Article Marketing As An Online Lead Generation Tool

Lead generation is about identifying prospects in your market that are interested in your product or service that you have to offer. The first step in any sales process is to identify your target market, but also know the ones that might need your services in the immediate future.

When you can point to these groups of people, they are known as leads. Leads become the lifeline of any serious business. Without leads you don't know who is interested in your product. Lead Generation is popular among insurance, mortgage and real estate businesses both online as well as in the brick and mortar world.

Article marketing is one of the most powerful lead generation tools out there; it works so well because you are able to establish a level of trust with your reader. Keep in mind that for the mere fact that your reader is reading your article, its safe to say that they will educate themselves before making a buying decision.

Now when they can read your article and learn a little bit more than they already knew, you have just gained their trust. This makes article marketing like no other form of lead generation online. Trust is very important when generating leads online, especially because of the nature of the Internet.

The quality of leads that you get from article marketing is also higher than other lead generation techniques, its due to the fact that article generated leads were able to learn from you. You did not approach them as some pushy sales guy trying to make a sale.

If you have not started using article marketing as a form of lead generation, I would suggest you seriously consider it for your business.

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Broken Links Will Hurt Your Search Engine Results

Search engine results are becoming more important every day as more people use the World Wide Web to find goods, services and information. One way to help your website achieve a decent ranking is by ensuring your site is free of bad links.

What Google Says About Links

When your website is ready: - Have other relevant sites link to yours. - Submit your website link or URL to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific sites. - Make a website with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every web page should be reachable from at least one static text link. - Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100). - Check for broken links and correct HTML.

Broken Links Are Bad For Users And SEO

It is important to trade links with relevant websites. But the more sites you trade with the more difficult it becomes to detect a bad link.

Bad links happen when: - The company goes out of business or abandons its website - Domain name change - Website/ company merger - Page, pages or directory sections are deleted or no longer continued - Inexperienced Web editors or content managers make coding mistakes

Google will detect all bad links in your website. Google robots or crawlers are routinely gathering information from your website on a cyclic basis. You may experience a drop off or ranking change if your website contains bad links.

Think Of It This Way

Links are mini-direction maps. They tell the search engine robots where to find content within and outside of your website. Imagine someone giving you bad or inaccurate directions. Would you trust them? Would you come back or ask them again? Search engine robots work the same way.

Website Redesigns Can Affect Your Links

When you redesign your website it will most likely have a new link structure and new page names. For example, your home page may be given a new file name (index.asp) versus (index.html). And your interior pages might be given new naming conventions such as "suffolk-home-remodeling-team.html" versus "our-team.html."

Before the new website pages are launched, your webmaster should create redirects for all of your old or existing web pages so that clients or customers with bookmarks in their web browser "favorites" will be redirected to your new website or website interior pages. A redirect also tells the search engines where to find your new website interior pages. Webmaster should also include this information in your robots.txt file at the root directory of your website.

Link Checking

There are a few free and share-ware programs on the market that will perform a scan of your website link structure and detect and report any bad inbound or out-bound links. I prefer having someone do this for me on a daily basis. Most people simply do not have the time to do a link check every single day. I found a really inexpensive service that emails me reports when any bad links are detected. You can check them out at http://www.seventwentyfour.com/

There is also a popular software called Link Sleuth ™, a free multi-threaded link checking software that analyzes websites for broken links. It runs on Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 and Windows XP. It requires some basic webmaster knowledge to run, but has pretty good documentation.

Solid Links = Solid Reputation

Whether you manually check your links, or use software or a link checking service, having a solid intact link structure reflects well on your website. It means you care about your visitors' online experience and your website presence.

Bad links may harm your website search engine ranking and leave your website visitors with a less than pleasurable experience.

Ricardo Vidallon is company owner and creative director for Visionefx a Virginia based web design company.

Million Dollar Resource Box

Writing articles can be a very profitable exercise if you focus on the details. One of the most important details of your article is the authors Resource Box. Many authors mistakenly use it to market themselves. They talk about their education, their background, and their accomplishments. Unless you are a famous individual, no one really cares where you went to school, where you grew up, or any of your fabulous accomplishments. Dont waste precious space in the Resource Box to brag. If you feel a need to tell people how great you are, write about it in an article and see how many page views you get. Ive researched over a thousand articles and the number one reason that many writers fail to make money with their articles is due to a flawed Resource Box.

In the ideal Resource Box, you should tout three things: your website, one of your own promotional items, and an affiliate program. Ive seen countless articles that did not even mention a website.

The article is written to benefit the public, the Resource Box is written to compensate the author. Many authors have one Bio that they use for every article they submit. This is a big mistake. When I finish writing an article, I dont step away from the computer until I complete two Resource Boxes. A plain text version for sites that do not accept html in their articles, and an html version for sites that accept the a href command. If a site says that they will allow html in their article, I will submit the html version. If the site does not specifically state that they will accept html, or if they say that they will strip it out, I submit the plain text version.

Your targeted Resource Box should contain just three or four sentences. None of them will contain information about you.

Sentence 1) If you have a domain with a catchy name, make sure you use it instead of an html (a href) link. This sentence will contain a link or URL pointing to the opt-in (or squeeze) page on your website. In order to entice the reader to click, you will offer them incentives such as free downloads, free ebooks, or a free report of some kind.

Sentence 2) If the site permits it, use hyper-linked text for this and the following sentences. In this sentence, include a link or URL offering one of your own money-making products.

Sentence 3) If you wish, you can say a few words about how great your website is and the benefits of using it.

Sentence 4) This is the last sentence; provide a link or URL to an affiliate program you are promoting.

By using this format for your Resource Box, you will be compensated quite nicely for your articles.

Download our FREE REPORT on making money writing articles and receive tons of free articles, reports, information, and downloads. Jo Mark is an Internet marketing expert specializing in the generation of income through the writing and placement of articles. Our successful ebooks have helped countless individuals to generate income by writing articles.

The Number #1 Article Marketing Mistake That You Must Avoid

Okay, I'm writing this for all struggling people who are trying to make a living online. If you're in an article marketing. You absolutely have to do this, one thing and that is: capture your visitor's e-mail!

You have worked hard to write out your article and you got couple of hundred clicks - if that. The visitors visit your website and then they go away most likely forever, without buying your product or service.

So it doesn't make any sense to me, if you go to work hard to write an article Only to make one or two sales. Article marketing may be a free method to generate traffic, but if you think about it you are trading your time in. And time is money.

If you're linking your resource box directly to your sales page don't do that. Instead direct the visitor to your landing page which has an e-mail opt in. They're the visitor had entered his or her e-mail, then you should direct the person to your sales page.

To build a long-term business you have to have a list.

Do you want to keep writing fresh articles day after day only to have it buried under search engine after a couple weeks? Or do you want to write article once capture the highly targeted customer into your e-mail lists and then market to them over and over again.

The second option makes more sense, no? This is the proven method on how to make lots of money, and it works. That is how the Internet gurus make millions every year on the Internet - through their e-mail list.

So if you make this article marketing mistake. Don't worry, you now know the secret to our article marketing success.

Remember that article marketing is not to drive tons of traffic to your website (although it could happen) but rather send trickles of highly targeted visitors to your webpage (and you want to keep them by getting their e-mail address)

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Using Articles As Marketing Tools

Nowadays, every business has a website and is being advertised through Internet marketing. Online marketing tools require a lot less time and effort than traditional marketing tools and since Internet users often search the web for information, the tools are programmed to respond quickly and target potential customers.

Though it is traditionally used in print methods, such as newspapers and, writing articles can still be an incredibly useful tool on the Internet. This content can help to boost a business' website ratings and bring the site higher in search engine listings, which will automatically increase the amount of traffic going in and out of the website. The more customers who see a site, the more sales a business will have, whether or not you're selling a product or a service.

The content, which is more likely than not a typical web article, should contain keywords and be search engine optimized so that the site is listed as high as possible on search engines. It should contain important information about the company and the services offered as well as how these services or products can be useful to potential customers. Though it's important that the keywords are visible so that the website will generate more traffic, the article should not be overridden with obvious marketing techniques and should be interesting and captivating to a potential customer. Like any article in a magazine or newspaper, a consumer can stop reading at any point if they become bored and disinterested.

Perhaps even more important than the writing of the actual article is the writing of the headline. A headline is what grabs a consumers attention and makes them decide whether or not they even want to read your article and continue with your website. A headline needs to be catchy and interesting so that a customer is eager to read the rest of the article and find out what this headline, a brief preview of the content, is all about.

Articles are effective marketing tools because, unlike other methods of Internet marketing, such as pop-up advertisements, you can really connect with a potential customer and allow them to become familiar with your business and services. Articles can be used several times and in several different places on the web. You can post the content on your website, email it to subscribers or potential customers, and even list it in article directories so that more users know that it's there.

By publishing articles online, businesses can let customers know that they are an expert in the services they're providing, utilize the resource box for free advertising, increase their profits through an increase of sales and gain from affiliate marketing. Using keywords within an article, businesses can raise their rankings on search engines, such as Yahoo or Google, and attract more high quality user traffic to their website. The more potential customers that visit your website, the more who will read your article and the more who will buy your products or services.

James Copper is a writer for big strategies limited

Best Article Marketing - Revealed - 4 Incredible Ways to Explode Your Article Marketing

Your desire to impart your knowledge can take you a long way in internet marketing. Write articles that contain information that will be useful and valuable to your target market and submit them to publishing sites. This will not only help you position yourself as an expert on your chosen niche, it will also augment the number of your inbound links that can easily pull up your search engine ranking.

Here are the 4 incredible ways to explode your article marketing:

1. Go for original content. While it is tempting to duplicate other writers' content, you must think of prioritizing your readers and give them fresh and new content that they will surely appreciate. Besides, copying others' work can greatly ruin your online credibility and can lead to penalties from the search engines.

2. Submit your articles to publishing sites the proper way. Identify the keywords to which your articles were based on and write a compelling article summary that will drive online users to check on your content. Use the preview feature of each publishing sites to ensure that all your links are working and that there is a proper spacing within you content to that make them easy on the eyes.

3. Ensure that your articles are posted online. Check publishing sites at least 5 days after your submission to check if your articles were accepted. Too many times articles are declined because of keyword spamming, inappropriate content, broken links, and blatant advertisements.

4. Use article submission software. Manually submitting your articles to publishing sites can be tedious, time-consuming, and downright exhausting. It can also eat up a lot of your writing time. Buy yourself more time and energy by using software that can help you electronically distribute your articles to various publishing sites.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

How To Submit Your Article To Major Media Portals

Article is very efficient vehicle to get more traffic to your website, increase its page rank, plus as a consequence to get more leads for your sales department. If you are novice in SEO or getting your website higher on the Google ranking, you should know the differences in search engine treating for article and press release. Let's review article submission strategy and its special niche in comparison to PR or video and text blogs:

1. Article means new knowledge and no ads. When you are writing your article, please try to keep reasonable compromise between you and media portal editor - you would like to place as much keywords in article header as possible while article editor will try to minimize the number of keywords in the header - editor is stronger than you - he can simply decline the article, which is abusing its header and introduction sentences. Article allows author (not company) logo or small photo

2. Press Release means new product or service announcement and it has date and place, introduction, body, and about company sections. Press Release normally allows you some advertisement, but in very modest manner. Press Release could be placed to a large number of media sites, sometimes for small fee, but often free of charge. Press Release typically has shorter life cycle and is forgotten in few months - similar to paper magazine or newspaper publication

3. Where to submit. Assuming that your news is ready for publication, next question is where to submit? This requires you to do your homework and preparation. Open Google, type in the search box something like "submit your article". Bunch of web pages will be on the first page. Well - open each one-by-one, establish (typically free) account and go ahead and publish. Then you should expect new article submission sites portals will send you invitations to publish on their sites and you will become established author in very short period of time - if you publish one article per week - one year is the reasonable period to become famous author.

Andrew Karasev, Pegas Planet: http://www.pegasplanet.com, subdivision of Alba Spectrum Group: http://www.albaspectrum.com, serving video press release, article, blogging community in USA and Internationally. Taisia Karaseva is Pegas Planet concept author and CEO. You can submit your article, PR, photo or video blog here: http://www.pegasplanet.com/SubmitNews/SubmitNews.aspx