It can be used for any product that you are selling yourself, or any product that you are promoting as an affiliate. There are of course exceptions for adult related content etc. But generally speaking, if you can think of a topic, then you can submit it for publication. Be sure to read the terms of service at each directory to be sure of what subject matter they will and will not accept.

Here's the concept...

Let's say your website is a review style website that provides reviews on the various online piano lesson products on the market. Your site is built and you have done your keyword research. Now you need to write a three to five hundred word article on the topic of piano lessons.

If your targeted keyword phrase is "the best online piano lessons", then the article will be entirely concentrated on that phrase. You will want to use the phrase in the title of your article. You will then write the article using that keyword density of 1 to 3%. I generally shoot for about 2%. But that depends on the content. If you use it to much it can start to become obvious and not read naturally. Another downside of using your keyword to much is that Google may view it as keyword stuffing and penalize you in their rankings for it. Stay within my recommended range of 1 to 3% and you will be fine.

You will then end your article submission with a author biography. You will often hear this referred to as the bio box. In the bio box you will list your name and website. You will also want to add a line or two that motivates the reader to click through to your site. For example;

You will also insert an anchor text to your website in the bio box as well as a call to action. The call to action may very well be the most important part of your article. Give the reader a reason to make the click to your site. You can read more about anchor text in the backlinking section of this site.

You are also allowed to add an anchor text in the body of the article. Although you can target more than one keyword per article I would suggest that you don't. Read the terms of service from each directory to see how many links you can add to the article body and the bio box. Use as many as they will allow.

Once you submit your first article you will become a published author. How about that? Looks good on a resume don't ya think? The good news is that if you work on building your online business, you won't ever be needing a resume again.

What's in a Name?

Before we go further let me address a question that you may already be asking yourself. Yes pen names are allowed and I recommend that you use them. Here's why. Let's assume that you are marketing the online piano lesson products, a dating guide and a forex trading course.

You are writing articles to market each site. These article directory sites all offer their users the option of searching for more articles by each author. If the user (reader) likes what you have to say in your articles, they will likely do exactly that. It is my feeling that when they see you are claiming to be an expert in each of these categories, they may begin to question your sincerity.

The purpose of your articles is to position yourself as an authority in your niche market. You are the expert and therefore worthy of writing the article in the first place. It is not reasonable to believe that one person is an expert in all subject matter. Make sense? I recommend that you use one pen name for each niche that you are in as far as your article marketing is concerned.

Quantity Over Quality

The are not very times you will hear me take the quantity over quality philosophy in my business. In fact my goal is to always over deliver on whatever product or service that I provide and yours should be too. But that is not the case with my article marketing. Generating traffic to your sites is a numbers game. Since traffic generation is the focus of article marketing, then it as well, is all about the numbers.

How much traffic can you generate to your site by publishing as article? I don't know the answer to that. It will vary greatly from one article to the next, and one niche market to the next. You may publish one article that only generates 20 visitors to your site monthly. You may write another article in the same niche and it may produce 100 visitors a month. If you are really good, and have a little luck, you may produce an article that produces thousands of visitors to your site each month. That however is not likely.

To achieve any real measure of success with your article marketing efforts I would suggest that you publish at least 50 different articles for each keyword that you target. You will be submitting the article to more than one directory. If you submit each of your fifty articles to twenty directories you will have 1000 published articles on the web. Now keep in mind that is for only one keyword. If you target five keyword or keyword phrases for your site that would equate to publishing 5000 articles (250 different articles). Each article will have at least one backlink to your website in the article body and at least one backlink in the article bio box. That is 10,000 backlinks to your site.

If each of your 50 different articles brings you only 10 visitors a month, then that makes for a total of 500 visitors to your site each month. If you are marketing a product that you sell for $30, or marketing an affiliate product for which you receive a $30 commission, then that equates to $300 in sales a month if you have even a modest 2% visitor to sale conversion ratio. This is for just one keyword. Do this procedure for five keywords and you are looking at $1500 a month.

If you can generate $1500 in sales a month for a year you'll have $18000 in annual sales. Divide that by the 250 articles that you wrote and it looks to me like you have been paid $72 for each article you wrote. But the kicker is that those articles are not going anywhere. They will be there on the directories to generate traffic for you next year as well.

Now if you are not excited about this traffic generating method then you probably are not breathing! But can it really be this easy? Read on my friend, read on...

Continued on page 2

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Here is a listing of my Top 25 Article Directories