Making Money with Your Blog!

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Web site owners come to us for training with many backgrounds. Some are very technical and excel with competitive intelligence. Some have a design background and can relate to designing a site that is user friendly. All understand and can implement basic search engine optimization. But my greatest challenge is to teach everyone (even those who say they can not write) how they can take article marketing and leverage the Internet to their full advantage.

Just as the saying from Donnie and Marie (yes that's aging me) "She's little bit county, and he's little bit rock and roll" I look at Article Marketing the same way, "It's partly science and a little bit art and persistence."

From the very first step of writing an article to the very last of seeing it get indexed I have come up with an 8 step combination to ensure article marketing success.

Let's begin with...

Step #1 - Keyword Research - As with any new SEO project I start, keyword research is my most valuable step. I always look for keywords that have low competing pages and a high KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index.) My program of choice is Wordtracker. Many of the most successful articles I've written start with a keyword I have found in my research phase and then I write an article around my findings. Finding those phrases that result in brining industry related traffic to your site is half the battle.

Step #2 - Writing the Article - Even if you think you can not write an article follow these few guidelines and you will easily have a 400 - 600 word article in front of you within a very short time. Author, Robin Nobles taught me this outline for writing an article many years ago and I still use it every time I sit down to write for my Web site.

1. Before starting to write, list the topics you want to cover.

2. Take each topic and detail them out individually.

3. Organize the topics by importance.

4. Make a smooth transition from one topic to the next

5. Your first paragraph should be a summary of what the article is about.

6. Use bulleted lists and plenty of white space.

7. Every article should have a beginning, middle and an end.

8. Include that ah-ah moment. I try to keep in mind that those who take time to read my articles are looking to learn something so I include something that will make them glad they read what I had to say.

Step #3 - Search Engine Optimization - Up until now my only concern is to write an article that provides real value to my reader. Now I take the article and concentrate on optimizing for my keyword phrases. Keeping in mind that my title tag is the most important element of my article I try to make it compelling and always include my keyword phrase in it. I also add my keyword phrase to my Meta tags, check my keyword weight, H1 tags and link text within the body of the article.

Step #4 - Proofing - I know most of you think this is a no brainier but it is so important. Any article I write I put it aside for a couple days and go back to it. I also have someone proof it for me before I start marketing it. I always read everything I write out loud and if I stumble on any words I can be sure my readers will stumble on them as well.

Step #5 - Web Site Publishing - Now I am ready to publish it to my Web site being sure I have added a link to my site map as well as linking it from another page on my site linking it to a page that relates to the same topic as the new article.

Step #6 - Blogging - I use my blog as my ace in the whole. Search Engines love the freshness of blogs and will visit your blog on daily or weekly basis if they see you're constantly adding new posts. I name my blog post using the same keyword phrase in my blog title as in my article and write only a snippet of the article on my blog pointing back to the full article on my site.

Step #7 - Upload to Article Marketing Web Sites - I have a list of my favorite article marketing sites that I use on a regular basis and I submit my article to each one of them every time I finish one. Here is my favorite list:

BusinessKnowHow.com

ArticleDashboard.com

Buzzel.com

ArticleBiz.com

EzineArticles.com

ArticleCity.com

ArticleAlley.com

Step #8 - Social Media Marketing - I start this step by pinging my blog post through a service such as Autopinger.com. Then since there are so many Social Media Marketing avenues available today on the Internet I did a lot of testing to see exactly what sites I could see some viable results from. From my testing I came up with a handful of SMM sites that I regularly submit my articles to. Let me share them with you:

Digg.com

Del.icio.us

Reddit.com

Scribd.com

Sphinn.com

Propeller.com

Step #9 - Bonus Listing - A couple months ago I found a new Social Media Site "Squidoo." I read the guidelines and created a lens concentrating on my keyword phrase. Now every time I complete an article I create a new lens in my Squidoo account focused around my articles keywords.

One of my hard to get keyword phrases has 314,000 competing pages and within a month my lens focused keyword phrase on Squidoo was index on page two and above the actual article on my Web site using the same phrase.

These are the steps I use each and every time I write for the Web. My whole goal is to monopolize the Internet with my industry related topics opening as many windows into my site as possible.

Its' not all about just your Web site anymore! The combination is changing every day and in order to keep ahead you must adapt to finding ways to open multiple vaults into your site every day. Article Marketing will help identify you as an expert in your field and give you instant creditability with your readers.

Follow my 9 Steps to Article Marketing and unlock the possibilities for your site today!

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Tracy Fredrychowski, SEO Instructor
Search Engine Academy of South Carolina
http://www.searchengineacademysc.com