The initial intent of the bill sounds okay…stop illegal sharing of music, movies and games. Unfortunately it could also stop the sharing of content on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Below is a synopsis of the effects of SOPA, shared from WorkOnTheSofa.com, for which I could be sued for copyright infringement if SOPA passes:

Simply put, SOPA makes websites liable for copyright infringement that occurs among its users. Since the very foundation of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit relies on the free sharing of content, they are among the most vulnerable sites to legal action. Legal experts are anticipating industry-wide changes by these companies that restrict, monitor, or otherwise control the type of content sharing that is allowed on their platforms. Taking away sharing features may be a voluntary choice, or being blocked by the government may be a forced punishment. Either way, you may have to say goodbye to your tried-and-true strategies for linkbuilding and organic traffic.

If you have a site that is open to content sharing, and you most likely do, then you face even more serious issues. Have a blog or any other means for people to post comments or links to your site? This could get you into trouble. If someone illegally shares content or even posts a link to a site that enables illegal sharing, you could be held liable under SOPA. Prepare to have your domain blocked from users or even be faced with a lawsuit.

I encourage you to visit the site to learn more about what this bill entails, and contact your state Representative to protest the passage of it.

SEO has changed a lot, although some things never change – good onsite optimization means you don’t have to worry about every little update – your site will be solid.

The Panda update did make everyone step up their game, though, especially in Google Places and link building. I spent 2 solid months researching, studying and revising my SEO methods to conform to the Panda world.

Here are my Top SEO Tips after Panda

Onsite SEO

1. Increase the content of your pages and posts. At least 500 words, and 700 if possible. Make sure you use good grammar and check your spelling. Points off if you don’t do a good job there, just like in English class.
2. If you don’t have videos on your site, add them. You can get videos from YouTube about anything at all. Better yet, make your own. You can do that easily by converting a PowerPoint into a video. The one on this page was put together very quickly using these instructions. It’s not the best but I wanted to show you what you can do using free products.
3. If your business is local, create and upload locations.kml  and geositemap.xml files to your root folder. Here’s a handy dandy geositemap generator. It also explains what to do once they’re created.

Google Places SEO

1. If you have a local business then you need to get busy if you expect to compete. I seriously suggest having an SEO specialist do this for you. There are many details within a Google Places listing that can help you rank well, or kill your listing. On top of that, what worked before doesn’t work now.
2. Make certain you hire someone who is experienced and can show proof of ranking businesses…there are a lot of people who claim to be SEO experts but are not. Don’t waste your money or worse, your chance to be competitive.

Link Building

1. Article marketing is still good, but make certain your content is valuable and not just rehashed crap. Also, longer is better. Ezine requires 400 and sometimes 600 words in an article. I suggest at least 700 if possible.
2. Videos videos videos. Google loves them. You don’t have to show your face in them either, so if that part bothers you like it did me, just provide information.
3. Social media is becoming ever more important. You need to have the following for your business: Facebook, Twitter, Linked In. Blog posts or articles should go to FB and Linked In, as well as Tweeted. There are tools you can use to automate this.

Google is asking us to provide more quality information in a variety of communication methods. This actually should not be too hard if your website is a business, because there are always plenty of things to talk about, explain, announce, demonstrate, and offer. Think of who, what, when, where and why.

If you’re an IM’er you have to provide more content and be smarter about your back linking. You need a plan; just winging it won’t get you far at all.

It’s time to take Internet marketing seriously. Local businesses need to cancel their yellow pages ads and put that money into their websites and online marketing efforts. The competition already has.

Here’s a heads-up on a link building WordPress plugin that I’ve been using and have seen great results with. In fact, it’s one of the best WordPress plugins I’ve ever seen.

Not only will it build automatic backlinks, it’ll build backlinks that do it all: link juice, authority, traffic and long-life in one mega-SEO hit.

How to Get Backlinks Automatically

The plugin is called Digi Auto Links, and it gives you automated backlinks for every single blog article you write.

Digi Auto Links gives you backlinks in all the right places – from sites that are relevant to your niche, which makes them much more valuable. These are high ranking, Panda-friendly links that would take you hours to get manually, but this plugin does it for you in mere seconds.

You can have manual control, or just set it to automatic and let it do its thing. I worked with it manually until I saw that it does a great job on its own, and now it is on 100% autopilot on my sites.

For the next two weeks the Digi Auto Links plugin is on sale for $27, and believe me, that’s a steal for a plugin that does so much! If you’ve got more than one blog, get the multiple site license for only $10 more – you can’t beat that.

In addition, it’s 100% guaranteed, so if you don’t like it (which I can’t imagine) you’ll get your money refunded, no questions asked.

Digi Auto Links:

• Saves you hours by completely automating backlink building for every post
• Creates gold-standard contextual backlinks automatically every time you post
• Hijacks targeted traffic and link juice from the top blogs in your niche
• Builds a 100% panda-friendly backlink network, with your blog at the center
• Gets your posts indexed at lightning speed

Go get it now!

Disclaimer: These links include my affiliate number. However, this is an unpaid review and it is for a product that I purchased, really like and use myself with excellent results.

WordPress sites do extremely well on the Internet. The coding is minimal, they are easy to optimize and maintain, plugins give them every functionality you could want, and the addition of regular fresh content makes the search engines come back for more.

WordPress Owns the Internet

Out of 1 million websites, 55% are WordPress.

That’s an amazing number. Here are some more figures:

– 23,211,650+ WordPress 3.0 downloads

– 12,000+ Plugins

– 1,285+ free themes (it seems like there are millions)

They are also inexpensive to have built. If you have an HTML site, it may be time to upgrade to WP while getting a fresh up-to-date look and current SEO for better search results. If you don’t have the time or knowledge to do it right, check out the client testimonials at Buzz Marketing Pros and then contact me…yes, SEO Diva is making a shameless pitch here for her services.

Small Business Owners: The ROI is Real

Too many small businesses, locally owned and with limited budgets, don’t realize that it doesn’t have to be hugely expensive to do it right online. The return on investment is there. It’s not instant, but give a newly refurbished site a few months and you’ll see an increase in traffic that wants what you offer and converts to sales.

You’ll get help understanding Google Analytics and which metrics you need to pay attention to. Taught by a leading analytics specialist, the concepts and steps are explained in easy to understand language, with step-by step guidance.

In this set of videos you learn:

1. Which metrics matter – it’s not hits
2. How to create goals to see which marketing campaigns are paying off
3. How to create a conversion funnel and then understand the results
4. Using analytics to get in-depth information
5. Learning how your customers behave using site search
6. Benchmarking – compare your site’s performance with your industry
7. Step by step instructions on creating custom reports

Even if you don’t want to become an analytics guru, these videos are priceless in helping you to understand what’s actually happening on your website and with your visitors. Increase your sales by understanding how it really works on the Internet.

Click here for access: Using Google Analytics

The site I tested for category optimization, as you can see from the WordPress.com Stats graph, was a huge success. Once I’ve completed optimizing all the categories the results will be even more impressive.

I’m going to explain what I did with that WordPress site, but please be cautious if you implement these changes on your own site. Make sure that your redirections are working. If you don’t have Google Webmaster Tools set up for the site, do that first so you can keep an eye on pages that don’t redirect properly.

1.  Download and install the WP plugins Category Redirect to Post or Page and List Category Posts.

2.  Make a new page for the category. Include a keyword header, a couple of paragraphs of introductory content and a photo or other graphic element. You should also create an SEO title and Meta description.

3.  Below your content use the shortcode indicated by the List Category Posts plugin. This will create a list of links to all your posts in that category.

4. Go to Admin >> Settings >> Category Redirect. Click Edit under the desired category, then insert the URL of the new category page.

You’re done!

If you decide to give this a try, please let me know how it worked for you.

Okay, sooooo Google rolled out the +1 button today.

I’m not real excited about it…but Google says it will be a good thing, because now when I search or go to a website, I’ll know which my thousands of friends have been there and liked it too. Similar to ‘Likes’ on Facebook, but FB wouldn’t share those with Google.

So like the little red hen, they went out and did it themselves.

Who knows how it will affect SEO. All I know is that now I have to get votes like a prom queen for my site to rank better. And everybody will know who I voted for, too.

Well, let’s put all that aside for now and get your button up on your site. There will soon be a plugin, I’m sure, but in the meantime, here are a couple of ways to do it, depending upon what kind of site or WordPress theme you have.

What Worked for Me

I’ll show you what Big G said to do in a minute, but their way is not always my way, and this is what worked on my WP theme to put the button on each of my posts automatically:

In the WP Admin go to Appearances, then Editor, then open your post.php file. Put this code where you want the button to show up on your posts (typically above the post content).  You can also put this code in a Text widget so it will appear in your sidebar area.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<g:plusone></g:plusone>

How Google Says To Do It

Simply add this script code before your /body tag. In WP this is usually at the bottom of your footer.php template in the Appearances Editor.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Then add this code in your post.php template or in each blog post where you want it to appear:

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

You are supposed to be able to personalize your button here, but it wasn’t working very well when I tried it:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

One More Thing

Here’s the intro video in case you’re still not sure about this.

Except – Wait!

I want to know what you think of it. Is the Google +1 button a good thing, a bad thing, or don’t you care one way or the other?

Thanks to Uncyclomedia Commons for the awesome prom queen photo!

Many people had great articles on Ezine that ranked well and sent visitors to their site. However, a lot of Ezine articles were crap, and many of those were also ranking on the first page of Google. Everybody dropped, good and bad alike.

So now the question is, should you continue to submit to Ezine for article marketing purposes? My answer is yes for a couple of reasons. One is that Ezine Articles was the best article marketing site before the update, and now they have made 5 changes to upgrade the quality of future article submissions:

1. Increased Quality Checks – Articles are spending twice as much time in the review process, and their editors are placing more focus on format, grammar, spelling, and consistency.
2. WordPress Plugin and API – No longer being accepted to avoid content duplication.
3. Dead Links – In the past, if you had a dead link Ezine gave you 5 weeks to fix it, with numerous notifications. Now you have 2 weeks to get it taken care of.
4. Membership Level – I think they’re being a little too strict on this, but now if you haven’t met their quality requirements within the first 10 articles you submit, you not only don’t reach Platinum level but are banned from submitting more articles. They have backpedaled a little though, saying that if you are showing progress they’ll be a bit more lenient.
5. 400 Word Minimum – Before it was 250 words, and a good writer can often get their message across in that short of an article. That said, this makes writers work harder to write worthwhile content.

Life just got a little harder for article marketers, but I think it’s worth it to get high quality information on the Internet and in search results. What’s your opinion of these Ezine Article changes?

Here’s the deal in a nutshell – follow the rules and you won’t have to worry about algorithm changes and updates. 99% of the time they only affect websites that are trying to get rankings by cheating in one way or another, or that are so poorly designed and optimized that they seem spammy to search engines.

It pays to do things the right way. Follow these 5 steps and you won’t have to worry about changing algorithms:

1. Build a site that is valuable for visitors
   Check your navigation, content, photos, forms and landing pages
2. Ensure that your code is search engine friendly
   Review your titles, descriptions, content, alt tags and contextual links
3. Make it easy for visitors to convert
   Make certain your phone number is easy to find, contact form works, your shopping cart works smoothly to completion, your download links aren’t broken
4. Build links the right way
   Write meaningful articles that are interesting to read and add value, then syndicate them for keyword links as well as encouraging potential customers to visitor your site
5. Post to your blog on a regular basis
   Keep it fresh and interesting with valuable information for the reader, and avoid sales pitches

This can be a considerable amount of work, but if you’re serious about your business you’ll do it. If you’re not SEO savvy, hire someone who is. You want a website that is the best it can be – ranking well in search engines and converting visitors to sales.

A landing page is dedicated to one thing – serving up exactly what a person is seeking and making it easy for them to obtain what they want.

Landing pages are extremely important if you are running a PPC campaign. When someone clicks on a link they want to be taken to exactly what was promised in the ad, not to your home page.

The PPC landing page should be simpler in design than your other site pages, with fewer options and a distinct “call to action” – meaning a way for them to easily contact you / download /  purchase your product from that page. It should be designed for your PPC campaign, and my advice is to block search engines from it, since you will have other pages you will want to rank in search results.

Landing Page Effectiveness

The Sherpa marketing chart below shows how effective unique landing pages are for websites.

Effectiveness of Website Design, Management, and Optimization Tactics

If you are not running a PPC campaign, should you still have landing pages on your site? Definitely! In your link building efforts, such as article marketing, your keyword link should connect to a page on your site that is specifically about the article‘s topic.

Sculpting Your Pages

For instance, let’s say you have a site that sells pet products. If you have written and syndicated an article about dog harnesses, the link should lead directly to a page that is about nothing but dog harnesses. Your visitor should be able to get all the info they need about the product from this page, as well as be able to place an order.

You don’t necessarily have to add more pages to your site to do this. Just make sure that the pages on your website that you lead people to are designed to encourage a prospective buyer to do just that – buy your product. It may mean refining some of the pages on your site or breaking down a page that is covering too many products into separate pages for each distinct product.

In other words, don’t have regular collars and leashes featured along with dog harnesses. This is not to say they should not be able to move on to those products. It’s smart to have a “related products” box in a sidebar, but the main page should be about the harnesses you carry…sizes, colors, styles, along with information on how to put them on a dog and why they may be better than a regular collar for your dog.

Along with helping your sales conversions, it will also help the page rank for dog harnesses, since it’s the focus of the page; there is content about the product, pictures of the product with keywords in the name (i.e. cane-corso-dog-harness.jpg) and of course you have used keywords in your title to help the page rank, as well as carefully written a Meta description to encourage searchers to click to your site.

Review Your Website

Your homework for today is to go through your website and see if you need to break down some of your pages into product specific landing pages. Making changes like this is not usually hard or terribly time consuming – especially if you have a template in place. You do need to spend the necessary time it takes to determine the best keywords to use for your title and H tags, write some great content, and again, create a Meta description that will make searchers want to visit your site.

Your reward will be higher search rankings, more visitors, and higher conversions (sales). Nothing wrong with that!

Consequently, I was very happy to find this article in the Axandra newsletter, and have received permission to publish it in full.

How your web page changes influence your search engine rankings.

It’s a no-brainer that changes on your web pages influence the position of your website on search engines. However, it’s not so clear how search engines react to the changes on your site and what exactly causes the changes in the search results. A new search engine patent might have some answers.

Several search engine patents deal with the changes on your site.

Google published a patent that described how the changes on your web pages influence the rankings of your site 6 years ago. Last month, Microsoft was granted another patent that discusses the influence of web page changes on search engine rankings.

This new patent shows which elements on your web pages might be monitored by search engines.

Which web page elements are monitored by search engines?

According to the new patent, changes of the following web page elements can influence the position of the page in the search results:

• Keywords that are included in a web page.
• Keywords that are associated with a web page
• The anchor texts that are used in links on the page.
• The colors and the sizes of images on the page.
• The position of text or images on the page.
• The frequency of document changes over time.
• The amount of the web page content that has been changed.
• Tags that are assigned to the page.
• Search queries that are used to find the page.

How exactly do changes in these elements influence the rankings of a page?

According to the patent, searches are classified into the two categories “informational” and “navigational”. The effect of the web page changes depends on the category of a search query.

A navigational query is a query that is used to find a particular site. For example, a search for “ny times” will lead to the home page of the sites. Examples for information queries are “how do I fix a broken bicycle tire” or “who won the 2011 XYZ awards”?

If the searcher is looking for information about a recent event (2011 XYZ awards) then pages that recently added the keyword could be boosted in the search results.

For navigational queries, pages with static content might get a boost. This methods works fine with some type of sites but it could cause problems with home pages that update their contents regularly (for example nytimes.com).

What does this mean to your website?

This patent was granted to Microsoft but it’s likely that Google uses similar methods. Search engines don’t just look at the current version of your website.

They also remember how it was in the past. The changes on your website could indicate a change of ownership, they could indicate that you try to keep your website up-to-date, they could be a signal for spam and more.

When you change your web pages, consider which signal you might be sending to search engines.

When you optimize the pages of your website, do not optimize a page that already has high rankings for one of your keywords. Better optimize another page of your site for the new keyword.

The more pages of your website you optimize, the better. Optimize different pages of your website for different but related keywords to show search engines that your website is relevant to a particular topic.

Keep some of the pages fresh and leave others as they are to offer search engines different kind of pages for different search queries.

“Copyright Axandra.com – Web site promotion software“

This is a guest article by Amit from SEO-Gavish at

קידום אתרים

The influence of the visitor

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the visitor’s contribution to the SEO process.

The opinions are different: some are claiming that the influence of each visitor is very high and Google is counting every visitor that left his credentials or made any other interaction during his site browsing.

Others are saying a visitor’s influence is minor and there is no way that Google will count visitors’ behavior during site ranking.

So which is the right one?

I would like to make some order in this matter and explain how the traffic affects the site ranking. I would like to emphasis a few points:

It’s not about the amount of traffic, but about its quality and about the visitor’s experience during the browsing of the site. In the past we used to think that the amount of visitors is crucial.

Let’s start with the basic SEO technique: Inbound Link Building

Every SEO person uses this technique in order to get higher Google ranking. The question is "What influence the visitor has to the link?"

Every time you are creating a link you need to think will this link contribute to the visitor and he will be able to use it or is it located on a page that no one is visiting. The purpose of the links is that visitors could follow them to our site. The problem is that today links are created mostly for the Google spider and without any though about the visitor.

Conclusion: It’s worth the effort to create useful links which will be followed by the visitors, a "live" link.

Till now we discussed the link building strategy, let’s continue.

The visitor is searching for the results in Google and gets a list of results. Your site is not the only one in the list, so the visitor will check other sites as well.

The visitor stages of behavior:

First, the visitor is looking at the list and decides which result he wants to click on and review. At this stage the visitor is directly influencing the ranking. If your site is located at the first page or in the first place, but visitor is not clicking on it, Google will understand that the site is not liked by visitors. (In some cases changing the description of the site will solve the problem).

Next stage will be viewing the site. So time of site viewing is an additional parameter of visitor influence. If the visitor is leaving your site during seconds, Google will understand that your site is not relevant or problematic. It is important to understand the next action of the visitor after leaving your site. Did he searched for the same value again and found more relevant site which he viewed longer? Or did he close his browser?

Reasons that may cause the visitor to leave your site quickly:

1. The visitor didn’t find what he looked for – your site is not relevant for the search request

2. The content of the site is not written well, unprofessional or not readable.

3. The site is designed badly and the graphics are poor. These days, the visitor is looking for an impressive site.

4. Menu and sidebars, site hierarchy and content are not clear enough. You must make the effort and plan a site that will be user friendly and clear enough so the visitor will enjoy using it without any effort.

5. Site upload speed is too slow. As our connection speed grows higher, the visitor’s patience becomes lower. The visitor will not wait for the site to be shown; he will look for other sites.

The influence of toolbars and connecting to Google sites accounts

Anyone who is familiar with the Alexa scale knows that it gathers the surfing information of Alexa users and ranks the sites based on that. Google is gathering information from any user logged on in Gmail or other Google account. Surfing the web using the Google toolbar is a highly effective information source. Google Chrome, although it is a relatively new browser, is used as an information source as well.

A few additional myths about the influence of human activity:

“A web site that is connected to Google Analytics will be ranked higher if the requests for additional information are created in it." I disagree with this statement, as this value can be easily falsely created, that’s the reason I find it hard to believe that it affects Google ranking. There is a difference between the request for additional information and actual sale in the web site.

An additional opinion I have heard recently is that amount of "LIKEs" the site is getting is influencing its ranking. This value can easily be a fraud, moreover, Google can’t read the "LIKE" source code.

These are a few examples of the human activity influence on the site ranking. It is important to understand that one of the aspects of SEO work is to make sure that the site will be relevant and user friendly, so that the visitor will find the information he was looking for and the site appearance will be welcoming.

Once your website looks great and has interesting, professional and relevant content, you will earn the visitor’s confidence he will come to your site again and he will not search for this information in a different website.

Good luck

Thank you, Amit, for sending us this article. You’ve made valid observations about the visitor’s affect on search rankings.

You will learn which article marketing directory works best for you, but here’s a rundown of some of my favorites. Except for Zimbio, they give direct links.

Your Blog – The first place you should put your article is on your blog itself. Wait a few days before you submit it to any other site, to give the search engines time to index it.

Ezine Articles – Articles published on Ezine are well respected and may actually rank in and of themselves. This article marketing service has strict guidelines and I strongly suggest you read them prior to submitting an article for approval. If you have first published the article on your blog, use the Ezine plugin (available from their site) to submit it; this avoids rejection because of duplicated content.

Go Articles – If you’re having problems getting articles approved on Ezine, you may want to use Go Articles instead. Their guidelines are not as strict and it’s easier to get articles published. Sometimes articles from this site will rank in search results.

Zimbio – If you’ve got a blog, set up an account on Zimbio and then register your blog so it will feed to Zimbio. I like to make my own “Wikizine” on the site and specify that my blog articles publish to it. Although the links are filtered through the site’s URL, articles can send traffic and rank on Google search results.

Squidoo – I have a soft spot for Squidoo. At one time articles from here would rank right at the top. There was a smackdown when spammers started misusing the site, and now the articles don’t rank as easily, but they still provide links and often some good traffic to your site. Squidoo lenses, as they are called, are fun to create too. For best results be sure to make at least five modules and add pictures.

Update: This Squidoo lens showed up on the first page of Google a couple of days after it was published. This gives the business 3 listings on the first page – always a plus!

Check out this list of the Top 50 Article Directories – gives traffic, pagerank, and whether the directory employs the nofollow tag.

I’d love to know which article syndication sites you prefer to use and that give you the best results.

The algorithms used in today’s search engines are quite sophisticated and can easily figure out what your article is about without you hammering it home. You’ll also alienate your readers if your article reads like it’s meant for search engines instead of human beings.

The two places where you must have your target keyword phrase are in your title and your link. It’s very important to do this the right way:

1. If at all possible, put your keyword at the beginning of your article’s title. For example, “Article Marketing – 3 Days to Success” instead of “3 Days to Successful Article Marketing.”
2. Make your link, whether in your resource box for article syndication sites or in the article itself, your exact keyword phrase: “Read SEO Diva to learn about article marketing and how to…“
3. Don’t neglect to use your keyword phrase in the tags for the article.

It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: make the article relevant to your keywords. I’ve come across articles that are about one thing, such as housebreaking a dog, and then in the resource box the linked keyword phrase is for something like Acai diet products. There’s no relevancy there, and it’s doubtful the link would add anything to the website’s ranking.

Using the Resource Box to Your Advantage

When you submit your article to a syndication site, you are often not allowed to put self-serving links within the article itself. Instead, you’re allowed two links in the resource box at the end of the article.

To make the most of it, write two or more sentences in a custom resource box for each article you submit. Ezine Articles recommends it be around 15% of your article’s word count.

One sentence should be a call to action along with your keyword linked to the most relevant page on your site (not your home page in most cases). For example, when you click on the article marketing link shown in #2 above, you’ll see that the link does not go to my home page but to an interior page of this site.

The second link should be an actual URL; using my example, it would be http://www.seodiva.net/article-marketing-3-days/. The reason is that when others republish your article, sometimes your link will be stripped out. However, by including your URL you have a better chance of 1) getting credit for the article and 2) for the reader to go to your site for more information.

You should also include the name of your business or site in the resource box, again for credit for the article as well as information for the reader.

Don’t forget to complete your author bio. Write a little about yourself, add your business name, a link to your site, and your social networking links.

When Others Publish Your Article

When other websites publish your article, they are supposed to keep the resource box and all links intact. Some do, but others strip out the links. By including your actual URL and business/site name, you are ensuring that the reader knows where the article came from.

Some unscrupulous people will exclude the resource box entirely, but since they are using duplicate content they aren’t getting credit for it from the search engines. Yes, it’s a ripoff, but your time is usually better spent writing more articles than tracking these people down and demanding they remove it.

Next: Article Marketing Part 3: Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles

Part 1: Article Marketing – 3 Days to Success

Writing an article takes a lot of time and effort, and you want to get the most out of your hard work. But if you don’t understand how to use article marketing the right way, your site will not reap all the benefits it should.

During the next three days, I’m going to show you how to write and market your articles so you will get inbound keyword links that are search engine (especially Google) friendly and will help increase the rankings of your website.

Article Marketing = Increasing the Knowledge Base

Are you old enough to remember Encyclopedia Britannica? When I was was growing up pre-World Wide Web, I loved to read articles from our family set, and actually read through every one of the 26 volumes. The Internet is like a massive encyclopedia that contains the combined knowledge of millions of people from all over the world.

To create inbound links to your site that will be considered Google-friendly and that will help increase your site’s search engine rankings, you need to take the time and make the effort to add to this knowledge base.

What makes the Internet so cool is that you get the viewpoints of many different people about any given topic. So yes, whatever you write about has most likely been said before, but you have a unique perspective and way of of explaining or describing your area of expertise that is like no other individual’s. This is what makes your article unique and interesting.

Your Article Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect

Some people have a gift for writing, but you don’t have to be a great writer to share content that will be meaningful to others. After all, you’re the expert!

Unsure of yourself? Just do it – sit down and write out what you want to say. A few tips:

1. Don’t write a sales pitch – who wants to read that? By the same token, don’t use industry jargon – a conversational tone usually works best. I sometimes have to go back and remove  “agency-speak” from my blog articles.
2. Don’t worry about cramming keywords in your article; make it natural. Write it like you’re talking to another person. If you and I were having a conversation, I wouldn’t say “I’d like to help you with your article marketing because article marketing will make your site rank better and I have a lot of experience with article marketing.”
3. Take a different approach and have some fun with it. Instead of rehashing what everyone else has said, go with a unique viewpoint. Throw in your own thoughts, add a quote, give an example, or tell a story.
4. Make sure your article provides value by answering a question or solving a problem for the reader. If you need ideas, ask your friends and family what they’d like to know about your business and then write about that.
5. Make it current – stay on top of what’s happening in your industry and take advantage of it. One of our articles hit #3 on Google and brought hundreds of visitors within a few days because it answered a question about a new law that had just been passed in Arizona.

After you’ve finished hammering out a rough draft you can polish it up – do a little rewriting where it’s needed, move sentences and paragraphs around to make the article more cohesive, but don’t freak out about it. Sometimes “good enough” is fine. Whatever you do though, don’t forget to check grammar and run spell check!

Next:

Article Marketing Part 2: Keywords, Links, and Your Resource Box

Article Marketing Part 3: Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles