SiteProNews |
- 10 Steps to a Successful Article
- Web Site Leverage
- How Should Webmasters React to Google Fresh? – A SPN Exclusive Article
| 10 Steps to a Successful Article Posted: 14 Nov 2011 09:20 AM PST 
Why write articles? Article writing and marketing is one of the most powerful ways to boost your traffic and sales. Articles will build your reputation and credibility. Articles will allow you to make more contacts and establish more connections. Articles will improve your ranking and bring you more traffic. Articles will improve your online presence. Article marketing is free! Writing an article is not as hard as most people think. You are not writing a dissertation but a simple and informative article. Below are ten steps to help you write a more successful article. Step 1: The Title Be sure you choose a title that will grab people’s attention and catch their interest. Most people will decide to read an article or not just by the title. Be specific in what your article is about. For example: How to Grow Vegetables vs. 5 Ways to Healthier More Delicious Vegetables Which article would you read? I know I would read the second one. Step 2: Topic of Interest Be sure to choose topics that people will want to know about. Do some research to see what questions people are asking. Visit forums, groups, social sites and see what needs to be addressed. See what the buzz is about and write your article accordingly. Step 3: Easy to Understand There is no need to write a college dissertation. Use short, easy to understand sentences. Use 5th grade level words to be sure everyone who reads your article will understand what you are talking about. Step 4: Easy to Read Going along with the short easy to understand sentences, keep your paragraphs short but informative. Leave plenty of white space so reading your article is not hard on the eyes. Research keywords when writing your article. Try to use some of the most popular search phrases that deal with your article subject. A good program to use is Google’s keyword search tool. But once you find the relevant keywords be sure not to overstuff your article with them. If you use them too many times your article will be too repetitive and will not do well in the search engines. Step 6: Writing When writing your article, write it as if you were explaining it to a friend. Don’t make it sound like a seminar or lecture. Add personal experiences when possible so your readers can identify with you and feel a bond and/or connection. Let your personality shine through and write from your heart! Step 7: Lists If you are including any kind of list in your article, be sure to write it in a bulleted or numbered list style. This will attract the reader’s eye and increase the chances of it being read through. Step 8: Article Body The first paragraph should be an introduction to what type of information your article will contain. Use it as a lead-in to the main body of the article. When writing the main body, be sure your writing flows from point to point and doesn’t jump around aimlessly. The last paragraph should sum up what the article meant and what points were made. Step 9: Proofread This step cannot be stressed enough. Read over your article several times to be sure all spelling, punctuation and grammar is correct. Things can be missed in just one or two goings over so do it several times to be sure. Step 10: Resource Box Your resource box is very important so you want it to be effective in getting people to click on your link and take you up on whatever you offer. Don’t try to sell anything in your resource box. Offer something free if possible. For example: John Doe is an expert in the SEO field. He can help you get your site to the top of the search engines. Click here to get his free step by step report. Article writing is not as intimidating as it sounds. You do not need to know big fancy words. You do not have to be a scholar and you do not have to be a professional author to write a quality article with helpful information. Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Posted: 14 Nov 2011 09:11 AM PST 
If you can’t get people to stick around your site and eventually contact you, your website is just taking up cyberspace. What does a results-producing website need? Let’s start with quality design, clear formatting and substantial content on every page. And you need to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question every step of the way. But that’s just the beginning. Even sites that have all the bases covered often miss the key to turning visitors into clients. It’s the difference between a website that “just sits there” and one that gets a prospect to give you a call or send an email saying, “Can you help me?” And that big key is called the “Call-to-Action.” And you don’t just use it once, but over and over throughout your site. Here are some important calls-to-action that you can easily add to your site: 1. At the bottom of every page tell people where to go next. Then include a link that points there. If you don’t, your visitors will scratch their heads thinking, “Where do I go next?” and then scroll up to the navigation bar to figure it out. Don’t make them think. Make it obvious where they should go next. Your directions might say something like: “Now that you have a better idea of the kind of clients we work with, click here to learn about the results you can expect to receive from our services.” Who knows when the inspiration will strike to contact you? Have you ever been on a website and wanted to contact the company but couldn’t find an email address or a phone number? Bye, bye business. And make that Contact Us page more than a phone number, email and address. Tell them what will happen when they contact you. Make it easy to do business with you. Take an extra step here. Insert a small form that they can fill out to request even more information about that service. Get their name, email, company name and the answers to a few questions about their needs. Yes, people do fill out these forms. But keep them simple! This is the psychology behind the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. It would be easier to just have people mail back the form. But they found that the more involvement, the better the response. You might try a survey of some kind. 5. Have prospects apply to be your client. When I promote my high-end groups I decided instead of a “payment link” at the end of the description of the groups, to put in an application form. This way I can screen applicants, since I don’t accept everyone. Then I send an acceptance email to those I feel will get the most from the group with a payment link. The conversion rate is still very high. When I accepted individual clients, I used a similar application form. 6. Capture their name and email address. This is really the number one purpose of a website. Offer a pithy article or report, plus an email newsletter (in that order) in exchange for their contact information. Once you have them on your eZine list, the marketing really starts. I call it “keep-in-touch marketing.” 7. Offer ongoing calls-to-action in your eZine. I generate much more business from the eZine than from new visitors to the website. Think of the web as the place where you introduce yourself to your prospects. And think of the eZine as the place they get to know you. Then invite them to explore your services in more depth (by sending them back to the website). Now go back to your site and start inserting all these calls-to-action. I promise you’ll start getting better results! The More Clients Bottom Line: Every single marketing activity needs to include a call-to-action. But the website is a “call-to-action machine” that moves people step-by-step through the marketing process. And this is true marketing leverage, because you don’t even have to be there to do it. Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing has been helping Independent Professionals attract more clients since 1984. Robert is the author of the online bestsellers, the InfoGuru Marketing Manual and the WebSite ToolKit. Robert’s site is a great resource for any self-employed professional. Get Robert’s free report, “The 5 Key Strategies to Attracting More High-End Clients.” http://actionplan.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| How Should Webmasters React to Google Fresh? – A SPN Exclusive Article Posted: 13 Nov 2011 09:00 PM PST 
On the Official Google Blog where this new Update was announced, Amit Singhal states: “We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.” However, in an update, Singhal explains this measurement of 35% only applies to where at least one result was affected by the changes. In reality, this update only “noticeably” impacts 6 to 10% of searches. “Update 11/7/11: To clarify, when we say this algorithm impacted 35% of searches, we mean at least one result on the page was affected, as opposed to when we’ve said noticeably impacted in the past, which means changes that are significant enough that an average user would notice. Using that same scale, this change noticeably impacts 6 – 10% of searches, depending on the language and domain you’re searching on.” Regardless, Google Fresh will be influencing what sites/pages get listed in the top spots in Google. Already, these fresher listings are popping up for keyword searches where products or services are constantly changing or evolving such as in consumer electronics. For the average webmaster or business site owner, this Update will probably mean they will have to examine how often their content is updated. Adding new fresh content has definitely become more important to your site and to your overall marketing strategy. However, for the small business owner with limited resources, constantly adding new content is not really feasible. These small sites won’t be able to compete with major websites which have hundreds of writers or content contributors. Keeping up will simply be too costly or too time consuming for many small business site owners. Create Blogs and Forums Hiring someone or outsourcing your content creation is one option, but in many cases this content is not of the highest quality, which sort of defeats the whole intention. Many SEO experts are already suggesting one way to keep offering up fresh quality content is to run a blog and/or a forum on your site. Blogs are excellent sources of fresh content and with their RSS feeds broadcasting your news means it is fast and immediate. Blogs are also very search engine friendly so tagging and indexing your content is already built-in and ready to go. They also create a Timestamp with your content so that it can be easily dated and assessed by the search engines. Having a membership forum or site, where members contribute fresh content, is another viable option for web owners. Appointing moderators to oversee this content is probably a good idea to ensure quality standards and to cut down on spam. Create Active Online Communities Along those same lines, another good idea is to create an active online community around your blog, site or any one of the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or perhaps Google+. Announcing fresh content to these communities, especially if they are large and active, will get your content noticed by Google. These social networks are designed to quickly pass fresh news or information along to all concerned and can be a great way to get your message out quickly and easily. Google+ has now opened up their service to accept brands, so you can have an account for your site or business. Create a Current Sitemap Any webmaster, no matter how small their site, can create a simple XML Sitemap of their site and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. Make sure when you create any new content or pages, the new URLs are placed on your sitemap. This can be done manually or you can set up a server-side application or program which does this automatically. If you want help creating a sitemap try here: Do Press Releases With the introduction of Google Fresh, having your site or business regularly do press releases is a given. These releases are immediately picked up by Google and indexed. These releases can also be very SEO friendly so you can optimize them for your site’s targeted keywords. Places like PRWeb are extremely professional but they are expensive. There are also free press releases sites or services which you can use to get your fresh content out there. Don’t Forget Google News Sites You may or may not be aware that Google keeps a list of hand-picked news sites which they regularly crawl and index. These sites have passed Google’s standards and requirements, so they are excellent places to submit your content. Especially if you have a new site, getting Google to index and crawl your content will take some time, so placing your content and links on any of these Google News Sites may be worth the extra effort since it will help speed up the whole indexing process. Give Google What Google Wants Finally, don’t forget to keep adding fresh quality content to your own site on a regular basis. Regardless of your field, industry or subject matter, there is usually a constant flow of news associated with your topic, so placing a “news” section on your site may also help with Google Fresh. Time and time again, those sites and webmasters who give Google what Google wants, reap the biggest rewards. All views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, Titus Hoskins, who is a full time search engine marketer. He earns his living by ranking high in the search engines for lucrative keywords. His main site offers Free Guides on everything associated with running a business from Corporate Business Gifts to Online Fax Providers to Internet Marketing Tools. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
If you are an online business owner and are not yet active in article marketing, you need to get started as soon as possible.
Ever go to a web site and find that after poking around a few pages you just click off and go to another site? Of course. It happens millions of times a day on the web. Why? Good question!
It’s been an extremely busy year for the good folks at Google, not only did they roll out the game-changing Panda Updates, but now they have increased the stakes by implementing Google Fresh. This recent algorithm update is based on the Caffeine architecture introduced by Google a year ago and supposedly makes Google’s listings much fresher.| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment