Q. How can an article stuffed with keywords attract readers?

A. In short, it can’t! In the past keyword stuffing an article would get that article picked up by search engines for the phrase being stuffed into it, but sites like Google and others are getting smarter all the time. Still putting your keyword phrase into your title, summary and article is a smart thing to do — in moderation. But over-stuffing makes readers leave skid marks. They take one look at the garbage and click off the page. It does you absolutely no good.

Always put your reader first. Manipulation tactics may work for a while, but they never last long as search engines tweak their algorithms to side-step them. Writing for the reader is always best practice.

Q. I’ve written and submitted over a hundred articles, but am seeing no increase in traffic.  Help!

A. First, make sure you haven’t made a typo in your web address. Click on your links in your article and make sure they work and lead to your site. Make sure your hyperlink syntax is correct in any links you embed within your article or within your resource box. Here’s a typical hyperlink syntax:

<a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com”>Your hyperlinked phrase here</a>

Make sure the double quotes in the code are standard straight quotes and not smart quotes imported from Microsoft Word or some other wordprocessing program.

Second, have a compelling call to action that makes people want to visit your site. For example, if your article is about “How to Fix a Leaky Faucet” you could link people over to a free ebook on “How to Save Money on Home Repairs.” Then link the person directly over to the exact URL on your site about this free ebook. Don’t make visitors hunt for the information on your site.

Too many people have no call to action with their article. They put something like, “John Doe is a writer/consultant. To learn more about him go to his web site.”  Honestly, most people don’t care about learning more about you. They want something to be in it for them!  Give them an incentive to follow through and go to your site, and that incentive should be directly related to the article. This may mean having multiple incentives and matching your articles to those incentives.

We operate a G-rated site at IdeaMarketers and enforce it strictly. We do not accept gambling, porn-related, adult-related, or offensive content. If we wouldn’t want our kindergartner reading it, then we will pull it.

We also insist that information entered be an actual article or press release and not an advertisement. Many people try to abuse our system by putting short keyword stuffed ads into our system as articles. This results in us removing the entire writer account and all the items posted within it. So don’t bother doing that!

While we are strict about content, we are more lenient than other content directories about how many links you can put to your site within an article or you bio. We do not set a limit, but hope that you would use this option judiciously. Too many links doesn’t help you anyway.

We also allow you to embed object code within your articles. So if you’d like to include a video or an audio embed code in your article, we are open to that. It just needs to be G-rated content.

For full list of our terms and conditions, go here.

Does bidding make a big difference in how much your articles get picked up and distributed or syndicated?

Answer

First, let me explain that articles on IdeaMarketers are sorted first from highest to lowest bidder and then by the expiration date of the bid (or the date the article was submitted if there’s no bid on the article). This gives top bidders prominent positioning on the most popular pages of the site – the home page and the channel pages. The top bid articles also recommended on other articles that are in the same broad channel category. For example, the top 8 bid articles in the Business category will appear on all business-related articles.

In relation to syndication and distribution, bidding for article promotion does the following:

• increases your chances of having your article (and thus your web site) picked up by spidering search engines ;
• increases the chances of your article being picked up by webmasters, editors and print publications, because it’s more prominently placed on our site;
• increases the chances of having your article syndicated through our category syndication. The articles we stream out to other sites are sorted first by bid amoun and then by date. We syndicated out roughly 3 million page views each month to other web sites. Bidding helps bring you toward the top of those syndication feeds;
• increases the chances of having your own syndicated column picked up because if you have a bid running on at least one of your articles, we promote you as a syndicated columnist on your profile, your articles, and also on www.SyndicatedWriters.com

To learn more about the bidding process, go here.

In order for your article to show on the home page of IdeaMarketers.com, you’ll have to place a bid for promotion. Our home page is sorted from highest to lowest bidder. A bid on an article, press release or book lasts for 7 days. For example, someone who bids $30 for an article’s promotion will come up higher than someone who pays $20 or $10

Assuming you have placed a bid and your article still isn’t showing, make sure you bid high enough to be on the home page. The left-hand column is what we call Group 1 and shows the top 60 bidders in the following categories put together: Business, Tech, Marketing, Finance, Travel/Tourism.

The middle column is what we call Group 2 and shows the top 60 bidders in the following categories put together: Education, Entertainment/News, Home/Family, Writing/Publishing, Life.

To see what current bids are going for, click here.

Assuming you’ve bid high enough, if your bid still isn’t showing, log into your account and go to Article/PR Admin on the menu and choose Update Home Page. To conserve resources, our home page is on a periodic update, but you can use this option to force it to refresh. After you do this, if you go to the home page, it should be there. If not, you might try pressing F5 on your keyboard to refresh your browser.

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IdeaMarketers.com is a place for ideamarketers, so it’s only logical that a definition of the term would be the best place to start when telling people what the site is about and what they can do with it.

An ideamarketer is a very specific type of individual who is different than just your ordinary person with an idea or the everyday person peddling a product. Just as the word “entrepreneur” conveys a different feeling and connotation than the word “businessperson,” so does the noun “ideamarketer” from the term “marketer.”

definition:
ideamarketer
i-de-a-mar-ket-er
- noun

• a person who is passionate about an idea – so passionate that s/he takes the necessary action to turn their idea into a reality;
• a person with deeply held beliefs or philosophies who feels compelled to share them with the rest of the world;
• a person who generates innovative thoughts, plans, products or services and then takes action to create, implement, and promote them;
• a person who feels s/he has a message to share and is willing to make the world a better place by sharing it.

Given this definition, it is the mission of IdeaMarketers.com to be an environment where ideamarketers^TM thrive – where they can share their message, promote their products and services, and have a springboard from which they can improve the world.

Bottom line… ideamarketers^TM aren’t just out there peddling any old product or service from which they think they can make a dollar. There are people with ideas, and then there are Ideamarketers^TM… people who turn ideas into action. If you’re such a person, IdeaMarketers.com is here to help you do it.

If you have an article on the home page of IdeaMarketers and you have changed either its title, summary or the photo that goes with it, the change will not take effect immediately. Our site is on a periodic update to prevent strain on our servers. But, you can refresh the home page yourself by logging into your writer account and going to Article/PR Admin and selecting Update Home Page. Once you do that, the home page will refresh.

If it still doesn’t refresh for you, then you can press F5 on your keyboard to refresh the page in your browser.

Idea Dollars are what IdeaMarketers.com uses as “currency.” You can use them to

• put an article on the home page of IdeaMarketers.com;
• put a press release on the home page of the site;
• put a book or ebook on the home page of the site;
• have one of our editors proofread your article so that it can have a “Ready to Publish” logo next to it as well as appear on our sister site ReadyToPublish.com which only contains human-edited content.

You can add Idea Dollars to your account, by logging into your writer account and going to Manage Account, Add Funds.