Another dumb question regarding article writing

The first question that comes to mind is "how are people going to find your article?".

Some of my earlier articles on EA are just basic information and not keyword targeted. That was before I knew about that concept.

Most of those have not been viewed more than 40 times in, like, 5 years.

If you're using them on your blog or on a related site, it might make sense not to keyword target your article.

Regardless, keyword targeting doesn't mean loading up the article with your keyword. It only needs to go in the headline, the first paragraph and the last paragraph.

You could target "buy purple widgets" with a headline: "Why Buy Purple Widgets?" or "There's a lot to know before you buy purple widgets". Then, you article can go into the article that discuses purple and blue widgets with a link in your resource to buy purple widgets.

Sylvia

Funny - I just wrote a blog post today on exactly this topic...of the need to follow this process...

1. First, know what you are selling and what people will use to search for what you are selling (this is an aspect of keyword research and competitive analysis that most people simply do not do or do poorly yet it can make a massive difference in your results)

2. Then, do keyword research and isolate those keywords that have the most commercial potential

3. Test those keywords (I've tested in batches of 20's right into the hundreds at one time - often using PPC to do my initial testing just because it works faster)

4. Based on how well the keywords convert - we then organize a content generation campaign around the most promising keywords. But...we look for content ideas that are relevant, interesting and current in-line with the keyword phrases we have chosen. You can use Blog directories, Google news, Amazon comments, discussion forums...for content ideas that hold a great deal of interest and that can be optimized around your chosen keywords.

Here is the full traffic generation with content blog post -- with a case study around an article that recently ranked #1 with 4.7 Million pages of competition - pretty cool!

Jeff

Why not write for the search engines and for your audience at the same time, in the same article? You can create a quality article while having a decent keyword density in the content! You need to write for both, if you want to generate some traffic to your articles, you will need to try SEO. Just my 2 cents.

There is a thing called relevance. Google's algo will key in on relevant keywords. So, you don't have to be (and shouldn't be) always on the nose with your keywords in your copy, title, etc. Naturally written articles just aren't written that way. You'll have other keyword phrases in there, which are related; like, "Atkins diet" "Miami Beach Diet", etc. These are relevant terms. By tossing in these relevant terms, you also help out your long tail. So, try to be a little diverse and more natural with your writing. I will say though, I always focus the link in my by-line on the KW phrase I'm targeting.

It may be the "obviously" bit that's misleading you, Matt. Very many EZA authors don't know what they're doing at all. It's really important, in article marketing, to learn to judge who's worth listening to (tpw) and who's not (surprisingly many people). If you see people "doing stuff that you don't understand", don't assume that they know what they're doing. The average standard and average level of understanding of "how to do it" is a lot lower than one might expect. I'm just saying.

The first thing to understand is that just because someone has written hundreds of articles on EZA does not mean they know what they are doing.

Some of the other writers participating in this thread may remember the lady who wrote thousands of articles about mesothelioma. She dropped a butt-load of money to make sure her website ranked well for mesothelioma, and she lost her ass.

She had made a mistake in her research.

She found a list of the highest paying keywords inside Google Adwords.

While it was true that attorneys were paying $20 per click for mesothelioma clients, the part that she missed understanding was that it was only one attorney and he was only buying two leads a day!!

Even if she was batting 100% and getting ALL of the $20 clicks, she would have only been making $600 per month -- $1200 per month from client, with a 50% split with Google.

Only after she had literally invested multiple five-figures into ranking for mesothelioma did she realize that it was not the cash cow that she thought it would be.

With thousands of articles on the topic, you would have thought she knew what she was doing -- she did not!! She was blinded by greed.


You cannot let the number of articles written be "the measure" of deciding who knows what they are doing and who does not.

You need to realize that the search engines are just one small part of a successful article marketing campaign.

The defined purpose of EZA is a channel through which to syndicate your article.

It can help with your SEO, and when an article marketing outsider figured that out in 2005, he introduced the planet to the concept of using article marketing to influence SEO.

Those of us who were insiders knew that, and we had mentioned it several times in our articles. But in 2005, Jason Bradley grabbed the bull by its horns and created a free article directory software called Article Dashboard.

Bradley made a load of money from his free software, because he was advertising an affiliate link for Host Gator. At $100 per web hosting account signup, he literally made a killing when thousands of people got his free software and bought web hosting for it. (It is a neat business model if you ask me, although it may have a sustainability problem.)

There are now literally thousands of websites running the Article Dashboard script. Every time someone downloads and installs it on a new web hosting account at Host Gator, he makes money. All of the folks downloading the software think that they will be the next EZA, but the Article Dashboard software is not up to that.

I have gotten off-track.

EZA was developed to syndicate your articles to other website, blogs and newsletters. But it can carry some weight for SEO.

When someone is writing articles like "jumping jacks to lose weight" (okay, I loved your example) and posting them to EZA, the goal is not strictly SEO.

There are several ways that these articles can be found within the EZA website -- by author name, by submit date, by keywords, by popular lists, by category.

The first goal is for the article to be found by a person using EZA to navigate. This could potentially lead to a direct click from EZA to the writers' website. It could also lead to the syndication of the article on another website, blog or newsletter.

And when the article is syndicated, those syndicated copies of the article could lead to direct click traffic from the resource box, bringing more potential prospects to the writers' website.

Some websites, blogs and newsletters have massive audiences that may be convinced to visit the authors' website.

The second goal is for Google and other search engines to find the article and attribute a link to the authors' website.

This could lead to the article being found by consumers on EZA, and a direct click to the authors' website.

It could lead to Google giving value to the web page linked to from the article.

It could lead to Google giving the authors' web page a good ranking for the keyword in the anchor text.

The goals in article marketing are many.

When I write articles, I do it to build my reputation and to direct the reader to a sales page on one of my websites.

When I write articles, my primary goal is to drive immediate traffic to my website -- sending people to my website, who will be more likely to buy what I am selling.

I have written many articles that have generated five-figures in sales in one day.

I have made that kind of money from articles selling $500 SEO Packages in some articles, $35 article distributions in other articles, $40 ebooks in some articles, and affiliate products inside some of my articles.

Article marketing has made a ton of money for me at the low-end and higher-end of the pricing scale. I recommend this kind of experience to everyone. But not everyone can pull it off.

On the front side of the article marketing process, I am looking for immediate sales. On the back side of the article marketing process, I am looking for search engine rankings.

And at every juncture, I syndicate the articles without spinning, because when I fine tune an article to lead people into my sales funnel, getting that article into other websites will give me access to an even larger audience of prospects.


p.s. I have written two ebooks on the topic of article marketing. The links for both can be found on my WF Blog page, linked in my signature. One of the ebooks is free, and the other is paid.

If you would like a thorough introduction to article marketing, get one or both of my ebooks.

p.p.s. Article Marketing includes promoting the article after you have written it. And in my book, promoting an article does not stop after I have given it to an article directory.

If you write articles and don't promote them after you write them, then you are basically an article writer only, and not really a true article marketer.

Ally: Really good advice.

Welcome to the Warrior Forum. I will have my eye out for you.

What I have learned (on the forum) and other places that has been working very well is once you have the keywords, write an article that provides value to the reader, write it "naturally" don't worry about the keywords, just write about them as the topic of the article and when you re-read it make sure you have the keyword in there enough and tweak it as you need to.