Writing a Successful Article for a Business Making Money Online: PART 1

If you are interested in starting a business making money online or have an existing web site and/or program you need to promote, then you have landed in the right place. Do you have a limited budget or you want to get your website to the top of the search engines, then article writing is the answer. You can use article submissions to attract your web site to ALL the search engines, and it is an excellent approach to getting to the first page of Google.

I was like most of you when I started promoting my web site. I spent money on these guaranteed visitors sites, Google Adwords and other web site promotion “tools.” But guest who was the tool? They advertise sending 10,000 visitors to your web site. You know how many leads and subscriptions I got after spending over $300 the first month? One! Yeah, you heard me. One!

When I discovered these so-called authorities did not know what they were doing or just simply wanted to take my money, I concluded that it was time to do what I should have done in the first place. Study the subject, do the research and due diligence before spending any more money or wasting my time with other methods of promotion.

As a semi-retired director of economic development and job creation, I had a reputation for doing the background work on businesses and projects before advising mayors and other elected officials. But, somewhere along the way I forget how important that is. I want to also urge you to do the same.

That was when I started reading up on Internet Marketing (IM). I decided then that the “experts” we putting the screws to us. The scams are everywhere and we must be aware. IM is not that confusing once you understand what the search engines look for and how that can be accomplished.

They seek out links to other web sites and blogs, and links from articles, or ads that contain your web sites and keywords or phrases. There are other components and detailed explanations for how they “grade these, but we will forgo that for now. The bottom line is these are MAJOR!

Targeted traffic is created in 2 ways. First, it comes from organic search engine results for your sites. Second, it comes from "good" backlinks to your site from high traffic sites on the web. We are addressing one method of developing backlinks here with articles. Then other method is reciprocal linking or exchanging links. However, articles create free one-way links at a higher volume.

That other problem is even when the “experts” tell you the “secrets” they manage to neglect most of the details. If you have an unlimited budget you can hire a search engine optimization (SEO) firm to optimize your web site then submit it to search engines and FFA’s for 60-90 days and then they guarantee they can get you to the top of the search engines.

Even then, if you do not continue to utilize their service you will NOT maintain this ranking long- maybe 30 to 45 days. Ads submitted to FFA sites are only good for one day. I don’t know if you are familiar with FFA submission sites/programs but they are set-up so that you must make submissions to these sites everyday.

Anyway, the whole process is only temporary unless you continue to pay them every month forever. That’s right. You spend $1,200-1,500 and get a temporary fix. So, unless you are making big bucks right away you may not recover your investment for months, even years. Therefore, if you are trying to start a business making money online you must be careful not to waste your funds to be successful.

But, if you want to get permanent long-term results for your marketing dollar, and time, spend them both on reciprocal links and articles. These are FOREVER! Once you write an article and submit it to a directory it, when it is accepted it is there for the rest of time. Articles contain your targeted keyword phrase (keywords that identify your web site) and links to your web site that will be out there for eternity generating visits to your site.

The same is true of reciprocal links to other web sites. The way this works is you identify websites that have a similar interest or market as yours and you place a link on your web site that is for/to the other person’s web site and they do the same for you.

That’s the condensed version. These type links remain on the web sites until one of you decides to remove them, but typically that is rare because you do not want to lose these links. Therefore, theses links are long-term or essentially forever. This topic will be discussed at another time.

Back to the business of writing articles.

Before you begin to submit articles with the appropriate keyword phrase and hyperlinks to your web site or lead generating page, you must select your keyword phrase (typically 2-5 words). This is not something they all share with you when they recommend writing articles. I wrote 10 articles before I stumbled across an omitted item- articles must contain the keywords you have had optimized to your web site.

So, if have an affiliate web site, find out if it is optimized and for which keyword phrase. My keyword phrase is “business making money online” and I had to get the web site optimized for these keywords for my promoting to be successful. But, I did not just reach in a hat and select a keyword phrase. The proper and best process encompasses using the “Google Keyword Tool.” This should only take 30 minutes, tops.

First, go to Google and submit those 3 words in the search engine. Click “Google Adword Keyword Tool,” then, go to the keyword tool and submit the keywords you feel best describe your business and/or program or product, i.e., make money online. Once you put this in the tool it will generate 100-200 or more keyword phrases. (This next step is the most important part of the selection process.)

Search for keyword phrases from the results that show search volume of more than 5,000 for the month (not projected for next month) and less than 20,000. Do not use those that say “Not enough data.” Then check the other factor, “Advertiser Competition.” Here you are looking for those that have less than half the bar colored blue. That means there is less competition and will be simpler to get to the top of the search engines. These are 2 results: make money online marketing (4,400) and make money from home online (9,900).

Select 4-5 phrases that meet the criteria, less than 20,000 searches and less than 50% competition. Then narrow your choice to the one that best meets your needs or that you feel best identifies your marketing approach. This is important because you have to promote this keyword phrase the next 3-6 months until you get to the level of traffic you will need to meet the needs of your program or income needs.

If you are preparing to do this long-term, you will need to determine that these keywords meet your long-term needs. Now you have to make a choice and prepare to start promoting the web site and/or program and generating income.

For a more detailed explanation, please check this article by an expert on the subject: http://www.seoelite.com/lessons/lesson-1/

The title is "Optimize The Wrong Keywords And You'll Likely Never Rank Well!"

I learned new information from this article and I’m sure you will find it current and relevant. That is very important.

Before we start writing articles, we need to learn to write hyperlinks. These are simply the way the search engines better detect your keyword phrases. That is, they are inserted in the article so the reader can click on them. Example: < a href="http://xxx.affiliate-secret-weapons.com/pips "> business making money online

Notice that inside the quotes is my web site, but inside the brackets and underlined are my keywords. When this is inserted into html on the article directory, it will be highlighted so that the reader can click the link. I had to modify this hyperlink by typing in xxx instead of www so that it would not do this.

This article has become more lengthy than I projected, and I am submitting the balance on my blog as Part 2. Please read my Resource Box for the reference. I truly hope this helps to you to this point.

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