Article Marketing Essentials for 2014 Copyright Š 2013, Hartford Rhodes
Table of Contents Article Marketing Essentials How To Stand Out From Your Competition Selecting Your Article Topics The Real Purpose of Article Directories Top 100 Article Submission Sites About The Author
Article Marketing Essentials As we wind up 2013, article marketing remains one of the cheapest, most economical and more effective methods for promoting your website online. On the front side, you create an article or otherwise share information that people will want to know, and at the end of your article, in your “about the author” information (also called your “author's resource box”), you will share information about yourself and your website with the person who has just finished reading your article. Once you have written your article, then you will want to get your article into the hands of publishers, who already have access to the people in your target audience. You can send articles directly to website owners and newsletter publishers, who might be interested in sharing your content with their readers. You can also send your articles to “article directories,” where publishers go to find content worthy of sharing with their readers. To help you get your articles into the hands of online publishers, who might be willing to publish your articles, I am including a list of the top 100 article directories in the last chapter of this report. If you are interested in learning how to improve your skills as an article marketer, I would like to recommend to you the article marketing guides being offered by Bill Platt at WritingPuzzle.com. Bill has over a dozen years experience in article marketing, and he is one of the experts in this field that successful marketers always recommend to others.
How To Stand Out From Your Competition While article marketing is a real promotion technique, you will want to avoid promoting your products and services directly, within the article. It is the value of your information within the article that will convince publishers to share your article with their readers and will convince readers to pay attention to you. One of the best analogies I have heard for “article marketing” is to look at television shows. For every hour on the clock, there is 42 minutes of programming and 18 minutes of advertising. Broadcasters do not advertise within the content, because it is the content that attracts viewers to the programming. And, consumers are willing to tolerate and watch the commercials, as the agreed price for watching for free the television show that they tuned in to see. Following this scenario, publishers and readers want information within the article, but both are willing to tolerate an advertisement in your “about the author” information at the end of your article. If you are a competent writer, and you can convince readers within your article that you are someone worth listening, then people will follow the links in your “about the author” to see what additional value you can bring to them. Article marketing is not about getting good search rankings. Instead, when you use article marketing in the way I am describing, you will find that you can get all of the traffic you want to your website, simply by making your content attractive to publishers and readers and convincing readers to visit your website to learn more about how you can help them. Ideally, the information that you share within your article will be related to what you actually sell on your website. The idea is to attract the
people who are most likely to buy what you are selling to your content, then make an appeal to them in your “about the author� describing how you can help them achieve their goals.
Selecting Your Article Topics Over the years, one of the best techniques I have seen used by article marketers to sell services is to describe to the reader how they can do the job themselves. I know that on the surface this seems counter-intuitive, so let me explain to you why this works. If you create an article that teaches someone how to build a website, fix a toilet, repair a car, or whatever, people are pleased to have the information available to them. But once the reader realizes how hard the actual task is, and how long it will take the reader to complete the task on their own, they are more than willing to contact the article's author to ask them to do the task for them. Over the years, I have sold a ton of services using this very technique, because although I have taught the reader what to do, the reader has decided that it would be much simpler just to hire a professional to do that task for them. When you are selling information products, it is helpful to share information and training related to what you will be talking about within your product. The idea is to get the reader excited about what they will find within the product you are selling. When you are selling physical products, it is always a bit more challenging to use article marketing to promote a website that sells that product, but it is not impossible. I used to do some writing for an auto parts website. With that project, we told people how to troubleshoot automotive problems, then we advised the reader in the “about the author� information to find the parts they needed on the website. In another campaign, we were promoting television sets. In that campaign, we explained what each of the product features actually
did. For example, what input jacks should you look for on your new television set, or what television models included picture-in-picture capabilities and why someone would want that? One time, we were promoting a high-end brand of clothing. In those articles, we talked about how a specific kind of fabric and the doublestitching helped improve the quality of clothing, and how that would save the consumer money since the clothing would not need to be replaced as often. The bottom line is that when you are promoting physical products, you will want to talk about things that would be interesting to consumers and valuable for consumers to know, and you will want to do that without mentioning specific products or specific brands within the context of the article. The point of article marketing is to win the attention of consumers who will be most likely to purchase what you are selling, get them interested in thinking about those things you sell, then to direct them in the “about the author� information to your website where they can learn more and make a purchase. Article marketing works well, and it always has worked well, when you focus on reaching a targeted audience of consumers with your content, winning the hearts and minds of readers, and directing them to your website where they can make a purchase.
The Real Purpose of Article Directories Before I tell you which article directories are best for submitting your articles, let me advise you about the real purpose of article directories in the marketplace. Article directories are simply a website where publishers can go to find good content to share with their readers and where authors can go to find publishers. Putting your articles into article directories is a process you undertake to help publishers find your articles and nothing more than that. Having your article posted in an article directory will not enable Google or Bing users to find your articles. However, if a real publisher picks up your article from the article directories, then it is very possible that the people using search engines might be able to discover your article on the publisher's website in the search engines. When a real publisher publishes your article, you are simply borrowing from the publisher's authority to get better rankings for your article in the search engines and to win more eyeballs for your articles. In order to benefit from placement in the search engines, your articles still need to capture the right readers and to lead those people to click the link in your author's “resource box” or “about the author” information. There are hundreds of article submission sites on the Internet, but most of them are ghost towns. In the next chapter, you will find a comprehensive list of top article submission sites.
Top 100 Article Submission Sites If you are in the market for an automated software tool to help you submit your articles to these article directories and others, I recommend taking a look at the “Magic Submitter” software. Website
Google PageRank
Alexa Rank
Ezine Articles Articles Base Buzzle Helium Article City
6 6 6 6 6
105 304 549 1603 5970
Article Snatch Article Alley Article Dashboard Sooper Articles Search Warp Isnare Article Blast Article Trader A1 Articles ArticleBiz Article Ant Article Insider
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
2442 2513 4218 5241 6418 6491 8171 7978 8951 9416 26938 136329
Pub Articles Article Click Article Compilation Articles Factory Uber Articles Article Sphere Popular Articles
4 4 4 4 4 4 4
4475 5797 9420 10533 18059 25296 28444
Article Greek Article World Albertam Yes Articles Articles World Online Article Emporium
4 4 4 4 4 4
36947 57430 68131 79131 186270 198613
Go Articles 3 Amazines 3 Article Rich 3 eArticles Online 3 ABC Article Directory 3 U Publish 3 Article Directory 3 Article Beach 3 FourPx Articles 3 Article Monkeys 3 Article Feeder 3 Article Bliss 3 Ultimate Article Directory 3 The Content Corner 3 212 Articles 3 Article Content King 3 Article Intelligence 3 1 Article World 3 Article Gold 3 Womens Articles 3 Article Avenue 3 Afro Articles 3 Article Wheel 3 Article Destination 3 Positive Articles 3 Business Highlight 3 Article Joe 3 Expert Articles 3 Article Hut 3
2143 6067 7518 9418 9655 9787 11017 11774 12030 12477 13378 13801 14080 15258 16423 21735 28075 35632 37484 38219 58129 59254 70730 93348 123775 152766 161492 200708 203480
Ezine Mark Article Cell Everyones Articles Article Stars Articles 4 Reprint Article Trunk Article Xpert Article Basement Ton Articles UR Articles Article Creek Article Mayhem Article Vista Softensive Articles888 Unique Articles Article Zap 101 Articles Business Clique Article Point
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
1855 11008 13790 14365 19602 24780 25485 28686 36758 49458 52129 53813 59382 66944 68203 71020 95341 145391 154776 478456
Article County Article Farm Base Articles Articles Idea Article Network 111 Articles
1 1 1 1 1 1
13295 20350 21407 42904 46324 63095
Article Cube Article Bin Article Pros Article Motron Free Article Zone Article-Exchange Article Set
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
7419 10705 11289 13555 36509 58521 72114
Ezine Article Exchange 0 Read Free Article 0
229183 3372784
About The Author Hartford Rhodes is a widower, who lives with his two cats in northwest Arkansas. He has three grown children and six grandchildren. Hartford has been working as a professional ghost writer – someone who writes in the name of his clients – for more than a decade. Articles that he has written in the names of his clients have been published in hundreds of popular websites and newsletters.
If you are in the market for some good software that will enable you to submit your articles to more article directories with much less effort, Hartford confidently recommends the “Magic Submitter” article submission software.