My goal here is to offer you enough info to get started, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed.

Still, there’s a lot of info here–Don’t feel like you need to read this all at one sitting.

Skip around to the bits you are most interested in, and you can come back to this page at any time as you need more information.

Submitting Articles To SubmitYOURArticle.com:

The Super-Duper, Ultimate, Explicitly Spelled Out Guide For How To Submit Your First Article – you might want to print this off or bookmark this resource, because it goes over every field in the Enter Your Article page, and when you’re first getting started you might have a few “what is this for” type of questions.

What Is Article Marketing?

3 Big Reasons Why Small Business Owners Use Article Marketing – even if your small business is in the “real world” and not entirely online, you need to accomplish a few objectives internet-wise in order to take advantage of all the marketing opportunities that the web offers. This resource explains the 3 main reasons why small business owners use article marketing.

The Ultimate Guide To Article Marketing – this is our Squidoo lens. It gives an overview of what Article Marketing is and how to do it. Lots of information on this resource.

Getting Started:

The #1 Reason Why Article Marketing Fails – if there is one post on this blog that you need to read, this is it. Article Marketing is not complicated–it is extremely simple and you may be surprised at the most common reason it ‘doesn’t work’.

5 Things To Do Before Your Start Article Marketing – for anyone who has just started doing article marketing, or is on the verge of starting, or who is considering starting, I’ve got 5 tips for you that will make your life easier.

How To Get Your Article Accepted On The First Try! covers 9 of the most frequent reasons for articles being declined by publishers.

Article Writing:

The Fastest, Easiest Way To Write Your First Article…Starting From Square One – a step-by-step guide for writing an article, starting with coming up with a topic and ending and going through writing and submitting your article.

How To Write Articles For A Product Based Website – probably the most popular article on this site. This is a resource that teaches people with product based websites (sales oriented websites) how to choose effective article topics and to write in a non-promotional way.

Article Titles:

How To Give Your Article Curb Appeal – explains why the article title is so important, and outlines 7 ideas for creating titles that will catch a reader’s eye.

Resource Boxes:

How To Write A Resource Box – a great little guide for writing a strong basic resource box. Tells you all the elements you need to include.

3 Secret Tricks For Luring Readers Back To Your Website – a strategy for enticing readers to click the link in your resource box and go back to your website (which is the what you’re after!)

7 Effective Resource Box Lures – a collection of “lures”–enticements you can use in your own resource box to help lure readers to your website.

Avoid Broken Links: 5 Safeguards For Your Resource Box Links – tells you 5 ways to be sure that your resource box links work. You should read this at least once.

Article Topics:

How To Never Run Out Of Topics To Write About – 5 methods for creating new article topic ideas.

Article Writing Formats:

The ‘HowTo’ and the ‘List’ articles are an article writer’s bread and butter. I encourage you to read these resources and start creating your own ‘HowTo’ and ‘List’ articles.

5 Steps To Writing A Killer ‘How To’ Article – explains why ‘How To’ articles are so attractive to readers and outlines 7 steps for creating a ‘How To’ article, starting with your article topic.

How To Write A Great List Article – list articles are some of the easiest articles to write. This post goes step-by-step over how to create a list article, starting with brainstorming article topic ideas that would work well in a list form.

Productivity:

How To Create A Monthly Article Writing Schedule – guide for creating a writing schedule, which makes it much easier to get your momentum going and stay ‘in the groove’. Also covers how I personally brainstorm topics for my articles.

Can I Do An Article Series?

The answer is “yes”, but not in the way that you’re probably thinking. If you are at all tempted to write an article series, please read these resources first (and this is a series, listed in order):

What To Do If You’re Itching To Write An Article Series

What Harry Potter Taught Me About Writing An Article Series

3 Reasons Why Writing An Article Series Can Simplify Your Life

How To Launch An Article Series From One Lonely Article

10 Ways To Sabotage Your Article Marketing Efforts

This is a series I wrote on the top 10 mistakes that people make and how to fix them.

10 Ways to Sabotage Your Article Marketing…and What to Do About It!

Photo by Jon Marshall

1) It contains a link to your website. This means that every time your article is republished, you build another backlink.

2) It establishes expertise–in your author bio, you will give the reader some indication of why you should be regarded as an authority on the topic.

3) It gives you a chance to encourage people to click through to your website. People will see a link in your resource box, but they will not necessarily click the link unless you give them a reason to. The text you use in your resource box has the power to convert readers into clickers! When people click the link in your resource box, you’re building targeted traffic to your website (which is what you’re after!).

As you’re crafting your resource boxes, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Your resource box should not exceed 450 characters (including spaces). This is the character limit for most publishers.
• There is no need to write ‘About The Author’ or any wording to that effect. People will automatically know that the text in your resource is ‘about the author’, so you don’t want to use up your precious character limit with unnecessary wording.
• You do not need to include your phone, email, or fax number–just a website address is good enough. The idea is to drive traffic back to your website. If someone wants to contact you, they should be able to find that info at your website.
• For best results, create a new resource box for each article, one that is customized to suit the article.
• Use the resource box to drive traffic to a single website.
• Test your links to be sure they work.
• Give readers a reason to click through to your website.
• Include your author name

I know it helps to see real life examples, so here are some examples of great resource boxes.

By all means, put some serious thought into your resource box, and if you’d really like to take things up a few notches, try using ArticleLeverage™ to create multiple resource box variations.

In fact, even if you don’t want to create article variations, it may be worth your while to go into ArticleLeverage™ and just skip to the step that allows you to create resource box variations. That alone would be a great use of this tool.

If you follow these guidelines and check out the resources referred to here, you should be able to craft an effective resource box.

We are always trying to improve how the submission process works and add more features, and we have recently done an overhaul to the how the ArticleLeverage™ system fits in with the article submission process to make it easier to use, and also to allow you to see variations of previously published articles.

Let’s go over the major changes…

1) You can now access ArticleLeverage™ from the Preview page for your article.

So, after you enter or edit your article, you can go to the article Preview page and at the bottom of the page you will see a button that will allow you to make your ArticleLeverage™ variations:

Access ArticleLeverage™ on the article Preview page

2) And here’s another way to access ArticleLeverage™– On your home page, you will notice a new icon in the Tools column. The icon will be black if you’ve already entered variations for your article. If you have not yet entered any variations into ArticleLeverage™, then the icon will appear green. You can click the icon to access ArticleLeverage™:

Access ArticleLeverage™ by clicking the icon on your home page

If variations already exist when you go to submit your article for distribution, the ArticleLeverage™ option will be preselected, and clicking the ArticleLeverage™ button will take you directly to a confirmation page, where you can review approve all the existing variations, and edit each section if you wish.

How To See Variations Of Previously Published Articles

If your article has already been distributed, you can see your variations for an article by clicking the ArticleLeverage icon in the toolbar. This is for reviewing purposes only–any changes you make to your ArticleLeverage variations after your article has been distributed will of course not affect your previously distributed article.

We hope you enjoy the new functionality of ArticleLeverage™, and please let us know if you have any questions.

Coming Soon! We are working on a further update to ArticleLeverage™ planned for the near future to allow members to choose whether to provide sentence variations (as at present) or paragraph variations.

Related Resources:

What is ArticleLeverage?

ArticleLeverage: HowTo Build Links To Multiple Websites With Just One Article

Sometimes people will ask me, “If you were in charge of getting my website a higher search engine ranking, exactly what would you do to achieve that goal?”

I am happy to share this info with you because I have my own websites that I want to rank highly in Google and the other search engines, and I want as much targeted traffic as possible and to also draw more business into my website.

Isn’t that what you’re after too?

I have spent a good bit of time and effort figuring out what works and doesn’t, and I have developed a strategy for my own sites that has produced really excellent results. I used this strategy for my most recent article marketing campaign that I started about a year ago, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

Over the past few weeks I have been sharing this strategy with you, going step-by-step through each and every thing that I did to create an article submission campaign that works and is pretty easy to execute.

Nothing has been difficult or ‘advanced’ so far–In steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 you have been very detailed about where you’re starting from and how to get to where you want to go. The focus has been consistency in your article submissions, and in Step 4 when I was telling you how to write an article, I also told you not to sweat the keyword stuff–at least not right at the beginning.

So far, the only things I’ve advised you to do with your keywords is to 1) figure out what they are, 2) keep them in the back of your mind, 3) learn how to make an HTML resource box, 4) and to enter your keywords into the submission page (there is a field on the article submission page that asks you for your keywords).

This is what I told you–as you’re just getting started, submit articles consistently on the topic of your website. Don’t obsess over keywords or fret about where and how to use them in your articles.

The reason for this is that too many times I see folks who are new to SEO and marketing a site, and they just get overwhelmed with the concept of how to use keywords, and then they overdose on keywords and misuse them and forget that they’re supposed to be writing for a human audience.

Using keywords in your article submission is very useful when you’re trying to get a higher search engine ranking, but things can also go terribly wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing and if you try too hard.

The Right Way To Use Keywords

If you use keywords correctly, you end up with an article that is extremely readable and useful to your target market, and it is not obvious to anyone that you are targeting certain keywords. You are just writing an article on a certain topic, and when you do that certain words come up naturally along with semantically related variations of those words. Your article does not look repetitive or sound stiff and cumbersome–it just reads like a quality piece of content.

The Wrong Way To Use Keywords

On the other hand, we can probably all spot an article that has misused keywords–it is not very readable, and there are obviously certain words/phrases that keep re-appearing throughout the article where other words would have served the article better. There may be words in the title that make you think the article is about a certain topic when it is really about something different. In general, when you look at the article, it sounds like it was written by a robot for a robot–the sentences and phrasing just don’t sound natural.

Now, this next step in creating your own Article Marketing Strategy is for when you start to feel comfortable with writing and submitting articles. It may be months after you start your submitting articles, or it may be years. As I’ve told you before, the most important aspect of a successful article marketing campaign is submitting articles consistently each month, so don’t feel like you have to understand everything about keywords in order to see results with article marketing.

But if you’re ready, let’s take the next step.

When doing article submissions, there are 3 main places where your keywords are can make a big impact:

1) Your title

2) Your article body

3) Your resource box

We’ve already covered how to use keywords in your resource box , so let’s focus on the article body and your title.

Your goal, as always, is to produce a well-written, easy to read article that contains helpful information.

You might try just writing an article as you usually do, and then after you’re finished read through your article again and see if there are any places where you can use your keywords or semantically related versions of your keywords in a natural way. You may very well find that your keywords are already appearing in your article, because they naturally pop up when you write on the topic of your website.

I would advise you not to try to use the same exact word/phrase over and over again throughout your article–this impacts the quality and readability of the article, and using a particular keyword too much in an article can cause some publishers to decline the article.

A good rule of thumb is this–keep your keyword density to no more than 3%.

(Here is a formula for calculating keyword density, and if you’re a member of SubmitYOURArticle.com, we will automatically alert you if your article exceeds 3% keyword density).

Example: Let’s say that your keyword phrase is ’sail boats’–this does not mean that you need to pepper your article with that phrase. Your article will be on some aspect of sail boats, so variations of that phrase will appear throughout your article. Google recognizes semantically related variations of words, like ’sail boats’, ’sailing boats’, ’sail boat gear’, ‘how to sail a boat’, etc.

I just put my keywords where they will naturally fit in the article. The more you write, the easier it will be to use your keywords in your articles without sounding contrived.

Your title should always indicate what your article is about.

The title is an extremely beneficial spot to use your keywords for these reasons:

• Your title will sometimes be used as part of the URL for the page where your article is published. For example, look at the URL for this page–the title is in the URL. Keywords that appear in a URL speak especially loud to Google and the other search engines.

• Your title will appear in search engine results.

• Search engines pay special attention to titles.

Knowing how beneficial it can be to have your keywords in your title may tempt you to insert them in the title when it’s just not appropriate.

Let’s say that your keywords are ‘New Jersey physical trainer’–unless your article is specifically about some aspect of physical trainers in New Jersey, it would not be appropriate to use those keywords in the article title.

If the article was about a more general topic–”10 Ways To Find A Good Physical Trainer”, then putting ‘New Jersey’ in the title would not be right, because there is nothing in the article about New Jersey.

Also, sometimes your keywords will just not sound right in an article title because of the topic:

Let’s say one of your keywords is ‘low carb smoothie recipes’, and your article is instructing people how to pick out a quality blender. The article is on the same general topic as your website (you need a blender in order to make the smoothies), but the article is not about ‘low carb smoothie recipes’. Consequently, you would not use that keyword term in your title.

First and foremost, your title needs to tell the reader what your article is about. Anything that the title promises must be delivered in the article.

Your title should attract a reader’s attention.

Your title should be written in such a way that it catches the attention of a reader who is looking through a list of titles in Google or on an article directory.

How To Write Search Engine Friendly Titles

How To Appropriately Use Keywords In Your Titles

Pay special attention to the first 3 words of your title.

You have to keep in mind that people are skimming article titles when trying to see if they’d like to click through and read that entire piece. This holds true when your article appears in search engine results listings as well as on article directories.

A great technique is to focus on the first 3 words of your title since those are the first words that a reader will see, and if your first 3 words are attention grabbing, the reader is more likely to click through and read your article.

Now, this is not always possible, but many times it is–when you’re writing your titles, try to phrase it in such a way that the first 3 words give a clear indication of what your article is about. For more info on this, please see this post:

Article Titles: The First 3 Words Count!

Additionally, on the article submission page  there is also a spot where you can insert your keywords, separated by a comma.

What is this used for?

The keywords you type in are used on many sites where some keywords are wanted for the meta keywords tags for the page where the article is published.

In plain English, meta keyword tags are a technical thing to help Google and the other search engines determine what your article is about. Additionally, these keywords also help search functions on some article directories.

Directories will also use your keywords (just one usually) when they are creating the URL for the page where your article is published, which helps Google and the other search engines identify the subject matter of the page.

But I don’t know what my keywords are…

That’s okay–with a little research you can determine the best keyword for your website.

Here are some resources to help you get started:

Getting Started With Article Marketing

What Are Keywords?

How Do I Get Started With Keyword Research?

And if all this talk about ‘keywords this’ and ‘Google that’ is starting to make your brain hurt, then take a step back. This step is only for when you’re feeling comfortable with writing and submitting articles on a consistent basis.

You may be ready to work with keywords next month, or maybe not until next year. That’s okay. Until then, you can easily do steps 1-4:

Step 1–Your Baseline

Step 2–Your Competition

Step 3–Organizing and Brainstorming

Step 4–Writing!

Photo Credit: The Key of my mindOriginally uploaded by ul_Marga

I’ve been telling you exactly how I would set up an article marketing campaign if I was in charge of marketing your website (and this is the same technique that I’ve used with great success in marketing my own sites).

Let’s do a recap–

Step #1 Establish Your Baseline

Step #2: Check Out Your Competitors

Step #3: Organizing and Brainstorming

Now we’re getting into the meat of things! In Step 4, we’re starting to write and submit articles!

We’ve got a few guidelines to keep in mind:

Always write on the topic of your website.

I’ve got a few resources you might find helpful if you’re not sure what types of topics to write about:

How To Find Great Article Topics

How To Know What Topics Strike A Nerve With Your Target Market

Keep your word count limit in mind.

Most publishers will accept articles that are somewhere between 400-1500 words. If at all possible, it’s beneficial to keep the word count between 700-800 words, as that length of article is attractive to the widest spectrum of publishers. Here are some tips on how to write an article of that length:

How To Write A 700-800 Word Article

Proofread your article carefully.

It’s even a good idea to put your article aside for at least 24 hours before proofreading it. Remember, when your article starts getting picked up by publishers, it will be hard to make any corrections at that point.

Why You Should Give Your Article A Cool Off Period

Write!

And I actually have a tutorial on how to write an article for those of you who are just starting out (or those of you who are veterans but would just like a refresher).

The Fastest, Easiest Way To Write Your First Article…Starting From Square One

What about keywords?

I know that there’s at least one person who’s wondering–”Should I be very concerned about using my keywords in my articles?”

You are just starting your article marketing campaign, and I’m assuming that you’re relatively new to article marketing, so I will just tell you–don’t sweat the keywords issue right at the beginning.

Just get into the habit of writing articles on the topic of your website. As the months go on, and as you get more and more comfortable with writing, you can gradually ease into being more mindful of your keywords in your articles. The reason I say this is because so many times it seems like being overly concerned about keywords does more harm than good, so please don’t worry yourself about it right now.

As I’ve told you before, when someone doesn’t see the results they were looking for with article marketing the reason is usually not because of a lack of SEO knowledge. The #1 reason why a person would be dissatisfied with results is something really easy and avoidable–not submitting enough articles.

So, if that is the main hurdle you need to clear in order to see results, focus on submitting articles each and every month consistently. Write the articles on the topic of your website, but do not be overly concerned about your keywords, at least at the beginning.

But, there are a few things I want to see you doing with your keywords outside of your article body–

Do learn how to submit an HTML resource box.

It’s simple, I assure you. You do not need to know HTML at all, but you do need to have an idea of what your keywords are.

With an HTML resource box, you are using a keyword or keyword phrase as anchor text for a link–this means that the keyword is hyperlinked and when a reader clicks the words that are linked, then they are taken to your site. Supposedly Google and other search engines regard hyperlinked text as being more important, a special indication of what a web page is about, so using your keyword as the anchor text for a hyperlink is little technical thing that you can do with your keywords to help Google associate those words with your article/website.

One thing to keep in mind though–if you’re using keyword linking from the HTML resource box, do not focus on the same keyword phrase each time, but vary them a lot within the niche.

Why?

If you use one keyword over and over again in your HTML resource box, it can appear as if you’re trying to manipulate Google’s evaluations and Google doesn’t like that. By varying the keywords you use when you’re employing an HTML resource box, you can help Google get a good idea what your site is about by linking in semantically related key phrases in a non-manipulative way.

What does semantically related mean?

If your keyword phrase is ’sail boats’, semantically related phrases would be: ’sailing boats’, ‘how to sail a boat’, ’sail boat gear’, ‘learn about sail boats’–you get the idea.

What is an HTML Resource Box?

How To Create An HTML Resource Box

How To Write A Killer HTML Resource Box…The Easy Way!

Do enter your keywords into the submission page (there is a special field that asks you for your keywords, and publishers use those keywords when creating the URL of your article page on their site). For more information on how publishers make use of your keywords, see this post.

So, those are 2 ways that you can start using your keywords in your article submissions without having to deal with the issue of how to integrate your keywords into your article body and title.

We’ll go over those more advanced keyword techniques in Step 5, but for now just write and submit articles, and use an HTML resource box and enter your keywords on the submission page.

Additional Resources:

What Are Keywords?

How To Do Keyword Research

The first two steps were setting you up to be able to measure and track your progress.

In Step 1, you established a baseline for your website and set up a spreadsheet where you’ll do monthly tracking of certain stats.

In Step 2 you figured out who your top competitors were and you entered your baseline information for them.

In Step 3, we get down to business–here is where you organize your article marketing campaign.

I’ve noticed that the #1 reason why some people give up or don’t see success or simply say “I don’t have time to do this” is that they haven’t planned their marketing activities out very well.

When you own a business, whether it is an internet business or a traditional business that has a website, you need to take your marketing activities seriously. No matter what type of business you have, if you are able to position your site at the top Google, you will receive more targeted traffic to your website, and traffic translates into more business for you!

Many people use Article Marketing as their primary marketing tool, and in order to see the results you’re looking for, you need to take an organized approach. If you do not, you will likely quit in a month or two be back at square one.

So, let’s do some pre-thinking on this, and I will tell you exactly what I did as I was launching my most recent article marketing campaign.

1) Set a goal as to how many articles you’ll submit each month–something between 1 and 8 articles.

I know some top article marketers who submit just one article a month and see excellent results, but you’ll see better results faster if you lean towards the upper end of that range, especially if you’re just getting started. You might give yourself some time to get used to writing articles on a regular basis and start off slow–perhaps Month One submit 3 articles, Month Two submit 4, and then gradually work up until you’re submitting 7 or 8 a month.

2) Determine which days you’ll write and what time–put it on your calendar.

For myself this is imperative to success–if I tell myself that I need to write 5 articles before the end of the month and I don’t set any specific times/dates for doing so, before I know it the end of the month will be on top of me, and I’ll be up against the wall. Not many people like the feeling of being in a tight deadline, and I like to do my articles at a leisurely pace so that I have time left to edit them and be sure they’re of the quality that I like.

I write on my calendar exactly which days are writing days, and I do my writing first thing in the work day. Some people say morning is best as that’s when our minds tend to be clearest, but some of us don’t start working until the afternoon or evening–whenever is the start of your workday, try to do your writing then. It feels good to have that accomplishment behind you, and I like writing when my mind is fresh rather than at the end of the day when it’s mush.

You’ll want to make this calendar as visible as possible to remind yourself–I even have a special dry erase board calendar specifically devoted to my writing schedule. It sits on the wall beside my desk, and every day when I sit down to work, there it is staring me in the face. After I write the article I mark that day off on the board. It’s very motivating to see the writing days being checked off.

3) Start brainstorming article ideas–remember, these are article topics that are on the topic of your website.

You don’t have to make your brain hurt by trying to think of article topics that have your keywords in them–let’s keep this simple. Just start thinking of topics that your target readers would find valuable and that are also on the same topic as your website.

This is a brainstorming list, so there’s no commitment here. Just start writing down as many ideas as you can think of, and get your creative juices flowing. When I’m jotting down ideas, I usually end up jotting down titles. You’ll find that when you start writing down ideas, the ideas will start to flow. Write down as many as you can and keep them in list form. This is a list that you can use all month long and depending on how many ideas you brainstormed, perhaps for several months.

By creating a list of article topics, you’re making it so much easier on yourself come your writing days–you won’t have to sit down and try to think up a topic and then write. All you have to do is sit down, look at your article list, pick a topic that appeals to you, and then write. Believe me, working like this is a million times easier than taking it day by day, article by article.

And that’s it for this step–pretty easy, eh?

Easy, but indispensable–I caution you, do not skip this step.The stuff you’re doing in this step will keep your whole article marketing campaign on track, even when you don’t feel like writing and even when you don’t think you have time. A little prep now can set you on the right path for the rest of the year.

Photo Credit: Red Duck Line UpOriginally uploaded by Maxey

You may have gotten into the habit of thinking of your article marketing as just one article here and another article there, but it really helps to approach your article submissions with a big picture view.

Submit just a few articles, and you probably won’t see drastic results, but submit a handful of articles every month for 12 months and you will see what marketing momentum can do for your site!

Consistency is key with submitting articles as with any online marketing tool, and creating and implementing an article marketing strategy can inspire that consistency.

I use an article marketing strategy myself that is comprised of a series of simple steps.

Last time I told you about Step 1: Establish your baseline.

Today we’re moving on to Step 2, which is: Establish the baseline of your competitors.

Why in the world would you want to look closely at how your main competitors are doing?

1) Well, for one thing, trying to get to the top of the search engines is not something you do in a vacuum–your success depends on how other sites are doing in relation to you.

If you’re at number 50 in the rankings for your keyword in Google, and the site that is ranked #1 is also working hard to market their site and building links each month and gaining PR, then you will have a clear idea as to what you’re up against.

2) Competition will spur you on. Think of article marketing and SEO as a race–you do best when you have competition. If you’re just running by yourself and someone is timing you, you probably won’t make your best time.

But, if you’re embedded in a flock of speedsters running their hearts out, you will most likely run harder too.

Keeping track of your main competitor’s status helps remind you that you’re in competition with other sites, and how well they perform with SEO influences how well you perform.

3) Keeping track of your competitors can give you insights and be consoling when the road gets bumpy.

Ask anyone who is consciously and consistently staying on top of their website’s progress–it’s not always uphill every single month. Sometimes your site may take a dive in an area for completely unexplainable reasons. When this happens, the tendency can be to overreact and think, “What did I do to deserve this?” and then not knowing if the sudden change had anything to do with you at all, you start making changes out of desperation.

But when you keep track of your competitor’s progress every month, it’s like you’re running with a pack.

What affects you may very likely be affecting them as well, and that can ease your mind that whatever the reason for the unexplainable change in your site’s backlinks, ranking or whatever, that it was across the board and not just affecting you, and that with some patience things will go back to normal.

4) Why not learn from your competitors? If a site is sitting at #1 in Google, they are there for a very good reason. You may find that your competitors are doing some things that are benefiting them greatly that you may be able to incorporate into your own marketing plan.

Those are the reasons why I track my main competitors and why I advise others to do so as well.

Let’s go over the steps on how to do this:

How do you know who your main competitor’s are?

It’s simple enough to tell–type each of your keywords into Google, and see what site comes up at #1. The site at #1 is your main competitor.

When I started my article marketing strategy last year, I focused in on 3 keywords, so for each of those keywords I have a main competitor.

What info should you track for your competition?

Mostly the same info that you are tracking for yourself as we discussed in Step 1: How To Create An Article Marketing Strategy

*The search engine ranking for the keyword. (And of course for at least the first month, that search engine ranking will be #1, since that is how you determined that they were your main competitor.)

*Number of backlinks. Here’s a tutorial on how to do a back link check.

*The Google PageRank–you can find the PageRank (PR) by installing the Google Toolbar and looking at the PageRank indicator. Remember, the web page that you will be keeping track of is the web page that is at #1 for your keyword term. Sometimes this is not the top level domain of the site (http://www.theirwebsite.com), but rather an inner page (http://www.theirwebsite.com/page2). When you’re doing your checks each month, just be sure that you’re consistently checking the same web page for your competitor. It helps to write down on your spreadsheet the exact web page that you’re checking so that you can remember each month.

And that’s it–on the same day that you do your stats check for your own site, also do the stats check for your main competitors.Some months you’ll notice that they did increase their backlinks, some months you’ll see that they lost backlinks, and other months you’ll see that they just stayed the same.

This info will give the stats for your own site a whole new dimension. It will be encouraging to you to see your site making advancements in backlinks or PR or search engine ranking, and you can sort of see yourself on a horse galloping up from behind getting closer and closer to overtaking the person out in front–at least that’s how I like to think of it!

If you’re aiming for being #1 for a keyword and you’re way back in the rankings, you can still see how you’re making progress each month. Really galloping up the search engine rankings is not something that happens overnight, and sometimes it can be one step forward two steps back, but over time you will see a trend of steady improvement.

Photo Credit: Horse racingOriginally uploaded by Paolo Camera

I was telling you recently how it really helps to think of yourself as implementing an article marketing campaign rather than just writing article by article and seeing how it goes.

You need to take a long term perspective with article marketing (as with any online marketing tool) , and I know that’s the area where we struggle–most people want to see results yesterday!

I know it’s hard to plug along not knowing where you’re going or where you’ll end up, and that is why creating an article marketing campaign can make all the difference in your results.

I have been article marketing for years and years, but just last year I started a new campaign that has created tremendous results for my sites. I did something a little different and it really paid off.

I thought it might be helpful to you if I shared exactly what I did so that you can get an idea in your head as to what is possible if you implement an article marketing campaign and stick with it over the long term.

I’m going give you Step 1 today, and this is it:

Establish your website’s baseline.

In order to know how you’re doing, you need to know where you’re starting from. Each month you will measure your results in the following areas, and after several months you’ll be able to see definite progress.

This was exactly my first step with my campaign that I started a year ago, and without doing this, I don’t think I would have had the success I had over the past year.

It’s simple enough–Here is how you determine your website’s baseline:

1) What is your website’s ranking for each of your keywords?

So, type Keyword #1 into Google.

Where does your site appear in the search engine results listings? Is it #5, #50, or 105–whatever your ranking, make a note of it.

Now, repeat this by doing a search for each of your keywords and see where your site turns up in the rankings.

Then, after you’ve finished searching in Google, hop on over to Yahoo and do the same searches.

(It’s worth it to set up a spreadsheet to track this info.)

If you don’t know what your keywords are, you will need to find out that info. Here are some resources for determining your keywords:

What are keywords?

How do I get started doing keyword research?

2) How many backlinks are coming into your site?

Here’s a tutorial on how to do a back link check:

Enter that number in your spreadsheet for both Google and Yahoo (or whichever search engines are important to you).

3) What is your website’s PageRank?

PageRank (PR) is the ranking that Google assigns to each page on the internet as a reflection of the website’s authority. The ranking scale goes from 0-10, where 10 is the best.

Now, you do not need to achieve a PR10 to be at the top of the search engine rankings for your keywords–you may be able to have a PR of only 2, 3 or 4. So, a super high PR isn’t everything, but it is one indicator that can help you track your website’s progress.

How do you measure your PR? The Google Toolbar has a PageRank indicator on it. Just download the toolbar, then hover your cursor of the PR indicator, and you’ll see the PR of the web page.

4) What is your website’s traffic?

You probably have some sort of stats tracking system set up with your site that will tell you your website traffic each month–that’s what you would use to tell you what your traffic is. Just whatever your website traffic was for the month prior to the month you’re currently in, add that to your spreadsheet.

Now–please note: Any one of these indicators may not reveal much.You may be building links and are due for an upgrade in PageRank the next time Google adjusts their rankings, but you won’t be able to tell that if you’re only measuring website traffic. Remember–there is a delayed reaction in the search engines and with traffic to a site, so that the efforts you exert today in marketing your site will show their results several months from now.

This is why it’s so helpful to track multiple stats–you can see changes in some areas while other areas are still trying to catch up.

Here are some FAQs you may have after gathering this information:

When I do searches for my keywords, I see radically different results in Google and Yahoo–why so different?

You may rank highly for one keyword in Google and be completely off the charts in Yahoo, or vice versa. This is not unusual–each search engine has it’s own way of measuring results so the results are different. By implementing an article marketing campaign, you can ‘even things out’. When I first started my most recent article marketing campaign, my site’s rankings in Google were much higher than in Yahoo, but now a year later my site ranks at the top in both search engines.

I can’t find my site in the search engine rankings–what does that mean?

That’s fine–this is why you’re doing article marketing, so that you can jump up the rankings! Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you’re just starting to market your site it’s not unusual to not see your site listed at all in the rankings when you do a search for your keywords. You are taking steps to change that.

My site has a PageRank of zero–what’s up with that?

It could be that your website is brand new–if your site has not yet been indexed by Google, when you do the PageRank check, you will see something like ‘no ranking available’. That counts as a PR0. If your site is brand new, you will need to wait for your site to be indexed and for the incoming links to be evaluated, which can take 4+ months.  If your site is not brand new, then likely you are just starting to marketing your site. Don’t fret if you have a PR0–PageRank can go up if you build links and market your site!

I know I have backlinks, but none are showing up when I do the search.

Please see this post on When Can I Expect Backlinks To Show Up For My Articles? to understand the reasons why your site may not be showing backlinks yet.

Is it really possible to increase your search engine rankings with Article Marketing?

Absolutely!  Let me give you a behind the scenes look at my own article marketing campaign which I started about a year ago.

Before & After:

That’s quite a jump!

But let me tell you that it didn’t happen overnight, and it took consistent work.

The very first thing I did before starting my campaign was establish my baseline, just as I’ve told you how to do in this post.

This is Step 1–it’s not that hard, and when you get into the habit of checking your stats every month, you’ll start to look forward to ’stats checking day’.

Yes, you’ll be checking these same stats every month–just put it on your calendar at the same time each month, and take a few minutes to check your stats and log them.

True, at the beginning it may not be that exciting and you may not see much of a change, but after several months of consistently submitting articles you will start to see changes.

If you come up with any other questions after going through the process of establishing your baseline, please let me know.

Photo Credit: Bed Jump Originally uploaded by jamesjyu

I know you recommend submitting articles at a trickled out rate, such as 8 articles a month spaced out during the month, but I've recently heard someone else advise that if you submit 50 articles at once, you'll get more traffic than if you submitted 1 article/day for 50 days.

Neither of the items they're comparing is even close to eight articles a month or two a week, but given that we're trying very hard to generate traffic right now, it's got my attention. Perhaps it's worth a blog posting if it hasn't already been covered somehow. Could you respond or point me to your best answer?

For example, a sudden upsurge in links could hurt your SEO, and would be damaging to long-term traffic trends; whereas a long-term article submission campaign which gradually increases links on a more consistent basis over time is likely to be more positive.

The major traffic benefit of article submissions is to my mind from SEO and increased search engine ranking rather than that kind of 50-at-once short-term approach.

So, this brings up an excellent point: 

As you're doing your article submissions, it pays to keep the big picture in mind.

It may be thrilling to have one or two days where your traffic jumps sky high, but that kind of traffic won't last, and it actually can work to your site's detriment over the long term.

The goal is to build links gradually in as organic a way as possible, while at the same time getting widespread distribution for your articles. 

As a member of SubmitYOURArticle.com, here's how you can accomplish this:

=> Space out your submissions–we recommend two a week submitted on different days. This also aids publishers in processing articles–some publishers may be able to handle a large influx of articles, but I think the majority appreciate not being inundated.

=> Submit articles consistently–this means submitting articles every month for an extended period of time (ideally for the lifetime of your website)

=> Submit up to 8 articles each month. I know some top article marketers who submit just one article a month and see excellent results, but you'll see better results faster if you lean towards the upper end of that range, especially if you're just getting started. It helps to have a goal for yourself–perhaps Month 1 submit 3 articles, Month 2 submit 4, and then gradually work up until you're submitting 7 or 8 a month. 

=> Take advantage of the wonderful ArticleLeverage tool we offer, and use it to drive traffic to multiple sites with one article. This allows you to build links in a more organic way.

=> Take advantage of the ArticleTrickle feature we offer, which allows you to have your article submitted to publishers gradually rather than all at once. With ArticleTrickle you can choose to have your article submitted over 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days or up to 90 days. By  trickling the distribution, you build links in a more organic way.

I think you'll find that this approach produces much better results and is much more doable in the long run. It's good to develop some steadfast marketing habits for your site–SEO is a long range type of thing that requires consistent work. It's not really something that you do once and then wash your hands of and forget about.

Start getting into the habit of marketing your site every month with your article submissions–in time it will become just a natural part of running your business.

If you’re a newcomer to article marketing, I know how intimidating it can feel to be faced with the prospect of writing not just one quality article, but a steady stream of them.

For many people, the last time they wrote a piece of content that needed to be top notch was in high school or college, so it’s no wonder that the thought of starting an article marketing campaign can bring up feelings of nervousness.

I’d like to assure you that it’s okay to be a beginner!

Even the most experienced, proficient, and successful article marketers were at one time novices. And it’s actually a perk that article marketing requires steadily writing articles, because it’s only through experience that any of us see improvement.

I wish that I could just sit down at a table across from you and address each and every one of your fears, and as much as possible that’s what I’d like to do here. I’ve made list of 7 of the top concerns people have, and I’d like to go through them one by one.

1) I’ve never written an article before.

That’s just fine–if you can write a letter to your Aunt Martha, then you can write an article.

As I said before–there was a time when every one of us were beginners, having never written an article before. Just because you haven’t done it before doesn’t mean that you aren’t able to start now.  I assure you, as you write your first, second and third articles, you will notice that each time it gets easier and less intimidating.

If it makes you feel an better, I have a friend who has a degree in English and is used to writing term papers, and even she was nervous about writing her first articles for article marketing. I think it’s normal to feel a little off balance at the beginning–that is a sign that you’re trying something new and expanding your skills.

2) I don’t know the correct formula/format to use.

Having some sort of “format” to guide your writing helps, doesn’t it? While there is no one way of writing an article, there are a few article writing “formulas” that are tried and true and make it easier to write.

I’ll share with you 2 of the formulas I use when I’m writing articles:

• The ‘how-to’ article. The ‘how-to’ article has the purpose of telling a reader detailed steps for doing something having to do with your niche. I think the best how-to articles involve a series of clearly identified steps (it helps to number each step). An example of a ‘how-to’ article would be 5 Steps To Writing A Killer ‘How To’ Article For more detailed instructions on how to write a ‘how-to’ article, please see that article.
• The ‘list’ article. The list article is the easiest type of article of all in my opinion. Think of a topic having to do with your niche–usually for a list this will be a general topic. For example, a recent article of mine was called Top 15 Article Marketing Tips. Incidentally, this post you’re reading right now is also a list and would be an appropriate topic for a list article. Here are some more detailed instructions on how to write a great list article.

Again, these are not the only two types of articles in the world, but if you’re looking for some sort of formula/format to follow to help you get started writing, I highly recommend writing ‘how-to’ and ‘list’ articles.

3) I’m not sure what a “good” article is, so I don’t even know what to shoot for.

Sometimes all we need is to see an example that we can emulate, and then from seeing a few articles that are “good”, you can start to feel more confident that you can do it too.

I’ve shared with you a few articles of my own already, and you’re welcome to look at my entire article list, but it also may help to browse through the entire SubmitYOURArticle.com article directory for examples to follow. These are all articles that have passed editorial approval, but if you have any specific questions please don’t hesitate to ask us.

4) I’m afraid that my article won’t be accepted.

One of the perks of submitting articles through SubmitYOURArticle.com is that your article is pre-screened by an editor to be sure that it meets our editorial guidelines. Our guidelines are set up to make it so that your article has the maximum chance of getting accepted by most publishers. If your article is for some reason not accepted by us on the first try, don’t worry–all you need to do is make the changes that the editor specifies and then resubmit your article. If you don’t understand what changes need to be made, just ask us and we’ll be happy to elaborate.

We do the best we can to help ensure that your articles have the best chance of getting accepted by publishers. If your article happens to be sent back for changes by our own editor, no worries–even I’ve had articles sent back with problems pointed out!

At any rate, getting an article sent back for changes is not necessarily a bad thing–that means that our editor noticed something that might cause your article to be declined by a publisher, and you have the opportunity to fix things before your article is distributed.

If your article passes our editor’s review, then it’s very likely that it will be approved by most publishers.

And here’s another resource of common publisher guidelines: How To Get Your Article Accepted On The First Try!

5) I don’t even know where to start…

That’s okay–I don’t blame you! The first article can be the hardest because you can get that “deer in the headlights” feeling of “oh no, where do I even begin?” Let’s just take it one step at a time–I’ve got a step-by-step tutorial on writing your first article from scratch that I hope you’ll find helpful.

6) I don’t have time to write.

Do you have time to market your business?

Sometimes we can get caught up on the idea of writing a single article, but article marketing is not about one article or a handful of articles–it’s about marketing your business, increasing traffic to your website, gaining more customers, selling more products, and building on the success of your business.

Every business person knows you need to market your business in order to grow. In the online world the way you market your business is to drive traffic to your website.

So, instead of thinking of writing articles as just another thing on your to-do list, think of it as an integral aspect of running your business.

In the same way you wouldn’t say “I don’t have time to meet with clients” or “I don’t have time to ship the products that people have ordered”, you wouldn’t say “I don’t have time to write.”

Writing articles is how you market your business.

7) I don’t know how to tell if it’s working.

If you aren’t sure how to tell if you’re efforts are paying off, it’s hard to keep the motivation and momentum going, isn’t it?

Most people want to submit an article and then count the minutes they wait for results, but you should be looking at a calendar rather than your watch.

I’ll just tell you up front–it will most likely take 3-4 months before seeing results from your article marketing efforts, and it will likely take longer to see results if the website you’re marketing is brand new.

The reason for this has to do with how search engines index new sites and register new backlinks. Search engines usually adjust rankings and calculate new backlinks every 3-4 months, so when you launch an article marketing campaign, the impact is on a time delay.

Why is article marketing such a popular marketing tool if it doesn’t yield immediate results?

Because it can produce dramatic effects on a website’s traffic over the long term.

This doesn’t mean you can’t measure your progress–I keep track of my progress every month to see how things are coming along. Please see this post for the indicators I measure to get an accurate idea of how my article marketing campaign is impacting my website.

We’ve just covered the 7 ‘top fears’–are you feeling more confident and comfortable? I hope so!

Remember, take it one step at a time, and you will grow in your skill and knowledge. No one expects you to do things perfectly from the get go, so just forge ahead bravely, and let me know if I can be of assistance to you.

Photo Credit: Casper the Friendly Ghost Originally uploaded by DianthusMoon