getting started - article marketing

Here’s the scenario.  You need traffic and you probably needed it yesterday.  While article marketing is not going to be the end all be all flood of traffic tomorrow, it is going to begin to lay a concrete foundation for steady traffic in the future.  The good thing is that you can reap some benefits from your article marketing strategy efforts today, tomorrow.  I’ll talk about that in a little bit.

First, you have some decisions to make.

Simply stated, you need to create content.  And you will need lots of it.  If you have some already, great!

Before creating content, you need to decide where you will use that content.  Is it going to be published on your site or blog? Are you submitting it to an article directory?  Are you publishing on someone elses site?  Are you going to post on a Web 2.0 site?

For example, I always start with three versions of each article that I am going to use.  I have one that will be published on my site, one for the top article directory and one that I will use in any number of different ways.

I always start with three, unique and different articles targeting the same keyword.  Now, knowing that I do not have to worry about a “duplicate content” penalty, I still get 100% better results when I have a few unique articles published on a few specific sites.  I will reuse these a few weeks later to build backlinks but to start off, I want some good, unique content.

Once you decide what your needs are, you have to decide if you are going to write the articles yourself or outsource them.  I do a mix of both.  I write some myself and I outsource some.

The great thing about article marketing is that you CAN write the article yourself and you CAN post it on a free Web 2.0 site!  Essentially, you CAN get an entire online business off the ground without putting any money into it up front!  But that discussion is for another day.

So, the takeaway for you today is that you need to have a plan before you go pulling your articles together.  This plan could consist of (my personal preferences but a good guide for getting started):

1.  Your very targeted list of keywords that your articles will focus on?  You did do your keyword research, didn’t you?

2.  How many articles and how many versions of each article you will need?  Ideally one article for each keyword and each one rewritten twice for a total of three articles per keyword.

3.  Will you write the articles or will you outsource the articles?  You need to assess your available time versus your available funds.

Did you see the first in this series:  Article Marketing Strategy:  Article Marketing Overview or read the next post in this series Article Marketing Strategy:  How Do You Write ALL of Those Articles?

Have you read about Article Marketing Domination?


Filed under: Article Marketing