They discuss why a good niche in PPC is not necessarily a good niche for article marketing (and vice versa).

After today’s video, you’ll never have to guess whether a niche is any good for article marketing.

The video is absolutely free and there is no registration to watch it.

AffSphere is an article directory that pays you for submitting articles.

AffSphere is a relatively new article directory, that has made it to the list of top article directories.

But what makes it stand out is that AffSphere allows you to earn 8 different ways for your articles! All you have to do is what you already do, submit your great content to the directory (that’s it).

AffSphere is a service of Affiliate Classroom, Inc., and on August 12th they are going to release a report that reveals exactly how they earn over 6 figures a year just from article marketing.

Learn more and watch videos about this new article directory at the AffSphere blog.

Most Interesting Gainers

• One of the most popular article directories, goarticles.com is back from pagerank 3 to well-deserved pagerank 6.
• Several directories reached pagerank 5:
  • ArticlesFactory.com
  • FreeSticky.com
  • ArticleInsider.com
  • TheAllINeed.com
  • ArticlesBase.com

Most Noticeable Loosers

• ArticleWorld.net and IdeaMarketers.com slid down from PR5 to PR3.
• The following article directories lost one point each and now have pagerank 4:
  • Certificate.net/wwio
  • ArticleManiac.com
  • Marketing-Seek.com

Article marketing continues to be one of the most effective ways to reach expert level in your niche. With the list of the Top 50 Article Directories by Traffic, Pagerank you can concentrate your efforts and save your time by submitting articles to the most valuable directories only.

Chris Knight of EzineArticles.com published the Pain Avoidance article template that can help you speed up the creation of your next set of quality original articles by addressing this time-proven principle:

Pain problem solving can become a new angle in your article marketing, or you could “re-package” your old articles with this new template.

In his blog post, Chris provides The Pain Avoidance Template simple four-step layout and tells why this article template idea works.

The Pain Avoidance article template

If you’ve ever had to write something for yourself, whether it’s a resume or a more in-depth piece for your company website, you’ll know how difficult it can be. You can spend hours staring at a blank screen, wondering exactly where to start. Thankfully, there are professionals around who can do this for you, and nowhere is this more apt than at the relatively young site, Need-An-Article.com.

Have you ever tried to find a freelance writer to complete your work for you? Then you know exactly how difficult it can be to find a good one. Not only does the writer have to know your exact needs, he or she has to be able to write the kind of article that you yourself would be happy to talk about – therefore, finding a good writer is paramount to any success an article is going to bring you.

This is where Need-An-Article.com is different from the majority of the other sites out there. Due to the way that Need-An-Article.com is set up, you can be sure that you’re only getting the very best, not one time but every time. This is due to the unique way that both clients and writers can communicate with each other, and the rigorous quality control that the owner Scott Foster instills on both sides.

The NAA Difference

Unlike the majority of other freelance writing sites, Need-An-Article.com puts equal emphasis on both client and writer. The benefit of this is that only the best writers are attracted to the site, while clients can relax, safe in the knowledge that their requested work is going to be written by someone who knows or can research the chosen subject well. So how does it all work, and how will it benefit you?

The NAA Writers

One of the key differences in the approach of Need-An-Article.com is the way that the writers on the site are chosen. Unlike other freelance sites, where pretty much anyone who knows how to use a computer can enroll – and if you’ve used any of these sites, you’ll know what that can mean regarding quality – NAA has a strict pre-membership writing test to take.

And since the writers are drawn from all walks of life, with various levels of experience in a whole host of topics, Need-An-Article.com can probably boast one of the most comprehensive knowledge bases around. Couple that with the ability to provide informative articles that are still entertaining, and you can see why this site is fast becoming one of the best on the market for article requests.

The Benefits to the Client

However, it’s not just with its writers that NAA excels (although this is a key strength). It’s also in the way that it’s been set up with the client in mind as well, to make sure that although it’s an automated service, it never feels like you’re left out of the loop.

For instance, the user interface that greets clients when they log in to their private members area is extremely streamlined and easy-to-use. The simple user page allows you to see the status of your article request through the whole submission process – when a writer has picked it up, when it’s been submitted to the proofreader, and when it’s ready to collect and use wherever you need it.

It also allows you to request one-time changes to an article, if you feel that the writer has missed an important piece of information, for instance. This kind of interactivity is pretty much unheard of with this kind of site, and helps Need-An-Article.com stand out from its competitors.

Need-An-Article.com – The Way Forward

Perhaps the best recommendation for Need-An-Article.com is the simple fact that it’s an ever-changing process. New features are being added all the time, such as the ability to request ebooks and sales copy.

By having a professional writer come up with unique content on these kind of articles, as opposed to relying on often-stale sounding private label ebooks and articles, you’ll have a much better chance of standing out from the crowd. And that’s got to be worth anybody’s time and money.

Visit Need-An-Article.com for more information.

The latest version of the best-of-breed SEO/SEM software is available now!

• More speed and power to solve your complex tasks;
• more flexibility in sharing data between your projects and profiles;
• submission of articles, products, and press releases;
• new report delivery options;
• new sleek interface in line with Vista Aero aesthetics
• and many more long-awaited and surprising enhancements!

We use our Web CEO daily to find best keywords, optimize our website for high rankings, analize who links to us, check our rankings with search engines, track and analyze our visitors, find broken links, and for many other tasks. It is so powerful — and this is why we recommend it.

Download Web CEO Free Edition Now!

SEO Elite

Brad Callen of Bryxen Software, Inc., the author, reported today that they’ve added a brand new project type to allow you to submit your articles to article directories easily.

There are entire programs that are made to ONLY submit your articles to article directories, and they cost well over a hundred dollars. Now you can use SEO Elite to perform this task.

Also, with this update, they’ve added a new skin to give SEO Elite a more professional feel to it, and I really like this new version.

Lastly, they’ve just created a free, 7 day trial version of SEO Elite, so you can download a fully functional, 7 day trial version of this powerful SEO software for free!

If you’re not familiar with SEO Elite, it’s main feature is to help analyze your competitor’s websites, so that you can copy what they’re doing to succeed in search engine optimization, and improve on it to grab a coveted top 10 search engine spot.

With this software, within seconds, you can find out your competitor’s entire linking strategy, and any significant data about their search engine optimization methods, including…

• the page titles of the webpages their links reside on,
• the anchor text surrounding incoming links,
• the email address of their websites,
• the total number of times a specified keyword appears within their anchor text,
• the number of PR0-10 websites linking to their websites,
• the average Page Rank of all the websites pointing to their websites,
• whether the website is in the Yahoo Directory, DMOZ.org and Wikipedia.

You’ll know exactly how you should create your own web pages for top search engine rankings. By analyzing your competitor’s pages you’ll find out the exact numbers for the following variables to optimize your website:

• Link Prominence
• Link Density
• Keyword Density (How many times you should repeat your keywords on your pages)
• Keyword Prominence (Where you should place your keywords on your pages)
• Whether or not they’re using meta keywords AND what they are
• Whether or not they’re using h1 and h2 tags AND what they are
• The number of external links on their web page
• The number of internal links on their web page
• The age of their website
• And much more!

Plus, with this free trial, you can get access to a free 58 week SEO course to learn proven optimization strategies.

Download SEO Elite fully functional, 7 day trial version for free!

“So what. Who cares?”, you may be saying, if you are not a SEO newbie.

I do care! VREToolbar.com was a PR0 and now it has received a PR5. Have I noticed a jump in search results? Certainly NOT (and I didn’t expect it, honestly). But what I did notice from the very first day we got a PR5, is that…

Googlebot has started visiting our website several times more often.

That means we can now have new pages indexed faster.

So, next time you see somebody’s claiming PageRank is meaningless, make sure you understand what they’re talking about:

• in most cases it has no effect on your search results positioning, but…
• it certainly may give you some other advantages which can indirectly help to increase your rankings, such as faster indexing.

BTW, we have updated PRs of article directories in our list of Top 50 Article Directories By Traffic, Pagerank too.

Today I’m going to tell you how to increase the kind of web site traffic your business really needs…

AND build your crediblity…
AND improve your ranking in the search engines…
AND get your customers talking to others about you…

… all with a simple four-step process that won’t cost you a single dime.

Sound too good to be true? It’s not!

Let me give you a quick rundown of the plan before we dive in:

1. You’re going to find a handful of keywords that the ideal visitor to your site would use to search for your product.

2. You’re going to plug those keywords into your web site.

3. Then you’re going to write a SHORT article that contains those same keywords.

4. And finally, you’ll distribute your content all over the web and get people passing your information on to other people who will be interested in what you have to offer.

You’ll be surprised how quickly and easily you can get this strategy going — AND how fast you’ll see an impact on your traffic numbers when you put yourself on the radar of people who are looking for what you provide.

Let’s check out the first step in a little more detail…

STEP ONE: Set up your web site for maximum “searchability”!

If you haven’t taken the time to…

• figure out the keywords your potential customers might be using to search for your product AND
• place them throughout the copy on your site…

your traffic is going to be sluggish right off the bat.

How are the people who really want your information supposed to find you?

When I tell people that they’ve missed an important step in their traffic-building strategy, they always ask me: how are you supposed to figure out the right keywords for your web site?

Here are the two tools I recommend to help them with the job:

• Yahoo Search Marketing’s Keyword Selector Tool is a good place to start your investigation. You just type in a word or term you think people in your market might search for, and the Keyword Selector Tool will tell you how many people searched for that particular term in Yahoo Search Marketing over the last month.It will also show you a list of related words and phrases, and tell you how many times people typed those terms into the free search engines over the last month.This is a great way to find out how many people may be searching for information to solve a particular problem, and give you a picture of the demand for your product on the Web. But best of all, it gives you tons of ideas for keywords that you might never have thought of.

Once you’ve generated a list of useful keyword ideas, you’re ready to dig in and do some serious research with Wordtracker.

• Wordtracker goes into more depth to show you not only what people are searching for online, but also how many other web sites are competing for the same audience.Basically, it keeps a record of how many times a particular keyword or phrase was searched during the past 90 days across the Web.When you enter the keyword phrases your market is searching for, you search the Wordtracker database of over 330 million searches (or “queries”).

  You’re looking for search terms that are popular, but don’t have too many sites competing for them. You can also pop all of this detailed information into useful reports that help you determine which keywords and phrases will bring you the most traffic.

  To check out Wordtracker and get a step-by-step guide to the process, just head to: http://www.marketingtips.com/wordtracker and click “Tour” on the navigation bar.

  Wordtracker is a paid service, but you can sign up for a day for under $8.00 and a week for under $27.00. It’s a great investment.

STEP TWO: Plug your keywords into your site

Now that you have some great keywords for your market, find as many places as you can to plug them into your web site! Use them in your title tags, in your source code, in the copy on your pages, and in your opt-in offers.

If you find your domain name isn’t telling people what your web site is about or showing up in the right search results, consider purchasing a new one. A keyword-rich domain name is a small investment that really pays off by making your site easy for your potential customers to find and remember. (One quick note: remember to use only keywords relevant to your product — search engines will penalize you if they find keywords sprinkled through your code that have nothing to do with the content of your site.)

Now to move on to the next step — your foolproof way to snag people searching for your product on the Web and bring them back to your site!

STEP THREE: Create a keyword-rich article to distribute on the Web

When you’re ready, get your keywords, sit down, and write a keyword-rich article that relates to what you sell. Then give it away to other sites — for FREE!

Believe it or not, this is one of the best ways you can drive a steady stream of eager customers to your site.

Why does it work? Well, people basically come online for one of two reasons: To check their email or to look for information. Sure, some of them end up making purchases, but this is not generally the reason they log on. They want…

• the answer to a question
• the solution to a problem

That’s why it’s your job to give them that information, as it relates to your product. You already do that with the copy on your web site, but why stop there?

Writing a short, informative article to distribute on the Web is a great way to gain recognition as a valuable resource in your industry.

Of course, you’ll want to write about something that relates to your products or services, since the ultimate goal of the article is to drive visitors to your site who are interested in what you’re selling. But the article should be informative, not “sales-y”.

Make sure that each article you write contains rare, valuable, or hard-to-find information. Not only will this increase the chances that other site owners or managers will post your article, it will also increase the number of visitors who click through to your site after reading it.

For example, if you have a web site that sells used golf equipment, you could write an article about three things to look for in a good, pre-owned putter.

Or if you sell an eBook about setting up your own home computer network, why not write an article about common problems people have in setting up a wireless router?

Look for article ideas in the questions that people ask you all the time, or in the things you often see people doing wrong. Share hot new tips on how to use the products you sell, or talk about trends that you’ve spotted in your industry.

I’m not talking about a major essay here, though.

Did I just hear a big sigh of relief?

Nope — you don’t need to be a professional writer to turn out a solid, traffic-boosting article! Your quick piece should…

• be no longer than 400 words (not even a whole page!)
• contain a keyword related to your product in first 90 characters
• contain the keyword in the first and last paragraphs
• have a short, credibility-building “bio” with link to your site at the end. Here’s an example: “ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joe Smith is a recognized authority on the subject of widgets. His web site, www. JoesWidgets .com, provides a wealth of informative articles and resources on everything you’ll ever need to know about widgets.”

Now for the fourth step in this traffic-driving strategy.

STEP FOUR: Get your content headed EVERYWHERE on the Web

Once you’ve taken a few hours to write one or two quick articles, head to one of these top online content distribution sites. Upload your keyword-rich content to:

• http://www.contentdesk.com
• http://www.ezinearticles.com
• http://www.freesticky.com
• http://www.goarticles.com
• http://www.ideamarketers.com
• http://www.findsticky.com

It only takes a couple of minutes, but the rewards for your site will be huge.

These sites carry hundred or thousands of articles on a range of topics. If someone is looking for content for their web site, they can download or copy an article from the distribution site without paying a dime to use it!

They can’t change the text of the article, and they must publish it with the author’s name and information intact.

Now people who are plugging your keywords into search engines will be directed to your content at these highly-ranked sites, and web site owners who are looking for fresh, search engine- attracting content will download your article — along with your bio and link! — and put it up on their pages.

And once visitors see that you know what you’re talking about, they’ll click on the link in your bio, and head straight to your web site!

The best thing about this strategy is that these visitors are QUALITY, TARGETED traffic — they actually WANT what you’re selling, because you are meeting a need or giving them help with the problem they came online to solve!

Some content distribution sites also offer “send to a friend” links next to articles posted on their sites — so make sure you’re uploading your articles to sites with this kind of capability!

Every time someone enjoys your article enough to pass it on, your audience grows. And since people don’t forward BAD content on to their friends, they are basically recommending you as a credible source just by passing it on.

You can also create a “send to a friend” link on your own web pages with the help of a simple script added to your code. Here are some examples of what this kind of link might say:

• “Did you enjoy this article? To recommend it to a friend, click here…”
• “To pass this important info along to a friend or family member, click here…”
• “Share this with a friend — just click here…”
• “Can’t wait to tell a friend about this? Here’s how…”

To find scripts to make links like these ones fully functional, check out the resources at:

• http://www.freewebtemplates.com
• http://www.javascript.com
• http://www.scriptsearch.com
• http://www.hotscripts.com

The visitors who come to your site through articles or forwarded material are highly targeted… and likely to take action when they actually arrive at your web site seeking your specific information.

Final thoughts

See how much you can do with one little article? It’s amazing how effective a small piece of content can be when you…

• know your keywords, and…
• know all the places to position that content so it’s viewed again and again

Once you’ve done your keyword research, you might feel a bit intimidated by the idea of writing something yourself for the ‘Net. Or maybe you don’t feel like you have the time to do it justice.

Remember — any free content you create shouldn’t be too long, and it definitely shouldn’t be too complicated, since the people reading it won’t know your product or your subject as well as you do.

If you’re still concerned, you can always hire a writer from a freelance web site like Elance ( http://www.elance.com ) to do a couple of short articles or an eBook (with a bit of basic information from you, of course.) Expect to pay anywhere from $25 to $35 an hour for their time.

But I recommend that you try to write something yourself first. You definitely don’t need to be a professional writer to create something readable and interesting… (I sure don’t have a degree in creative writing myself!)

Just try to think like your audience — what do they want to know, and how much do they know already? Then tell them simply and clearly. We’re not talking Shakespeare here.

Here’s one more quick peek at my easy four-step plan to increase web traffic:

1. Find the keywords people are using to search for your product.

2. Make sure all the content on your web site contains these keywords!

3. Write short, keyword-rich articles with links directing people back to your site — nothing too long or complicated; just enough content to establish you as someone “in the know” about your industry.

4. And finally, send your article to content distribution sites and — with just a simple suggestion or a script-based link — encourage people to pass your material on to their friends (and direct them back to your site!)

These simple steps are things that practically anyone can do to drive traffic. They’ll help you get the kind of targeted, quality traffic that can make all the difference to the success of a business, especially when you’re just starting out!

In other words, these are the types of visitors who are most likely to take action on your site, whether they make a purchase, or simply opt in with their personal information.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ll take more of those visitors any day of the week!

• How articles can bring you an ongoing flood of subscribers and sales!
• How to leverage articles for massive AdSense profits!
• How to get tons of traffic from other people’s articles!
• Where to get articles written for you — dirt cheap!
• How to get your articles properly distributed — do this wrong and you won’t get much traffic or incoming links!
• And much, much more!

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