produce something in the range of 400-600 words and you have your article.

Now, don’t panic, writing 400-600 words is no big deal. Think of it like this. One double-spaced page with a one-inch margin all around will hold about 200-250 words. If you’ve done your research and taken notes, the chances are that you have more than enough ideas and information to fill a minimum of two such pages.

Using the previous example “japanese garden”, you could then title your article “Seven Steps to Japanese Garden Heaven”. Okay, maybe not the sharpest title, but it would certainly tell human readers (and the search engines) what your article is about.

Take the research you’ve done and split it into seven major benefits for people searching online for information to help them create their own Japanese Garden.

Your lead might be something like this: “Imagine the calm and simple serenity you could enjoy strolling through your very own Japanese Garden…”

Then take each of the seven steps you mentioned in the title and turn each one into a section for your article. If you want a short piece, make each section one paragraph long. If you want something more substantial, make each section two or three paragraphs long.

When you reach the conclusion do these two things:

1. Sum up your article’s lead or title in your final paragraph (including the keyword or keyword phrase)

2. Quit!

Use this basic structure for writing articles and you’ll find it amazingly easy to create very successful, keyword-focussed material that will bring visitors flocking to your website — even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer!

Find out more about how articles can turbo charge your website traffic by clicking on the FREE video link in the resource box below.

Dave Foster owns and operates the “Solo Profits” blog and podcast, helping to guide individual entrepreneurs and home-based business owners to online success. Draw upon the wealth of solo business information at the “Solo Profits” blog - Here ==> http://www.soloprofits.comDiscover more about turning your words into traffic right here: ==> http://www.soloprofits.com/turnwordsvideo.html

Using Rebrandable Ebooks to Build Your Opt-In List

05 2008 Monday

By Willie Crawford in Featured

Webmasters and ezine publishers scramble daily to find fresh content on hot topics for their websites and ezines. They want to give, or sell, this information to their insatiable audiences.

Knowledge grows exponentially, and there is a huge demand for the latest of that knowledge to be summarized into digestible pieces. Ebooks are a great way to distribute that information while creating a list-building virus.

Ebooks are big with website owners and ezine publishers. They have a much higher perceived value that just articles although ebook are often little more than collections of articles.

Discover Secrets to Gain Fortunes Eliminating Writer’s Block, Forever

05 2008 Thursday

By Dan Lok in Featured

Book publishing, information publishing, however it’s called. It can create a wealth of fortune for you.

However, what most people understand about publishing means they have to do something big. They have to be really knowledgeable about the subject they want to publish. They had to be real good with writing.

But when does writing have to be a hard thing?

Here’s why: Long have we tried to write, and time after time we experience what we call writer’s block. The fact is, writer’s block can never have to be a problem at all - as you’ll learn why in a while.

Then, the world never cares whether you’re knowledgeable about something, they care when you’ve delivered to them in a value of some kind. Why do you think someone would want to buy a book from you? They wanted to learn something they can change their lives in, and further improve their quality of lives as well.

Here’s where researching comes in—but we’re not speaking about the average research. Sometimes people think research is a difficult feat requiring hours upon hours of effort, but with what you’re going to learn from me in later articles, you’ll find researching a petty little task to do, and you can create greater results from my technique!

We’ll talk about writer’s block here.

You see, the only reason why you have writer’s block is because you’re editing. It’s summed up in this one sentence.

Whether or not you’re editing doesn’t matter, but when you feel a block of your mind from writing amazing words, it’s because you’re giving yourself judgment over your writing process. It doesn’t have to always be this way.

And here’s a secret to eliminate writer’s block forever if you would but understand its true value and use it:

Write FAST. Write really, really fast.

I will teach you how to do this even clearly on the next subsequent articles I will be sharing with you which you can find on my web site, but right now here’s the most important thing you need to eliminate writer’s block forever.

To quote one of the world’s current greatest science fiction writers of all time, Isaac Asimov (featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for his prolific writing), here’s what he says when asked by a reporter what his secret is to becoming such a prolific writer: “I guess I’m prolific because I have a simple and straightforward style.”

Little did people really deciphered the true meaning behind his quote.

The way you can really have a simple and straightforward style is to write the way you talk… and if you want to write the way you talk, you better write fast because that’s the little trigger to unlocking your amazing writing abilities to have your readers feel as though you’re talking to them.

You know what they say? The best books in the world always makes it feel as if the reader is involved in the picture.

Well this is one of the biggest secrets to writing a book fast and publishing one you can sell on the Internet, or have them racked upon the booths of book stores you visit in the next few weeks, or months.

Believe it or not, you could publish your own book in 2 weeks and use it to change your life forever.

If you want to learn the subsequent chapters to really write fast, and how to use what you’ve written to create a multi-million information publishing business online even though you’re just an average person, be sure to wait or discover the next articles coming up for you.

A former college dropout, Dan Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to a multi-millionaire. Dan came to North America with little knowledge of the English language and few contacts. If you’re ready to take your online business to the next level, go to: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/more.html

Against the rules - hints about how to create text for a website

05 2008 Monday

By Adam Nowak in Featured

I am sure that many people wonder what the secret of filling up a website with its content is. The recipe seems to be quite simple - clarity and an appropriate outline are crucial. However, there is one thing you cannot forget about. Those who have never published texts or documents outside the Internet will find it easier, as they do not have to get rid of their old habits while learning the new art of website publishing. In contrast, experienced publishers will have to agree that clarity and simplicity do not mean the same as they did in the past. Filling in a website with text is against the rules and principles which they regarded as a strong point of their work until now.

Knowing the audience

The most important thing to be remembered is that a web page contains messages for a particular group of people. The content is to satisfy the informational hunger of our potential website users.

The more we know about them, the easier it is to adjust the texts for their needs. For example we can do the following things:

* choose topics in such a way that they would be really interesting for our audience;

* arrange those topics, so that it would be easier to find them on the page;

* construct the text using the language of our users, not one of experts;

* choose the style of writing that is suitable for the reader;

* set up a form of communication - contrary to other media, the Internet allows us to use a more informal style on our webpage. It is up to us to establish the grade of familiarity, but in order to do it properly, you need to have thorough knowledge about the users.

In everyday situations, we pay attention to the way people react to what we say. In such a situation, we choose our words, tone and style of speaking to show our appreciation for the other speaker. We create a message that builds trust. Difficult as it may seem, our webpage needs to build the same familiarity. We have to guess what people think about us, how we should address to them and what they want to listen to.

Scanner or reader

The text screened on the monitor is less absorbed by the human eye. That is why it reads 25% slower than a text written on paper. Moreover, too many websites found by the search engine are not related to what the reader is looking for and they do not want to read them.

Therefore, we have to prepare our text in such a way, that it convinces the readers as early as the first glance, to read it and then to search through our service. Hereafter, little advice on the subject is presented.

1. Structural construction of the text

While preparing a text that is to be published on the Internet, we think about its structural construction. We start wondering about the template that is to be filled in. For example, if we edit a text about a company’s products, we prepare a scheme of the description. It can look like this:

Name of product Problem Solution Product’s function Benefits Price

The next step is to describe all the products by filling up the same template. Be consistent and try not to change the template for similar items. The reader will expect to find the same schema on each and every page describing all the products.

2. Reduce the text, as nobody will read it

If you want to be sure that someone will read your text, write less! Let’s reduce our text by its half preserving only the main core.

All important information, that is not closely related to the core, should be moved to the additional material. It is better to do it this way, because as we already know, Internet users rarely read long texts. Try to put each new thought into a separate paragraph, but do not make them too long. It is crucial with a reference to the above mentioned remark about scanning the text before reading. Short paragraphs will make it easier to evaluate the usefulness of the text for a particular person. The ideal paragraph consists of two or three sentences

3. Text easy to scan

As research shows, 79% of Internet users scan a page and eventually read it afterwards. Therefore, the headlines informing about the text’s content should be clearly designed. Using headlines and subheadings should be of primary importance while writing such a text. If you need to highlight one part of a text or a word, use bold type. It is the best solution. Do not use capital letters, italics or underlining (in the Internet, the last one is used for marking linked pages). If you highlight using a colour, be consistent and use the same colour every time. Do not exaggerate with highlighted items. It is enough to use it in one or two phrases per one paragraph. If you want to mark many elements of the text, you can put them into a list, but try not to make it a very long one. It is acceptable that the list is not longer than nine points and has no more than two levels of indentation for each point. If the list is long, it is worth dividing it into sections, each of them having a headline. As much as it is possible, let’s help our reader imagine the data and use charts, diagrams and graphs.

4. Paragraphs - short and pithy. Text - written from the end.

Remember that each paragraph is the beginning of a new thought. Therefore, press Enter each time you start a new thought. It would be suitable that a paragraph is given to one problem and answers one user’s question. Start with the easiest information and then move to the new and more complicated kind. Do not forget that the text is to be published on a website. Therefore, put conclusions and the most important information at the beginning of the text, so that it is faster to find out what the text is about and it could make the reader read it in full. Do not keep users in suspense. As a rule they are lazy and expect simple and quick information.

Turn the content on its head. Contrary to text published on paper, start with a summary or conclusions. The Internet user should know in advance what is interesting for him in the text. We have to remember, that our reader will, first of all, scan the text and only then may become its reader.

As we can see, meeting the expectations of our Internet readers is not easy, but still possible. What is important, we can ask ourselves whether what we have created on the website would interest us as Internet users. If we have any doubts about it, it is better to start everything from the beginning and once more have a look at the presented hints.

This article was translated by mLingua Worldwide Translations, Ltd. mLingua provides professional language translations in all major Western and Asian languages, software localization and web site translation services. Please visit http://mlingua.pl

How To Make Money On The Internet By Selling Ebooks Of Your Own

05 2008 Wednesday

By admin in Featured

It is incredible what lengths people will go to in an attempt to have success online without using any of their own ideas or products.

People are willing to go out of their way to buy pre-made web sites, purchase or find free ebooks to promote, and place affiliate links on their site to sell other people’s products. But if you really want to make money on the internet, try selling ebooks of your own.

I discovered this very fact out for myself. Much like many other entrepreneurs on the internet, I was moving along ok and making a few bucks here and there, but I certainly was not making the BIG bucks.

And that is when I realized what all of the top internet marketers were doing!

If you pay attention closely to some of the top internet marketers, you will notice that they all have their own products and ebooks to promote. i.e. They are all selling ebooks of their own.

There is no secret to their success. They were willing to put in the time to create fresh and enticing products.

There are far too many sites on the internet that have created duplicate content that is written in different wording. Unfortunately, most internet surfers can identify the same content that has been slightly altered. But if you can create something new, something that nobody else has touched on, or give a subject a different slant, you can have success.

There is nothing wrong with taking an idea that has already been created and going in a different direction with it. In fact, this can give people a different view of the topic. But the important thing is that you include new information and fresh tips and techniques on how to do something. If you can do this, you will sell ebooks that can bring you in a very tasty second (or even main) income.

Once you have ebooks and info products of your own, you can open up a whole new world of internet marketing. These are your ideas you can promote meaning nobody else has touched on them in just the same way. There are not hundreds of other people already approaching the idea in the same way as you are. But eventually there could be hundreds of other people promoting and selling YOUR ebook.

It is a completely different story once you have people promoting and selling ebooks for you because you are getting the credit.

Selling ebooks that are not yours can be difficult because you are selling other people’s ideas. It certainly is not easy coming up with fresh ideas and creating an ebook, but it is far more rewarding and much easier to sell.

So the secret behind selling ebooks is writing your own first. While it can be difficult creating your own ebook, (unless you have a good teacher), it can be even more difficult to sell someone else’s.

Save yourself the trouble and gain more recognition by writing and selling your own ebook.

Writing and selling ebooks of your own is now EASY! Check out the 6 week course that is changing lives! http://www.InfoProductsMadeEasy.com

Discover The Top 3 Crucial Tips You Must Know To Create Powerful Headlines and Stop Losing Sales

04 2008 Monday

By Jennifer Horowitz in Featured

Your website copy has several very important jobs. The first and most important job is to draw readers into your site. Additionally it has to answer questions, sell your product or service, get people to join a mailing list and more.

To make sure you are writing power copy that is sure to grab your prospects attention and make them beg for what you have, I am going to share some copywriting tips and secrets.

Let’s get started with the first and most important element…

Headlines like this one:

“Discover The Top 3 Crucial Tips You Must Know To Create Powerful Headlines and Stop Losing Sales”

With only a few seconds to grab the attention of your site visitor and pull them into your site, your headline is the most important element of your website.

Many people think of their website as a store, and they open with “Welcome.” After all if you have a store and someone walks in, you are going to welcome them to your store. This is a mistake for websites. Let me explain.

When someone lands on your site, they are not actually in your store yet. They are standing outside your store - they are looking at the sign and the window display and trying to decide if they want to come in.

Your headline is your sign and your window display - it is what has to entice visitors to come in and browse.

It is only once they start reading your copy and checking out what you have to offer (clicking other links, looking at pictures etc) that they are actually in your store.

So, you could have great copy, wonderful products or services at great prices, an exciting offer or breaking news and it just doesn’t matter unless people read it.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking your site doesn’t need a headline. It may not be a “sales letter site”; you may look at it as a catalog site or an information brochure site - but either way it doesn’t matter. You need a compelling headline to get people to come in and look around.

A lot of time, effort and research (testing) have gone into writing the perfect headline. Please remember that you should test different headlines and see what works for you. To get you started, here are the Top 3 things you must know….

1. You may be familiar with AIDA. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. It means you have to remember to: capture your reader’s attention, arouse their interest, increase their desire and lead them to take some kind of action. All are important pieces of the puzzle. You have to remember with a headline, the action you want them to take at this point is just to keep reading. Let’s explore increase their desire. What that really means is to elicit an emotional response from them. People buy based on emotion. In addition to desire, another great motivator is fear. In face, fear of loss is a greater motivator than desire to gain.

Balancing SEO Against The Needs of Your Article’s Audience

04 2008 Thursday

By Hunter Waterhouse in Featured

Article marketing continues to be a proven method for generating traffic to our websites and developing good search placement, even after all of these years. I have been reading articles online since 1995, and I continue to read a few dozen articles per week on subjects that are dear to my heart.

Some Claim That Article Marketing Does Not Work

Now and again, I will read a thread in a forum somewhere where somebody claims that article marketing does not work.

Some article-marketing critics will admit that they have only distributed only one or two articles. Well yeah, I can see why article marketing did not work for them - because they did not work at making article marketing profitable for them.

Article marketing is like any other method of advertising. If you don’t make a real investment in it, then you cannot reap great rewards from it.

The Marketing Rule Of Seven

Advertising professionals speak of the “Marketing Rule Of Seven,” which suggests that a consumer must see your marketing message at least seven times before they start to pay attention to your message. The pros also suggest that once seven exposures have been achieved, the consumer will make a subtle, subconscious connection to the advertiser. Recognition brings rewards, in that after seven exposures to an advertisement, consumers will start to feel as if they know enough about the advertiser to trust their sales message.

If television, radio and print advertisers understand that a company’s sales message must be seen or heard at least seven times, then why would you - the Internet marketer - think that you can write a single article and see the full benefit of the medium?

Successful Article Marketing Requires A Commitment To The Reader

All commerce on the Internet is driven by information, such as written sales messages and information about products and services. Some websites also benefit from generic information concerning topics that their potential clients will be interested in reading. For example, if a website sells plumbing supplies, the consumer may find the availability of information about how to remove the old fittings and how to install the new plumbing equipment, as an essential element of their purchase decision.

Article marketing when done correctly will not be a boring, blathering of search engine optimized keywords related to a product or service line.

Article marketing, when done well, will provide information that will be of real interest to the person most likely to buy what you are selling.

For example:

If you are selling auction services, give the reader tips to help them make more money from the sale of their goods in the auction environment or how a buyer can find a good deal.

If you are selling auto warranties, tell the reader how to uncover the best value in an auto warranty plan and what features to seek.

If you are selling resume services, give the reader advice on how to write their own resume.

Article marketing when used well can help a company establish itself as an expert in the field, and it can help show a reader why hiring the author’s service might be better than a do-it-yourself project. As an example, with the resume advice article, once the reader sees how comprehensive your knowledge is and how detailed a resume should be, the reader may just decide that using your resume writing service will be much more productive than the do-it-yourself resume.

Just Like Lawyers, Writers Specialize Too

Beyond the cost of labor, content development is usually the second most expensive expenditure made by the online vendor. It is important to note that just as there are lawyers who specialize in one area of law, there are also ghostwriters who specialize in certain types of content creation.

People who write sales copy are referred to as “copywriters.” Copywriters are people who understand the nuances of how to make people buy what you are selling.

They understand that replacing a single word in the sales copy could mean the difference between lukewarm sales numbers and red-hot sales numbers, and they know which words to change.

Some professional copywriters have a proven track record of writing sales copy that has generated millions of dollars in sales - people such as Frank Kern, Dan Lok, and Joe Vitale. These guys know the value of their copywriting skills, and they charge accordingly. If you ask them to write sales copy for you, don’t be surprised when they quote you a price in the range of $5-20 per written word.

Other writers might specialize in writing books, brochures, and articles. Some writers specialize in the smaller word counts, like the folks who write greeting cards and book jackets.

Finding The Best Writer For Your Needs

The kid down the street who writes part-time for the newspaper may or may not be the best person to write your online articles for you. One reason is that people who write for offline publications seldom appreciate the importance of keywords in an article for search engine marketing purposes.

Note this article for example. Our purpose is to show you how you can use article marketing as a successful marketing tool for your business. We also want to show how the articles should appeal both to the reader and the search engine algorithms.

With these thoughts in mind, when you are finished reading this article, read it a second time to see how many variations on the following SEO keyword phrases can be found in this article: article marketing, search engine marketing, keywords, advertising, content creation, writers and copywriting. Of course, copywriting is not the kind of writing we do, but people who do not understand the specialization of writing skills might type “copywriting” or “copywriters” into their favorite search engine to find someone who writes informational articles.

One never knows precisely what the public will use as their search keywords when they go to the search engine to find information. That is the very reason why a good online article writer must strive to showcase a range of similar keywords within the context of an article.

Your Article Marketing Strategies Influence Your Overall Success

We know that some people tell you that the only reason to write an article is to get a link back to your website. What most of these people don’t tell you is that most websites that accept reprint articles do so, only after a human has reviewed or at least scanned the article.

An article that does not read well will never be published on a top-tier website. Yes, some websites may accept a poorly written article, but more sites will only accept well-written articles.

A reader who is not impressed with your article will seldom reach your resource box, so the link back in the resource box can only give value to your website from the search engines - maybe. The search engines generally only give value to articles on good websites or those placements that have lots of links pointing to the article within the website. Bad articles don’t get published on good websites, and they do not attract links.

As the Marketing Rule Of Seven should indicate, multiple articles generate a long-term wave of new links and potential visitors to your website.

Consistency is also important to a successful article marketing campaign, in that releasing weekly articles will enable your readers to see your marketing message regularly.

Finally, the smart use of a variety of related keyword phrases will strengthen the ability of your article to appeal to the search engines and the people who use them.

If you can balance the needs of your article’s audience against your need for search optimized content, then you can benefit handsomely from your article marketing campaigns.

Hunter Waterhouse is a ghostwriter and editor. Put his name in quotes and run it through your favorite search engine, to see the quality of the websites that have published his articles, and you will know that Hunter knows what he is talking about when it comes to article marketing. If you need ghost written articles, visit: http://www.reprintwriters.com If you have hired anyone to ghostwrite articles for you, confirm their honesty and the uniqueness of your articles, with the free Plagiarism Check Tool.

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »