Article submission is one of the best SEO strategies but it is also one of the hardest to do well.  It really isn’t that hard, it is just that most people do not do it correctly.  Here are some tips on article submission that will serve you very well.

1:  Register with valid E-Mail:  Almost all the good article sites require that you not only register but confirm your e-mail address.  The good ones won’t spam you so you needn’t worry about that.  They will send you information on your article such as approval or denial and that is information you need to know anyway.  Almost all the good sites require that you become a member as well.  It is almost always free,  if it isn’t, find another site.

2:  You must write good and relevent articles:   Article submission sites have a philosophy of give and take.  If you give them good relevent content (your give) then you can take a free high quality link from their site (your take).  To get your article listed your article must contain relevent information.  You can of course, promote your product of service but if your article does not contain information relevent to your industry it won’t get published.  All good article sites have an approval process,  if you send them a PR piece, they won’t run it.

3.  Pick 3 or 4 good article sites:  Most peoples first thought it to bombard 1000 article sites but this will not help you and can even hurt.   Search engines don’t like to see massive amounts of duplicate content and may devalue your site it you do this.   Bombarding article sites with 1000 submissions worked well for about three months 8 years ago.  Search engines caught on quick and took measures to prevent it.  Remember that an article site wants unique content that can not be found everywhere else.

4. Don’t use article submission software.  It doesn’t work as SEO   I know that it is tempting to think that having your article on 1000 directories will help,  it won’t.  Good article sites require that you create an account and submit manually.  Good sites do not allow automatic submission.  Manual submission can be time consuming.  Remember,  good article sites don’t want it to be to easy, they want dedicated and professional writers.  If it was as easy as clicking a button in submission software everyone would be doing it that way.  Search Engines hate to see the same article in 1000 places,  they know that it is an SEO trick and will catch it immediately.  You aren’t going to fool Google, Yahoo, and MSN.  They have teams of people who are constantly refining the way their search algorithm works.

5. Read the guidlines on the article site:  Yes, this is time consuming but article sites often have very different guidlines on where you can put links and how many.  Many only allow a link in the resourse box (a text box that the article author can use for a brief bio or links).   If you do not follow the guidlines they will send you a nice e-mail telling you that your article was rejected and why. I have been guilty of not reading the guidlines myself, I got rejected but fixed the problems and was then approved.

6.  Submit to the correct category:  Most article sites categorize their articles because their subscribers only want to be notified about articles that are in a particular market segment.  If your article is in the wrong category, it won’t get picked up.  Good article sites have a very large group of categories to choose from.

7.  Deep Links (links to a page other than homepage):  If you are writing about a particular subject and you have additional information on your site, link to that page instead of your home page.  This allows people to go directly to the information they need.  Search Engines like this practice because it improves efficiency and an orderly flow of information.  Play nice with Search Engines and you will get the higher rating that you want.

8.  Be patient:  All SEO takes time,  it can be frustrating,  often it takes alot of time for your article to appear.  It must first be approved, then the search engines have to index the article site, they they must index any other sites that pick the article up.  Count on a month and a half minimum.

9.  Monitor your submissions:  Some article sites may not approve your articles or they may not get picked up by anyone.  If this happens, move on to another directory.  Some directories are more dominant in certain industry segments than others and they are not about to tell anyone which ones.  So, the only way to succeed is to keep at it and find your best article sites through process of elimination.

Yes, it is time consuming but the end result is higher ranking in search engines and higher traffic to your site.  Lots of people do not take the time to do SEO properly.   If you do,  you will have the advantage.

Which is better, SEO (marketing) or Advertising ?   That is a question that I often get from people who are trying to get traffic to their site.  It’s a good question.

The answere,  You need to do both,  here are the major reasons why

1.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be done for free.   You would be crazy not to take advantage of it.  Free marketing is great but search engine competition is high so make sure you do your SEO carefully. SEO can also take many months to be indexed by search engines.

2.  Advertising isn’t free but it is instant:  Unlike SEO Marketing, Web advertising is instant,  you message can be put on tens or thousands of sites within 4 hours (our network includes over 80,000 sites) and you can get guaranteed traffic.  The increased traffic will also help your sites rating.  Remember, Web Sites are also judged by Search Engines according to how much traffic they get.

3.   Search Engin Marketing only gets your name in front of people who are searching for it:   Lots of people buy things or become interested in things through advertising.  If people don’t know about a product, they can’t search for it.  That being said, people who click through to your site via a search engine are well qualified customers.

4.  SEO is effective but very time consuming:  To do SEO properly you need to vigilantly watch your backlinks, manually submit to directories, write and manually submit newsworthy press releasese, write and maually submit and write excellent information articles, and meticulously optimize your web pages for keyword density.   Advertising takes no time at all and someone else does the work for you.

5.  Advertising creates valuable information:  When you advertise, you get a report on where people are coming from,  that tells you a lot.  Everyone thinks they know who their market is, but often they really don’t.  In knowing what type of sites your clicks are coming from you will better know who your online customer is.  It may not be the type of customer you think you should be marketing to.

6:  Advertising helps refine your marketing message:  When you purchase text ad advertising you can enter in an unlimited number of text ads all with different text and a different markeing message.  You get a report of which ads are being clicked on which will tell you which message is connecting with the public.  This information is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT.  Just to get this data is worth the advertising cost alone.  It tells you exactly what your customers are looking for.  You can use this data to further refine your SEO and to make changes to your site and other advertising messages so they are more effective.

These are just some of the reasons why you need to do both.  Any effective marketing strategy is going to include both SEO and web advertising.   You simply can’t get it all done one way.

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