Friday, June 6, 2008

SEO Copywriting Finding A Happy Balance

Perhaps the hardest type of copy to write is SEO copy. SEO is an acronym for search engine optimized content. This simply means that your article has been decorated with keywords that the search engines will include in their algorithms as they index your page.

Sadly a lot of SEO copywriting is not very charming for humans to read. That is because most people think that the key word has to be repeated again and again in order for the page to rise to the top of the search engines. In fact this SEO technique is called keyword stuffing and many search engines will now penalize you for it. Unfriendly garbled copy that is ridden with too many of the same words can make visitors to your site think you are illiterate as copy with too much SEO looks like a moron wrote it.

Remember that the goal of effective SEO writing is to not only to improve your searchability and search engine rankings but also to lure customers to your site. The last thing you want your carefully written SEO coy to do is turn your visitor off your web page because they are grossed out by your blatant attempts at marketing. However this is precisely what happens when people click on a site that is filled badly written SEO articles that are strewn the keywords. Even worse, this type of a hard sell is because it makes you look greedy and desperate for business.

The key is to find a happy balance between copywriting for people and copywriting for the search engines while creating your website content. This is a talent that not too many people have in which case you might have to hire a professional SEO writer to ease your path for you when it comes to content.

Anthony Gregory is a SEO and website promoter, he can be contacted at sales(at)brilliantseo.com

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Article Marketing - Stay-At-Home Mom Gets 100,000 Article Views From Just One Article Directory

Just when you are ready to give up article marketing forever... you find out that if you do just a little more, you can blow the roof off the top of your online business.

Let me guess, you have heard all about article marketing, and you have even submitted a few articles. Sure, five years ago that might have been a great way to drive traffic to your website, but it just doesn't work like that anymore. I mean, look at the 5 articles I have submitted, I have just passed 100 views, and only three people clicked through to my website.

That was a lot of work writing those articles, and it sure was not worth having only 3 people click through to my website. I am just going to go back to pay per click, at least I know I am getting some regular viewers to my site, and it only took me 15 minutes to set it up.

Does this sound familiar? It should, it represent 90 percent of the people who post articles on article directories. Let me share a little secret with you that might change your mind. You have to post more than 10 articles. One of the top article directories has said that 90 percent of all authors who publish in their directory never publish more than 9 articles.

I have to admit, I have published more than 50 articles, and there are days when I feel a little discouraged. Then I noticed this interesting statistic on another authors *Extended Author Bio.* EzineArticles.com shows how many articles an author has posted and then it shows how many views they have gotten to date. Here is the first one I looked at: 465 Active articles, resulting in 50,335 views.

When I first read this, I thought it had to be a misprint. I mean, my best article today only has just over 90 views. Even if all of my articles finally ended up with 90 views, that would only be 4500. Then I thought that he has probably been publishing for 10 years. Nope, all of his articles had been published within the last three years. What? How can that be? Even if you multiply 4500 X 3, you only get 13,500. I thought that 13,000 was the absolute best I could ever hope for: boy was I wrong!

I decided to look into it further to see if there was some kind of mistake. I will admit, I had read that at some point when writing articles, you hit what they call, *critical mass.* They say that it is somewhere between 100 and 250 articles. Anyway, here are a few of the stats that I found with very little research:

1,130 Active articles, resulting in 670,296 views, Member since April 27, 2005

58 Active articles, resulting in 27,164 views, Member since March 24, 2005

45 Active articles, resulting in 13,449 views, Member since July 19, 2006

74 Active articles, resulting in 194,018 views, Member since October 27, 2004

After I found these, I decided to focus on authors that had around 200 articles, since that is around where they say you hit critical mass. Here is what I found just around the 200 articles published mark:

238 Active articles, resulting in 339,172 views, Member since June 28, 2005

233 Active articles, resulting in 30,740 views, Member since October 25, 2007

232 Active articles, resulting in 184,233 views, Member since November 01, 2005

231 Active articles, resulting in 57,886 views, Member since July 14, 2006

236 Active articles, resulting in 63,417 views, Member since December 06, 2005

At 200 articles, if you received 90 views each, which I thought was impossible until today, which comes out to 18,000 views per year. The longest time any of the authors over 200 has been publishing is 2.5 years. That means they should have, in a perfect world, 46,250 views max. Only one author has not blown that number out of the water, and he or she has only been publishing less than a year.

Now I have to admit, I had no idea that there was anywhere near this kind of potential. I pride myself on answering questions that you just can't seem to find the answers to anywhere else. This is one of those questions I have had for a while. Just give it to me straight, what can I expect? Well, here it is.

I didn't use any of the author's names, because this is not allowed on many directories. And remember, to see these numbers you do have to look at the extended author bios. If the author has not posted their picture and information about themselves, the directory doesn't setup an extended author page. This means you can't see these numbers on everyone.

I can tell you this, after looking at these findings, I am so motivated that I am taking the rest of the day off from my job to write articles. Looks like the first one to 200 articles wins see you there.

What if Dan Iverson could show you how to write about any topic on earth and make money? He'll teach you how to better understand human nature as it relates to e-commerce; how people, from their perspective, come to make a purchase on the Internet. I am talking about learning how you can pick a topic of interest, write about it, and with the right tools and a little research find connections between your readers and real products and services, of which you can become an affiliate and make money. Here is the best part. I will teach you all of this absolutely free. That's right, click on this link and you'll get the full Affiliate Masters Course Free. This is no joke, I promise once you start to read this course, you will see and learn the logical system of affiliate and information marketing. It will open your eyes to the greatest and most versatile opportunity in known history: the Internet. Even if you have a website, you can use these techniques. http://aggressiveinternetmarketing.net/free-tool.html

How To Increase Link Popularity

You have a fantastic website. You provide high quality content that makes your reader stay awhile. Now all you need is the traffic. Increase the number of links pointing to your website and you will get your traffic! It really is that simple!

The two types of links are one way links and reciprocal links. Search engines prefer one way links because these occur more naturally than a reciprocal link. This is because one way links commonly occur in conjunction with the high quality content on your website and in the articles you write.

While these techniques are quite easy and simple, do not underestimate their power to bring you free targeted traffic. So how do you this? Read on...

Forums
Hang out in forums relevant to your website theme. Join forums where you can give advice and also receive advice. Do not just submit a post for the sake of advertising and do not post any sales pitches or advertisements in your post. The forum moderator will likely delete it anyway and you will quickly become unpopular in the forum. Always remember to offer value when posting in a forum. This will equate to 100% free advertising to your website. Each forum you belong to will give you an opportunity to enter a link to your website in the signature of your post.

Article Marketing
Article Marketing will be your most important and effective linking strategy. Each article that is written by you and submitted to the article directories gives you another opportunity to build one way links to your website. Focus most of your time on this strategy. Set a minimum goal of writing at least one article a week. You will find this to be the quickest and fastest way to increase your link popularity.

Blogging
Blogging also creates another opportunity to build one way links. Each post that you make to your blog will include your one-way link back to your website. Those links will be associated with the high quality content of your posts.

Reciprocal Linking
Reciprocal linking involves the mutual exchange of links between two websites. Two websites owners agree to exchange links, usually through a link exchange directory. You will need to contact the website owners directly to ask for a link exchange. The main goal is to appeal more to search engines.

Online Directories
There are thousands of free online directories that will allow you to submit your URL. Just search for "link directories" in Google or any other search engine to find them. It will take a considerable amount time to submit your website to all the directories but you can potentially end up with hundreds of one way links to your website. That would be well worth the effort.

There are also paid directories. The Yahoo directory has the most impact, but it is rather expensive. Unless you have an unlimited start up budget, wait before submitting to this directory. Chances are there are already higher ranking websites listed so it probably won't be worth it for you at this point.

Link popularity is an important part of search engine optimization so devote some time to your linking campaign. Remember to always work smarter not harder. The bottom line is that you must perform these actions consistently. Your traffic will not increase overnight but over time your search engine ranking and traffic will increase and you will see your income increase.

Nina Greene is owner of BennettWealthSystems.com and writes on a variety of subjects. To learn more about this topic Nina recommends you visit: http://www.BennettWealthSystems.com

Four Ways That You Can Increase Your Sales With Articles

Today, making money on the Internet in more competitive than ever. Traffic is among the most difficult thing to do in Internet marketing. It's almost impossible to get a high search engine ranking without some good research. There are several strategies that you can implement into you Internet marketing business to help you get the traffic you need and the sales that you want.

1. Reach extra people

When you write good, quality articles you should share them with other people. You can do this by posting your articles in you site or you can submit them to a number of article directories. Simply include a link back to your site in the information bio box. This in return will bring a ton of visitors to your site, all for free.

2. Optimizes your site for enhanced search engine ranking

If you make your site full of special keywords you can improve your sites rankings in the search engines. Keyword density is one of the most important factors when it comes to determining how your site will rank in the search engines.

3. Free Advertising

You also can try free advertising. There are numerous sites that offer advertising for free as well as different tricks you can use. Try putting a link back to your site whenever you send out an email.

4. Increase Link Popularity

Instead of finding other sites that would want to trade links with your site you can publish an article. When you do this, other sites will use that articles and it will have a link back to your site, thus improving the number of visitors to your site.

Max Whitson began involved in learning about Internet marketing at the youthful age of 14. Now, Whitson is an internet marketing guru and has lead hundreds of people to success by making money from home.

For more information, visit http://www.makegreenfromhome.com

Increase Your Link Popularity for Free

Among the many things you need to worry about for high search engine rankings,link popularity is among the most important. Link popularity refers the how many other websites on the internet link back to your website. The more websites link back to yours, the more popular your website will be with search engines. Let's explore a great free method of increasing your link popularity.

Want the hard way or the easy way?

The hard way to increase your link popularity is to take the time to visit hundreds of websites, put a link to their website on your site and then ask them to link back to your web site. This method works but it is very time consuming and often only produces mediocre results.

An option that isn't free but works for getting one way links back to your website is using link brokers. Two services out there to get you started are linkadage.com and textlinkbrokers.com. These sites offer you the chance to find high traffic website owners who will put keyword rich one way links to your website in return for money.

Write an article and get a link

The easy way to get one way links to your web site is to write articles on topics you know, then include a resource box at the bottom of the article that includes a link or two back to your web site. The webmaster or ezine publisher gets useful content they can offer to their customers and you get a valuable link back to your website without having to reciprocate. This is a win win proposition.

But I'm not a writer!

I can almost guarantee that you know things other people want to know. It could be almost anything. Write about things you know and the writing will take care of itself. Using a word processor, you can make sure your article is spell checked and has proper grammer. You don't have to write a book. You only need between 300 and 400 words to be able to deal effectively on a topic.

Decide to take action today

For years, I had read about the benefits of writing articles to get people to my website and for years I put it off because I didn't consider myself a writer. Once I made the decision to take action and write, the benefits have far outweighed any fear I had about writing. Determine to take action and just do it! Sit down right now and write your first article. You won't regret it!

Joe Duchesne is a partner is a web hosting service at http://www.yowlingbuilder.com that offers an easy to use web site builder that allows even the complete beginner to create a professional website in no time at all.

Reprint freely as long as both links in this resource box are live.