1. When you write articles with good information related to your industry these sites are no only more likely to be accepted by the article directories, but then many times other sites will republish your articles as well. Search engines search article directories all the time due to the high amount of traffic these sites get and tons of content being generated. So your articles start showing up on the search engines in topics related to your industry.

2. At the end of the articles, there is a place to put links back to your site. This is a completely legitimate way to build links to your website, because you are providing good content in exchange. This aligns with the very purpose of Google. The result is increased presence in the search engines.

Check out my Squidoo page called: Distributing Your Content with Article Submission Services for a more detailed description of article submission and article submission services.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

Have you ever written an article?

Have you ever written anything on the web?

Has everything you’ve written been indexed and placed by Google in the exact search terms you wanted?

Well if so, then close this window and move on with life. For the 99.99 percent of you out there where this is not the case, read on, because I have some pointers that will help with this.

I was talking with a client last week, he was saying that Google wasn’t indexing the articles he wrote in the search terms he was going for. I asked to see the articles he had written. I read them over and spotted exactly what his problem was…

He was not using the words he wanted his article to show up in, he was using words related to these. I then checked with a few other people that claimed they had the same problem. One-for-one I found the same thing; they thought that Google would index the article for the search terms they wanted because it was RELATED to what they were talking about. Unfortunately, they forgot that, although Google is a very efficient “smart” search engine with millions of dollars in development, it’s not a sentient human.

Let’s take a specific example of using this. The keywords that we are trying to get this article to show up in are Good Green Grass (name of the company) and Lawn Care:

Article Title:

Bad: Green Grass is the best grass

Good: Do it yourself Lawn Care by Good Green Grass

The title is an important place to put keywords. Being the nature of titles, Google will look at this and see what your article is about, given the content in the article matches up it index the article accordingly.

Article Summary:

I recommend that you don’t just take a paragraph or two out of the article and make it the summary. Write a summary, taking advantage of keywords where you can to gain the most exposure for your articles. A lot of the article directories will have listings of articles with the title and summary being shown. What’s written in the summary is one of the factors Google takes into account on where to index you on pages that show listings.

Just as an example, I wouldn’t have a summary like this, “Lawn care by Good Green Grass has Lawn care services so you don’t have by Grass, but Good Green Grass.” As a reader I would think that you are writing for search engines, negating me as a client.

Take advantage of having captured your clients attention this far by saying things like, “Good Green Grass is providing do-it-yourself lawn care tips for those who want to have a beautiful, green lawn, by doing it themselves.” You can see the additional keywords you get by doing this, beautiful, green lawn, etc.

Article Body:

It’s important to use the search term you are trying to get the articles ranked for as keywords in the article itself. You are going to have to use your own judgment on the frequency of your keyword, but a good viewpoint to use is, how many times would you want to see it if you were reading the article as an actual human?

One difference in articles from press releases is that articles need to be informational reports for people to read. They can’t be too self promotional. Take the time to make yourself the authority on your business and having given your customers free information, become their friends. When you become that, you will have more business than you know what to do with.

When writing the body of the article think of different variations of the keywords you are going for. These will help get ranked in related keywords, gaining more exposure.

Resource Box:

Most sites have a resource box a.k.a. an author’s bio. This is the place where you can put your self promotional message. If the site allows links to be placed in the resource box, do it, because then you are gaining inbound links as well as all the other advantages. I will be writing more articles covering the details of how to properly format a resource box and covering each of the different fields you can fill out on an article in more detail.

Keywords:

Put the most important keywords at the beginning of the list. Most sites give you a limit of the number of keywords or number of characters. A lot of the sites that we use limit you to 150 characters in the resource box, this is going to vary from site to site.

Summary:

The main point is to get creative in how to word the search terms you are going for. You need to make it so that it doesn’t seem like you are writing for the search engines, but clients. You must include the keywords though, otherwise your article is less relevant and will not show up to the extent it could. The more you give to other people (not necessarily cash, talking more about information in this case), the more you are going to get back in the end. If you make it a little fun to read while writing, that’s another plus.

Rafferty Pendery

CEO Studio98

Article submission is the process of taking an article relevant to your company or the products or services you deliver and uploading it to article directories. Article directories are websites that collect articles on many different topics, ranging from Arts & Entertainment to Health to Technology. There is no standard list of categories for articles to be submitted to, so you are going to have to choose the most appropriate category on each site.

Examples of Some Article Directories

There are so many article directories out there, it would be impractical to list them all here. Below are a few different article directories that I recommend.

http://www.articledashboard.com

http://ezinearticles.com

http://articlefriendly.com

http://www.articlenetworks.com

http://www.articleplatform.com

Articles vs. Press Releases

There are a few differences between articles and press releases. Articles are more informational type promotion regarding the subject of your business. For example, if you were a spa, you could write an article on “How to Properly Care for Your Nails”. A Press Release is more of a self promotional tool to release some news about your company or products. Articles generally get disapproved if you make them too much of a self promotional piece.

Article Submission vs. Other Strategies Out There

If you look at the purpose of Google, providing good relevant content to their users, articles aligns with this perfectly. Article submission is not a trick or gimmick, it is providing good, relevant content.

There are other “get ranked quick” schemes out there. I DO NOT suggest being a part of these at all. Google spends millions of dollars finding these sort of schemes and it is bound to be shot down sooner or later. You might as well spend your time and money working on something that is going to align with the purpose of Google and not just get you deleted. That’s not to say that you can’t abuse article submission and get content deleted, because you can. If you follow the guidelines of the sites and use article submission for the intended purpose, then you reduce your risk significantly.

The whole idea of article submission is that you provide good information to the users on the internet and it will help build your search engine presence and peoples’ trust in you.

Two Pronged Approach

Article submission really is a 2 pronged approach.

1. When you submit articles, there is a space at the end where you can put links to your site (most sites limit you to 3 links in the resource box). Inbound links are a huge factor in how search engines rank your site on different keywords. So now you are publishing good, relevant content and getting inbound links for it. It works wonderfully whenever we have done it for our clients.
2. Because there are so many people submitting articles to these article directories, they are being searched all the time by Google. You can get the articles that you submit to be ranked by Google as well. If done properly, you will start to see many listings of the article you submitted showing up in Google.

Summary

Article submission has proven to be a great tool. We have used it for our clients to build a strong presence on the internet and search engines. Use it properly and you will win. It can take some work to get started, but once you do, I’m telling you it will be worth it.

Studio98 does have an article submission service where we will take your articles about your products, services or company and post them to 100 article directories, helping to keep your focus on what’s important, delivering great service to your clients.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98
Website: http://www.RaffertyPendery.com
Blog: http://blog.raffertypendery.com