Web Content Editor

When I introduce myself as a web content editor I’m often faced with the response- “You’re a writer then”.  The answer to that is ‘no I’m not’, that skill belongs to a copywriter.

Although a web content editor does need the ability to write, this is only a small part of the work they will undertake. Websites today combine text, images, video and music; a good web content editor needs to be familiar with all these skills.

The aim of a web content editor is to ensure a website attracts and retains its target audience. The website content must appeal to their needs and be presented in manner that keeps them coming back.

Some of the tasks a web content editor will do include:

• Sourcing, researching and producing new content for a website.
• Editing existing content, which includes text and images, to suit a website’s layout, image and style.
• Content marketing activities such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), article marketing and press releases.
• Interacting with a website user’s by monitoring online forums and message boards or replying to email enquiries.
• Using website statistics to formulate web content strategies for attracting the target audience.

The main aim of a web content editor is to keep a website’s content fresh and appealing. So often a company produces a wonderful looking website and then thinks their work is done. This unfortunately is not the case if they want that website to be a success.

A website’s content serves three main purposes:

1. To be inform or persuade the visitor to perform certain actions. For instance to buy a product or use a service.
2. To retain a visitor’s attention and encourage them to return. This is known as making a website ’sticky’.
3. To convince the search engines that a website should be listed higher than its competition for relevant keywords such as ‘gift shopping’.

Skills a website content editor may require include:

• Ability to research, write and edit web copy
• Knowledge of multimedia content
• Be able to format images using Photoshop or similar software
• Have an understanding of HTML, XHTML and CSS
• Ability to apply SEO techniques to website content
• Be able to analyse website statistics and formulate strategies
• Able to work with Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Be familiar with Web 2.0 practices such as blogging and social bookmarking

With the large number of organisations now developing their own websites the demand for web content editors is continually growing. But it is important for these organisations to recognise a web content editor as a profession with its own set of skills to complete the task successfully.

Often an organisation will employ a journalist as a web content editor who has little knowledge of how the Internet works. The journalist has the skills to write great copy but if the content is not presented correctly on the website its value will be wasted.

An analogy I’ve often hear is;

Developing a website is like to raising a child; they cost a lot of money and require a lot of attention.

A web content editor gives that specialist care and attention to a website, which over time will repay the investment by growing in popularity and success.

By Mark Smiciklas

In order to retain the attention of prospects and clients visiting your small business website, the content you present needs to be organized, easy to read and search engine compatible. Writing for the web is different - online reading is not the same as reading from print. Web users, particularly those performing website searches, have limited attention spans - they tend to scan pages for specific information rather than reading every single word of content.

1. “Clean” Information Layout

Research indicates that the average web user only reads 20% of the content on any given web page. Here are a few ways to design your content so it captures the attention of your visitors:

a) Descriptive headings - Let the reader know exactly what’s on the web page by using headings that provide accurate descriptions of the content

b) Short paragraphs - present one topic or idea per paragraph to make it easier to scan through a web page

c) Bullet points - if some of your web pages present multiple facts within a single section, lay out the content in point form to make it easier for your visitors to “digest” the information

d) Bold text - use bolding or capitalization to draw attention to important words/phrases

2. Concise Copy

Avoid the urge to present every detail about your company, product or service. Approach your content from the perspective of your website visitor and (briefly) describe how you can help provide a solution to a problem they might have. When it comes to editing, a good rule of thumb is to take what you’ve written and cut the word count in half!

3. Simple Language

One of the biggest problems with many websites is the amount of “gobbledygook” that is used. Try to avoid the use of technical language, industry specific lingo and acronyms. Your visitors will appreciate (and pay attention to) straightforward descriptions of your company, products, services and solutions.

4. Keywords

Take some time to research the keywords that are applicable to your product/service before writing or editing you website content. Keywords are the words or phrases web users type into search engines i.e Google, Yahoo!, etc to find information on the internet. Having the right keywords throughout your site’s content will increase the likelihood of potential customers finding you online.

Google offers a great tool that will help you come up with keywords and provide you with search statistics (how many times the keyword was used in Google searches over a period of time).

5. Great Content

Offering great content will make your website better - An obvious statement, but based on the content on many websites, easier said than done. It’s important to understand the meaning of great content - it’s not content you think is great, it’s content your visitors will find exciting and useful.

a) Write an article that solves a client’s problem
b) Write an e-book that helps visitors learn something new
c) Start a blog to share your ideas - and invite people to comment
d) Publish a white-paper on a topic or trend that is important to your clients/prospects

One last note - offer your content for FREE…making people jump through hoops and exchanging content for email addresses is not the best way to build your brand online. If you offer good content and goodwill, it will pay off in the long run.

About the Author
Mark Smiciklas is a Vancouver Marketing Consultant. His firm, Intersection Consulting, helps small to mid-sized businesses address challenges in the areas of marketing, management and business development.

To find out more about Intersection Consulting, please visit http://www.intersectionconsulting.com. For more thoughts and ideas on marketing and management for small business please visit the Intersection Blog at http://www.intersectionconsulting.typepad.com.

By Darren Jennings

One of the biggest questions I am asked very frequently is how to drive more traffic to your sites. Driving traffic to your sites is the single most important stage in your marketing campaign, because this is exactly what it is all about, Marketing on the Internet.

So many people have a belief that having a site on this vast space is the way to success, the problem is this, the vast space known as the WWW is like the haystack and your website is the needle. When you put your site onto the haystack (WWW) it just gets swallowed up into the darkness. Your next job is to give people directions on how to find that needle or in your case Website.

The techniques out there today are constantly growing and changing so you really have to keep up with the times and trends, the days of SEO have long since gone, although still used today by less conventionally educated marketers. Today’s crowds of people who you want directing towards your service or product are scattered all over the WWW, so you have to go and find them before you can get them to look at your site.

This concept has really sky rocketed the profits of those who know how to use and harness this trend to its maximum capability. These techniques are free and can drive huge amounts of traffic to your sites daily.

Article writing:

This is a highly powerful way of driving huge amounts of traffic to your sites on a daily basis and won’t cost a penny. If you write good articles about your niche and post them daily you will receive masses of quality traffic to your site. The key is to put your link into your signature.

Blogs and Forums:

These are full of people who are right at the forefront of your campaign, again find the forums and blogs related to your topic and begin posting on a daily basis, you must add your link to your signature not in the post, and most forums don’t allow this. Using this technique will drive traffic to your site too.

Working on a budget, these ways are amazing at driving huge amounts of qualified traffic to your site. Although it may seem like a pointless exercise, consider this, marketing is about reaching out to people to show them your service or product also to brand you. When something new comes on to the market they apply tons of marketing to get their name known, this technique is the same as what I have highlighted above. The amount of people who read articles or participate in forums is by the thousands, after all you’re reading this article right now, and so I know my marketing has worked.

How to drive more traffic to your site is not rocket science once you understand how people think and where they go to think. Using these 2 techniques alone will show massive improvement to your visitors if you are consistent, don’t just write one post or one article and expect a miracle.

About the Author
Darren Jennings- has professional experience as a Business Growth Specialist and has Trained and Coached many to greater success. http://www.successfulincomestrategies.com

by Jeremy Long Chia Teik

The blog has now become a marketing tool for many marketers who want to sell their products or services online. It is phenomenal in effect and has brought various successful stories for marketers engaged in different marketing online activities.

Blogging has much to do with conversations. Your blog must attract readers and bring in the traffic. What is essential to achieving this goal is to pay much attention to your blog content. It can affect the outcome of your marketing campaign. Listed below are a list of tips for great content. It is by no means exhaustive.

(1) Content must be of value and informational  You can write on any topic that is relevant to your niche. The posts must be informational and should provide value to your readers. The content must be interesting and satisfying to readers. If readers are satisfied with the content, they will return to your blog for more information.

(2) Content should be unique  One of the important tips for great content is that it should be unique, besides being of value and informational. Content that captures the interest and satisfies your readers will surely bring about a loyal readership. Readers will return for more. New readers will be added through time.

(3) Blog should be updated  It is intrinsically the nature of blogging that your blog be updated regularly with new posts. New posts are what readers are expecting to see when they return to your blog. They will be delighted to find new refreshing material. Even the spiders of Google will be pleased to know that your blog is being updated regularly with fresh and new content.

(4) Build your reputation  Whatever you are posting in your blog matters a lot to your reputation as the provider of quality content. With links pointing back to you, your blog will experience an increase in traffic, which will in turn raise your ranking. Always ensure that your content is of quality as this will boost your reputation.

(5) Build up your credibility  Building up your credibility as an author is one of the tips for great content. Readers will respect you as the expert in your field. They will come back to you should they need help.You are perceived as the best author who can help them with your knowledge.

(6) Provide mind-provoking content  Content that provides for interaction will help generate traffic for your blog. Mind-provoking content that encourages debate and discussions is a good food for thought. Readers can participate and contribute their views thus paving the way for better interaction, which eventually will lead to increase in visibility for your blog.

Content for your blog is important to your readers. The posts must delight them with great content, and only then will your readers respect you for what you have provided them with.

About the Author:

For latest updates on how to increase traffic, raise page ranking, write effective articles and powerful squeeze pages, create explosive blog marketing system, learn about viral marketing, and bring in massive income from your internet marketing business, please Click here.

By Chris Simpson

Today there are more and more people who are beginning to use social media outlets to help promote and market products. There are many ways that you can learn how to use these social media outlets to increase sales if you know what you are doing. In fact, many people are beginning to realize that this is a top marketing strategy. Of course you may have no idea where to get started. So, here are a few top strategies to help you utilize social media outlets to increase your sales.

Get Involved in Multimedia

First of all, if you want to utilize social media outlets, it is important that you get involved in multimedia. People love pictures and videos and they like it more than just words on a page. It’s easy to use photos on photo social media sites such as Flickr or similar sites that will help you bring in more traffic to your own website. There are video social media outlets as well that you can use, such as Google Video and YouTube, that can bring in more traffic to your site and help you to use social media to your benefit.

Stand Out on Social Media Sites

When you decide to get involved in social media outlets, you’ll need to make sure that you stand out. There are many people on these sites, so if you want to use them to your advantage, you need to figure out how you can stand out. Decide how you can best get attention. Getting attention for your self on these sites will help you to draw in traffic and the sales that you want as well.

Become a Member of the Media

Becoming a member of the social media is important as well. Get in on conversations and get accounts at social bookmarking sites, such as Digg and Stumbleupon. You can use these sites to help you drive more traffic to your site, so make sure you learn how to appropriately use them. Also, you can use sites like Facebook and MySpace to help you make sales as well if you know how to get involved and what is happening on these sites.

Allow Criticism

When you are involved in social media outlets, it’s important that you allow criticism. If you do this, you’ll actually build credibility and show that you can stand up and your product can stand up even when criticized. Take the time to answer these criticisms, but don’t just delete them or you may actually hurt your efforts to sell products and use these social media outlets as a sales tool.

About the Author
Chris Simpson is dedicated to helping people earn money at home by finding honest and legitimate work at home and home based business opportunities. Find legitimate online work from home today at: http://www.HomeNetPro.com.

By Joseph Ryan

As you probably know, affiliate marketing is the new Internet gold rush, and like all previous gold rushes it’s mainly the people selling the picks and shovels that are getting rich.

You’re much more likely to earn over $100,000 next year as a web designer (assuming you’re really good), a web hosting entrepreneur, or, best of all, a “web marketing guru” than you are as one of the toiling legions of affiliate marketers.

Yet just as a few people managed to strike it rich panning for gold in California around the turn of the 20th century, so a lucky few are doing the same thing panning for affiliate sales on the Internet at the turn of the 21st. In any case, “affiliate marketing” is one of the most often-searched-for keyword phrases entered into Google. There are, it seems, hundreds of thousands of would-be Internet marketers out there who want to know how to turn their time into gold by joining the affiliate marketing rush. Consequently there are hundreds of websites and “how to” books available nowadays on the subject. I’ll give you the basics briefly and you can then decide if this is something you may wish to delve into further.

Affiliate Marketing Tutorial

Essentially, affiliate marketing means promoting a company’s products on the Web and receiving a commission for sales of those products (or for some other result, such as getting them sales leads).

That can sound like easy money. You develop a website, become an “affiliate” for a product that seems like it has a good market, then run ads for the product on your website. Then, whenever someone clicks on one of the ads and buys the product, you earn a commission. Simplicity itself.

If you’re not too familiar with this method of making money on the Web, you’re probably wondering, “Okay, so how do I get to be an affiliate for some company’s product? And then once I become an affiliate, where do I get the ads? And how do I get paid?”

Before I answer those questions let me share a dirty little secret about affiliate marketing with you. In the past many companies which offered affiliate programs never paid their affiliates, or, more commonly, underpaid them. Suppose you promoted XYZ Company’s widgets on your website and received $500 worth of orders in a month. The company has promised to pay you a 20% commission. So you should receive $100. Trouble is, nobody but the company really knew how much your sales were, in many cases. They might actually pay you $50, therefore, or nothing. You wouldn’t know you were being hoodwinked.

Fortunately, there’s now an easy way to avoid that problem, and this answers the questions posed above. You become an affiliate through an affiliate network like LinkShare or Commission Junction. These networks represent hundreds or thousands of companies. You select the companies on the network you want to promote and your commissions are tallied by the networks, not by the companies whose products you’re promoting. You receive your payments directly from the networks. In my opinion, this is a huge improvement - at least in this way you can be sure you’ll get paid for your efforts.

So the response to the first question above, “How do I get to be an affiliate for some company’s product?” is simply that you join an affiliate network. This is actually quite easy. Just go to LinkShare or Commission Junction - the two biggest - and sign up. (Clickbank is pretty good, too, but offers only digital products, like ebooks.)

Once you’re been accepted by a network, you can then review their extensive lists of companies which offer affiliate programs through them. You’ll be looking for some good programs that offer products or services that will appeal to the visitors to your site. So for example, if your site is about automobiles, you might want to run ads for auto accessories, auto repair, auto insurance, etc.

You’ll note that some companies’ affiliate programs pay you on1y for actual sales (i.e., $25 for selling a car insurance policy) whereas others pay you for leads (i.e., $10 for a potential customer filling out an application for a car insurance policy). Guess which of these two types of affiliate programs is more profitable. The answer is the latter is almost inevitably more profitable. So you should, initially at least, only promote programs in which you get paid for leads, not for actual sales.

The way it works is like this: You choose one or more programs which appeal to you, then apply to become an affiliate of those programs. In most cases, you’ll get approved automatically. In other cases, you’ll receive an email later either accepting or rejecting your application. (The company may have a policy of not accepting “new” websites, or may not accept websites in certain fields, etc. — thus a possible rejection.)

After you’ve been accepted into a few programs, go back to the affiliate network’s website (i.e., the site of Commission Junction or LinkShare) and copy the HTML code for the banner ads or other types of ads you’ll be putting on your website (this HTML will have a tracking code appended to it so that you’ll get paid your commissions).

Once you put these ads onto your website you’re in the affiliate marketing business. At this point it’s just a matter of waiting for some of your visitors to click on those ads and purchase the products or fill out the application forms. Every time this happens you get credited for the stated commission. The networks generally send out checks on a monthly basis.

Doesn’t this sound great or what?. Unfortunately… there are some serious problems.

Affiliate Marketing Usually Doesn’t Work

In spite of much breathless hype by marketing gurus, most people who try affiliate marketing never make a penny of profit. Why not?

One reason is that most website visitors don’t click on banners anymore. We’re all pretty jaded when it comes to banners, in fact we seldom even look at them, and only in very rare instances do we actually click on them and buy something.

Then there’s the huge problem of getting substantial traffic to your website. In order for affiliate marketing to have any chance at all of working you need a lot of of good, targeted traffic. Today, that can be extremely difficult to achieve, because the Web has become a crowded place. No matter what the topic of your site is, there are probably thousands or hundreds of thousands of websites out there already on the same topic. Search engines like Google and Yahoo will index your site and then pretty much forget it exists. You’ll get only a dribble of traffic and few if any sales. In a word, much work and effort, little reward.

How to Beat the Odds

It’s quite amazing that, despite the tremendous odds, a few people have actually found ways to earn significant incomes from affiliate marketing.

One way they’ve done it has been by using pay-per-click advertising. Google Adwords is a prime example of this, although similar ad-serving systems are available through Yahoo, MSN, and others. In pay-per-click advertising, you purchase ads on search engine results pages - these ads are called “sponsored results” or something similar. You pay a set amount each time someone clicks on the ad - usually anywhere from $0.25 to a few dollars.

That can get expensive fast. If you are paying fifty cents for one click to your ad, that brings you one visitor to your website, who may or may not click on any of your affiliate ads. A hundred such clicks and Google has charged you $50 and you may have gotten zero sales or commissions.

Even so, some people have made this work. One way is by only targeting narrow niches. Not “Canon Cameras” but “Canon Powershot Cameras,” for example, or even better “Cannon Powershot DSC 600.”

Although a very broad keyword phrase like “Canon Cameras,” or worse still, “cameras,” might have thousands of people placing bids on it, a narrow one like “Canon Powershot DSC 600″ might only have a very few - namely, people marketing that particular type of camera. Thus the “per click” cost might be much lower — and the “conversion rate” (the percentage of clicks converting to sales) much higher.

So by finding niches and by bidding on many keyword phrases, a few people have done quite well and continue to do so.

Another trick is called “search marketing.” Search marketing simply means to place pay-per-click ads on search engine pages (i.e., “search results” pages). Then when somebody clicks on these ads they’re taken directly to the company’s website, not to yours.

Continuing with the example above, you might put up an ad which takes the visitor straight to the Canon web page where he/she can immediately order the Canon Powershot DSC 600 camera, instead of forcing them to first go to your web site, then click a second time to get to the Canon order page.

Search marketing can be a lucrative method of affiliate marketing but it is beset with ferocious competition. A select group of people who are extremely good at writing ads and very focused and determined can make it work - it’s being done all the time. But the sad fact is most will just run up Google Adwords bills. If you’d like to look into this further, I suggest a book called Affiliate Millions by Greg Holden and Anthony Borelli (John Wiley & Sons). It spells out everything you need to know to have a reasonable chance of becoming a successful search marketer.

An Alternative: Google Adsense

Concentrating your efforts entirely on affiliate marketing is a big gamble. But there’s a way to become an affiliate marketer as a lucrative sideline, and that’s Google Adsense. Here’s how it works. Suppose you have a content website on skydiving and it gets a fair amount of traffic. You can then sign up for Google Adsense and Google will provide you with a snippet of HTML to place on all your pages which will serve targeted ads related to skydiving - for example, small plane flying instruction schools, parachutes, etc. Whenever anyone clicks on one of these ads, Google credits your account with a commission.

Adsense can be a good alternative to Adwords because with Adsense you don’t have to worry about choosing affiliate programs, bidding on keywords, or paying credit card bills for ads. Adsense chooses which ads to run on your site based on your content. Needless to say, if nobody clicks on any of your Adsense ads, you receive no commissions but then you pay no credit card bills either.

According to a recent article in USA TODAY, with the headline “Google Search Ads Find Momentum,” a few people are cleaning up with Adsense. One website owner, Marc Ostrofsky, is quoted as saying, “I put up a website, add the Google ads, and wait for the money to start flying in.”

Frankly, that’s hard to believe. Nobody puts up a website and gets money flying in - you have to generate traffic first. What’s more, Ostrofsky owns a company, iREIT.com, that manages thousands of sites, some of them high-traffic. For most of us, returns from Adsense will be modest but nevertheless welcome. My website WebSearchGuides.com runs Adsense ads and does pretty well.

A Last Caution

As said, “affiliate marketing” is one of the most-searched-for keyword phrases on the Internet. Each and every day, untold thousands of people research this subject, hoping to find a way to supplement their incomes with a home-based business or, even better, make a million or a couple million and forget about holding a regular job.

As a result, a booming “guru” industry has sprung up out there, eager and willing to teach you how to become an affiliate marketer. But the obvious question is, If there is so much wealth to be made marketing products on the Web, how come the gurus aren’t doing it themselves instead of teaching people like you and me how to do it?

About the Author:
Joseph Ryan is editor of Web Search Guides (http://www.websearchguides.com)

by Billy Baker

Now your website is up and running, don’t think you can just sit back and get traffic to your website without lifting a finger. It is not that easy; well, it can be if you know what to do. Think of your website as organic, something that continually evolves and grows into the future. So how are you going to get website traffic? I will give some tips here in principle.

I will later introduce you to traffic knowledge that will have you operating at the top end with other traffic masters. Let’s take it one step at a time.

You have done everything right. Now you need to let people know you exist. Maybe you are wondering if you should buy website traffic or, maybe, if there are things you can learn to get more website traffic more quickly and easily.

Some ways to improve your website traffic include content and article marketing, in-bound linking, Web 2 strategies, free website directories and search engine optimization. If you do nothing, you will likely get very little traffic.

1. Content and Article Marketing

To get traffic you need top quality content on your website. If you don’t, any visitors you do get will click away from your website immediately and move to the next one in the list.

Article marketing can be used quite affectively to drive traffic to your site. Write good quality articles relevant to your website’s content and submit them to online directories.

This will help get you noticed and listed in the most popular search engine directories. Remember to stick with quality. Check places known for their stringent approach toward quality such as ezinearticles.com to get an idea of what you should be doing.

2. Creating Links

Start a link campaign. One of the strongest off-page elements for optimization are back-links or in-bound links from other complimentary sites which are respected or trusted. Another way to create links is to make informed comments on blogs and forums that allow you a link to your website address. This is effective and many will click your link simply out of curiosity, especially if you have interesting things to say in your field. But remember, it is not the quantity of external links that is important; it is the quality of them. Keep away from reciprocal linking, it is most often not worth the effort.

3. Web 2.0 Strategies

Web 2 strategies, often known as social marketing, have become a huge online marketing tool. YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, Propeller, MySpace, Facebook, Stumbleupon and Digg are all examples of social marketing tools that have come to the forefront in recent times. There are many ways to use these communities to promote yourself and improve website traffic in an ethical manner.

4. Free Website Directories

Promote your website to online newsgroups and free directories. These can be invaluable for getting your name out there quickly. Take care with directories and make sure you’re not submitting to a link farm. Search engines despise link farms. Make sure the directory offers significant traffic. Google themselves promote Yahoo directory and niche directories as good places to list your site. Yahoo charges a hefty fee but you have to decide how much credence you place in your site.

5. Search Engine Optimization

Make sure your website is optimized so search engines list you. You must be listed for people to ever see your site on a search engine. To optimize your website use keywords in your content, the same keywords in you meta keyword tag, a sensible and relevant meta description, headlines and page titles. Don’t cheat! You need to learn a little more about On-page and Off-page optimization. You can Google these terms and find out more in detail later.

No longer do we live in an age where we can expect people to come to us. It is essential to know your target market and tactfully encourage folks to visit. Usually with quality. Remember, that in the end, real people will decide the future of your site so don’t be in a rush.

About the Author
Billy Baker, an SEO and internet marketing coach has provided a review on a remarkable source of website traffic knowledge. It will only be of interest if you plan to increase website traffic.

By Chris Simpson

One of the top heralded ways that you can expand your online reach today is by writing articles. However, you may not fully realize all the advantages that come with article writing and how it can work to enhance and expand your reach online. You’ll find that articles are a top way to bring in targeted visitors that are brand new to your site, and they work quickly as well. Not sure they’ll be a help to your business? Take a look at some of the benefits you’ll enjoy.

Establishing Yourself as an Expert

First of all, writing articles allows you to establish yourself as an expert, and you’ll be able to start making your name more popular by using it on all of the articles that you write. People will begin to recognize the name, and if you have quality articles, they are going to keep coming back. The quality content that you provide will also show that you are an expert in your field and that what you have to say can be trusted as well, which is extremely important.

Quality Links Enhance Search Engine Rankings

You’ll be able to expand your online reach with articles because they help to provide quality links that enhance search engine rankings. When you put up articles on article directories, they will contain links to your site in them, which builds up quality links that go back to your site. This is an important way that you can build up your search engine rankings. The better your rankings are with the search engine, the more people you are going to be able to reach online.

Great Articles Will Be Shared with Others

If you write high quality articles, you’ll find that they will be shared with others as well, again helping to expand your online reach. Often they’ll get picked up by ezines and blogs, helping to get your name out to a whole new crowd. People may also begin sending articles they like to friends and family members. So, there is a lot of potential for you to draw in people to your sites that are brand new prospects.

Build Up a Reputation

Writing articles can also help you to build up a reputation online as well, which is important if you want to draw in new and targeted traffic to your web site. Once you have a good reputation, people will begin to look for your name. They’ll trust your name, and this means they’ll probably trust your company too.

Articles Literally End Up Everywhere on the Web

Last of all, you’ll find that the articles you write can literally end up everywhere on the web. They can be posted on websites, blogs, in newsletters, ezines, and more. This means that you’ll be getting amazing exposure just from those articles that you have written. This will take your name, the name of the company, and the link to your site all over the web and you’ll draw in people that you could have never reached any other way.

About the Author
Chris Simpson is dedicated to helping people find honest and legitimate work from home jobs and home based business opportunities. Find legitimate work at home opportunities and learn how to start working from home today at: HomeNetPro.com

by Bob Sommers

There are several key ways to construct your web marketing articles to increase your chances of publication and readership. Being knowledgeable in your industry gives you the expertise to write the article, but if you don’t follow basic publisher formatting rules, your articles will be rejected.

Following a few basic formatting rules will help you get more articles published, and of course, more traffic to your website.

Rule 1 - Format your article to be visually appealing and easy to scan.
Publishers are scanning hundreds of articles for publication. Readers are searching thousands of sites for information. When readers and publishers open your article, your topic and major points should be obvious. Format your text in sections that provide a quick visual scan. Highlight important points. Your goal is to immediately catch the publishers’ attention before they lose interest and jump to the next article search.

Rule 2 - Get to the point, quickly.
Your first sentence should let your reader know what to expect. And your first paragraph should reinforce that first sentence. Your first paragraph will further define your topic and lead your reader into your article. Your article content must be consistent to what you promised in your title. The article title and content work together to convey your message. And your article content must bring value to readers, search engines and publishers who are searching for specific content related to your topic.

Rule 3 - Keep your sentences simple.
As you write your article, consistently remember your reader. Your content should consist of short, easy to understand, simple sentences. Also, remember that not every reader of your article knows your industry lingo and terminology. Keep industry acronyms and abbreviations to a minimum or provide an explanation. Plan that your article can be read and understood by anyone that picks up the article, not just someone specific to your industry.

Rule 4 - Short paragraphs are easier to read.
Short paragraphs break up large blocks of text and adds to the ability of the reader to quickly understand and scan the text. Short paragraphs can also help you emphasize a topic by making it stand out from other text.

Rule 5 - Make spelling and grammar a priority.
Your spelling and grammar should be nothing less than perfect. Simple, grade school grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes are unprofessional and ruin your creditability as an article writer. Article distributors will not correct your errors. They will either reject your article, or they will publish it with all the errors for the entire world to see. Once your article is published, it’s published.

Rule 6 - Break up your content.
Another way to break up large blocks of text is to highlight major points with numbers, bullets and subheadings. You can also take advantage of font styles by bolding words, subheadings, titles or phrases. If your reader quickly scans your article, do your main points stand out?

Rule 7 - Use keywords early.
Use your keywords early in your title and your content. Search engines only search your title and the beginning paragraphs of your article. But don’t overload your article with keywords. Article distributors are quick to notice an abundance of keywords and may refuse to publish your article. The best place for top keywords is in your author block or resource box at the end of your article. Those keywords will prompt your reader with a call to action and a link to your website.

Rule 8 - Review, review, review.
Review your article for readability, meaning and flow. Read your article out loud for flow, logical order and understanding. Ask a friend for a critique. Scan your article like you’re reading a submission from another author.

Review your article for punctuation, grammar and spelling. Then review it all again. Use spell check software, but don’t assume that it will catch all spelling mistakes. Reading your article backwards will prompt you to look at each word individually, rather in a sentence structure, providing another way to check your spelling.

Review it all one more time. Remember your article represents your knowledge, your business, your brand and your professionalism. A good article with grade school mistakes won’t represent your business well, nor will it be picked up a publisher.

If you’re regularly writing and submitting articles, writing for your reader and following these basic article publisher rules, you’ll increase your chances of publication. You’ll produce well written, easy to read, professional articles that publishers will want to add to their newsletters, ezines and websites.

About the Author

Join Bob Sommers at the Recognized Expert article marketing forum and participate in our lively article marketing discussion. Learn how to write articles that compel readers to act from a Saint Louis copy writer and professional writers from around the world.

by Kerry Thomas

One of the absolute best ways to improve your search engine rankings and directly promote your products and services is by submitting articles to quality article directories.

Search engines find and index relevant content. What exactly is relevant content? Ideally you should be able to search for a specific keyword or phrase and all the search results returned should be related to that search term. Right now, articles offers the web promoter a widely accepted method to gain traffic to their site.

Some of the past web promotion techniques did not always deliver the results that visitors were looking for. Link exchanging was one such technique that has lost favor with search engines.

I do not recommend using link exchanges and bought text links. Webmasters were all too eager to swap links with other sites even if both sites were completely unrelated.

As you can imagine,link exchanges simply diluted the search results and allowed some non-relevant sites to be returned in the search results.

The search engine’s job becomes easier to do when a website–your perhaps–has lots of textual content that is linked to from other related sites.

Search engines look at links and the content around links to determine how relevant the web page would be to to a particular keyword search.

Article writing gives you the perfect way to deliver exactly what the search engines are looking for and in return you generate traffic for your website.

One should avoid the excessive use of keywords and simply write for a human audience. Please note that this method of marketing will require that you regularly submit content.

Keep the information flowing and always try to keep new and fresh content available. Remember that once your work is published you may develop a loyal bunch of followers that will be looking for more of your information.

Your writing can and should be targeted to a specific niche that fits your purposes and stands an excellent chance of getting indexed into the search engines.

Once the web page with your article is indexed then you will have a link pointing to your site that helps your search rankings. Another perk to this method of marketing is the fact that you will generate direct traffic to your site.

Don’t struggle to optimize your website with methods that don’t work. Relevant content is what it takes and quality articles will get your site noticed.
Article Republished From: Liberated Press Releases a web site that DOESN’T use Google Adsense text links in or around articles.

About the Author
Kerry Thomas is active in article marketing and writing. He owns the following article directory.