I’m writing this article to stress the importance of choosing your primary keyword phrases and article titles wisely for article marketing. I had an IdeaMarketers bidder write me to say his site wasn’t receiving traffic from search engines. I investigated the situation and found that when I searched for his article’s primary keyword phrase on Google, he actually had the top four natural listings for his article and Web site! He was getting better search engine placement. Unfortunately, his primary keyword phrase wasn’t something anyone would think to search for.
Bottom line, his article promotion was a waste. While IdeaMarketers and Google were doing their thing, it didn’t create results because very few (if any) searches would ever be made for his primary keyword phrase.I recommend that you always think about your typical visitor and their needs when crafting your title, keywords, summary and the article itself.
Title
Choose a title that is descriptive and tells the reader what the article is about. Pay special attention to the first three words of your title. These should be a phrase that people actually search for. While catchy phrases are cute, they may not accurately depict what’s inside the article. They probably aren’t what someone would think to search for either. Also, don’t make your title so keyword-stuffed or technical that no one would understand it. You need to strike a balance between readability and phrases that people would search for.
MSN loves article titles. Most bidders on IdeaMarketers who bid high enough to be on the home page, in time will find their exact title coming up in the top results of MSN. On any search engine the title is important because it helps the searcher decide whether they want to click or not.
Keywords
The keywords you select when adding/editing an article are a list of comma separated words or phrases you think people might search for to find your article. These come into play when someone does a keyword search on IdeaMarketers. They also appear in the keywords meta tag for the article page. (Meta tags are what search engines read on a web page to determine its content.)
Use Google’s Keyword selection tool for ideas.
Primary Keyword Phrase
Even more important than the keywords is the primary keyword phrase we let you enter for your article. This displays on our home page and channel pages. It links to your article. Your primary keyword phrase also links straight from your article to your Web site. Search engines look at these linked phrases in determining link popularity and how far you come up in their listings for that phrase. Being linked off the home page and channel pages of IdeaMarketers for a primary keyword phrase is considered a high-value link and will weigh heavily in your favor. Choose this phrase wisely. It should be something people will actually search for. Don’t just haphazardly throw something in this blank. You’re wasting a lot of power (and bid dollars) if you do.
Also, don’t choose a phrase that is too broad. For example, the competition for the phrase “real estate” is tremendous; whereas you will have a better chance at a top listing for “real estate investment course” or “Chattanooga real estate.”
Summary
Your summary is your “elevator speech” – your chance to grab the searcher’s attention in a sentence or two. It appears on IdeaMarketers as a description with your article title, as well as in the meta tags, and eventually as the summary associated with your article on many search engines. Include somewhere in your summary, the same primary keyword phrase that you had in your title. Use the summary wisely to effectively describe what readers can expect from your article. Don’t ever leave this blank!
The Article
Once the visitor has made it to your article, make sure you retain their attention. It’s your goal to impress, instruct, and enlighten them so much that they will want to visit your Web site. Articles aren’t advertisements and they aren’t blobs of keyword-stuffed text. Not only will the visitor instantly leave your article if it’s nothing but an ad or keyword jumble, but also they’ll probably look at your name and make a mental note never to do business with you.
Your article simply must be credible, well-written, properly formatted and grammatically correct. People want to do business with people who are intelligent and trustworthy. Steve Martin used to do an old stand-up routine where he compared “Fidelity Bank and Trust” to “Fred’s Bank.” Where would you rather put your money?
The same goes for article promotion. The quality and credibility of your article reflects upon you and your professionalism. I was speaking to one of our long-time contributors who got her start writing articles several years ago on IdeaMarketers. Now she’s a columnist for a print journal and has an agent for her innovative business book. But that never would have happened for her if she hadn’t put quality and professionalism first. While search engine rankings and positioning are important, never sacrifice quality for keyword-stuffing nonsense.
Follow these tips and you’ll see better results – both in better search engine placement and in your long-run reputation for credibility and professionalism.To submit your articles to IdeaMarketers, go here to get a writer account. Or if you already have a writer account, you can log in here.
