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Make it Interesting -- for Real People Like all web content, articles should be written with two audiences in mind: the Search Engines, and the Real People who you hope will read them. For the real people in your audience, look for a snappy, interesting angle on your subject matter, and give it a catchy title. One of my most read, most indexed articles is called "Vinyl Banners don't get no respect". Even though this is about a relatively obscure product, this article has been picked up by a number of websites, and has been read hundreds of times. Think of the free publicity it has given the company. Another example is "Free Business Cards mean Big Profits". This is another article about a "niche" product -- business card displays -- but it is aimed squarely at the "business opportunity" folks, and the appeal to "free" and "big profits" gets them every time. Always include a "resource box" at the end of your article. Make it as clear as possible who you are, what your "credentials" are, and include links to your site and your contact email address. Write for the Search Engines too Your other audience is that group of super-beings called the Search Engines -- especially Google. Once your article is written and posted in a number of article directories, you will want to submit it to Google, Yahoo, and a number of other engines. So write it so it will rank as high as possible for your "most important key words" (MIKW"s). There are some important techniques you can use to get good ranking, and I can't give them all away here. But here is a quick summary:
Distributing your articles Getting your articles to publications, ezine directories and article indexes can be a very time-consuming task. One of the best tools available for this is Jason Potash's Ezine Announcer. This is a very complete article submission tool that lets you enter your article once and submit it to many different sites semi-automatically. The program also comes with a regularly updated database of directories and indexes. It is hard to describe how much information Ezine Announcer contains, and how much it can help you, but take my word for it, Ezine Announcer is worth buying. Of course, you may not be terribly confident in your own writing skills, or may be too busy running your business to think about this stuff. If that's the case, drop me a line and I'll give you an idea how we could get an article writing program going for your business. ----------------------------------------- Rick Hendershot is based in Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He has spent many years as an advertising consultant, and small business owner. He currently publishes several small business websites and ezines, and provides web design and online marketing services to small business owners wanting to jump start their online marketing efforts. He can be reached at rh@small-business-online.com. For more information, contact |
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