Why Articles?
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It is an opportunity to share information and establish yourself as an expert
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It creates an opportunity for new traffic to come to your site (when your
article gets distributed to various sites on the internet, people can read your
article and click on a link within the article to get to your site.)
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It creates one-way links into your site. Every time one of your articles is
posted, each link in your article counts as a one-way link to your site.
When you write an article and post it on your site, you are creating new
relevant text for your site visitors and for the search engines (which can
result in a boost in rankings).
How Does Article Syndication Work?
Write an article (keep reading for more specifics on how to
format your article)
Find a company that will handle your article syndication for you, OR locate
sources you can syndicate your article to on your own.
Post your article on your site and wait about a week to make sure the spiders
index your site (making sure you get credit for the unique content as your
own).
Create accounts at the Article Sources you identified and submit your article.
Pay close attention to their guidelines - do
they allow HTML, do they require that your article not be published anywhere
else, do they require your article be on your site, do they allow multiple
submissions in a month? Etc, etc. It helps to keep a file with all the relevant
details about the source so that all future submissions go smoothly.
Notify all your clients, friends and family about the article
and send them to it. In some sources you get credit (which means more exposure
for your article) if it is popular and read often or searched for.
Article Guidelines:
1.You want links from the article to different pages on your site - however not
all sources allow hyperlinks in the content (they only allow a link within your
bio) so make sure your article still makes sense even if it is a version that
doesn't have the links active.
2.Because the search engines look at the text within the "hot" or clickable part
of the link - it is really good to use a keyword in that area. As an extra
bonus, if you can change the keyword within the link on your article at
different sources you get more of a benefit. In other words, take the time to
create different versions of your article. Vary the text used as the anchor
text in the links, and vary the pages that you link to within your site in the
various versions. This will give Google what they are looking for - varying
anchor text and links going to many pages on your site, not just one. This is
one of the most important, and overlooked steps out there. This alone can
increase the value you get from article syndication.
3.Link to relevant pages on your site, not just your homepage. It helps the
reader get more information and it helps you with the search engines (they
don't like to see all the links going to one page only). Eventually you have
articles out there going to all of your site pages. Just remember, when you
link to a page you need to tie it into the content of an article. Ex: If you
are talking about dog collars, don't link to a page about bird cages.
4.Wait one week after you post it on your site before you syndicate it.
5.Always write a short, compelling bio with a link to your most important site
page.
6.Include a "Reprint Rights" statement at the bottom of your article, allowing
people to use and republish the article as long as they don't alter it and they
include a link to you.
7.Prepare a short, medium and long summary for your article. Many sources will
ask for a summary in various lengths and you want to have it ready and have it
be compelling so that if people read the summary they want to read the article
and ultimately go to your site.
8.Don't forget in addition to submitting to article websites, you can also
submit to newsletters that are relevant in your industry
9.Write the article in plain terms, don't use too much jargon.
10.Make sure your article is informational and don't be too salesy or
self-promotional or people will be turned off and some sources may reject the
article. Links to your site within the article and Author Bio is all you need
to guide traffic to your site.
11.Don't use a lot of formatting, keep the layout simple. For sources that don't
allow HTML you will end up losing the formatting anyway.
12.Check out your sources to be sure, but typically you want to aim for 600 -
800 words.
13.Write a very compelling headline. Tip: Take a look at Cosmo and other
magazines out there; they have the best headlines on the cover. Try playing
with headlines like that.
14.Make sure your article provides value and answers a question or solves a
problem for your reader.
15.Don't use long blocks of text, people like shorter paragraphs and bullet
point lists.
16.Date each article with the date it was written (when posting it on your site,
so that people will know if they are reading current information or not.
17.Update your SiteMap when you add articles to your site.
18.Link to your article from your Blog. Don't post the article on your Blog and
on your site - that is duplicating content and can be considered spam.
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