There are certain sets of skills and knowledge that are a part of any job.  This applies to writing for article marketing as much as any profession.

In another article I’ll offer some of the specific skill sets involved in professional article writing.  I want to concentrate this article, in fairly broad terms, on the necessary knowledge sets.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is at the heart of any article marketing.  I’m sure you realize that SEO is a very complex field in its own write, and it changes frequently as the search engines are continually refining their algorithms to try to deliver ever improving results for users.  However, we can keep the list of SEO variables that apply specifically to a writer to a manageably short list.

Use of Keywords: Nobody can tell you a true magic number of times a keyword should be used in an article.  If someone tells you that you must include a keyword four to six percent of the time, that person is simply wrong.  (Of course, if that person is your client, it may be advisable to pretend that she or he is correct.)  But here are a few generalizations about keyword use that work: 

1.  Try to include your keyword (or at least part of the key phrase) in the article’s title.

2.  If possible, include your primary keyword in the article’s first paragraph (or the second paragraph at latest).

3.  Avoid using any keyword or key phrase much more often than ten percent of the time or much less than 3 percent.

4.  Never try to optimize for more than three versions of a key phrase in a single article.

Duplication of Content: If you are contracted to write multiple articles pertaining to the same keyword or small keyword list, you must make sure that the articles are sufficiently unique that the search engines will recognize them as different content.    At first, the search engine may list multiple identical content, however over time the search robots will classify the duplicate content as redundant and stop indexing all but one of the versions.  At a website, dupecop.com, there is a free tool available that will compare up to four articles to score the uniqueness of each against the others.  They also sell a version of the same software that can check up to twenty five articles at a time, as long as they are in .txt format.

A good article marketing writer should also be familiar with a concept called article spinning and useful article marketing software, in addition to being mindful of SEO guidelines.  Article spinning is nothing more than providing alternative words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs throughout the original article.  The function of the software is to randomly select from the available alternatives.  While the process of preparing an article for spinning is quite time consuming, it is a highly effective way of generating unique versions of the same article.  In the end, it is faster than writing more articles from scratch.

Before putting any effort whatsoever into creating any web pages you should have considered how you intend to get people to visit and ‘consume’ your content. Regardless of whether you are creating web pages for business, as a hobby or to inform there will inevitable come a time when you are going to want get people to come to your web pages. You should devote your energies to getting the search engines to direct as many visitors as possible to your web pages. The most economical and focused traffic is delivered by the search engines.

Search engine revenues rely upon the accuracy and relevance of the results they deliver to their users. The delivery of relevant and accurate results to searchers is the key objective for search engines and is a major factor is maintaining and increasing user loyalty. More users returning, means more popularity and more sales. You and your web pages face a similar challenge.Make your users experience your number one priority so they return to your web pages time and time again.

So what exactly must you do?. You have two choices but there is nothing to stop you doing both if you have money and time. You can create and publish great content and persuade other web site owners to link to it or you can advertise on the search engines using PPC (Pay Per Click).

Search engines see nothing but keywords or key phrases everything else on the Internet is invisible. Searches always begin with the entry of a keyword or phrase into the ‘search box’. The search engine goes and looks in its vast index of web pages and selects the most relevant web pages and then returns them in a list that is ordered in terms of relevance and authority. Search engines use relevance and authority to decide what pages get returned and presented to the searcher.

Relevance means the page contains the keywords and authority means the page has back links to it from other web pages. The number and authority of the back links to a web page help the search engine determine the position the web page will occupy in the list of pages.

Back links are the number one priority you should focus on in web page optimisation.

Back links not only determine your position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) but are a major source of visitor traffic. People searching for and reading relevant content will click on the back links that contain text related to their quest and subsequently be directed to your web pages. This text in the back link is known as ‘anchor text’ and this too is taken into consideration by the search engines. Some back links have more value than others.

Web pages with back links from authoritative pages acquire authority in the eyes of the search engines.Web pages with more authority pass more authority onto your pages .

How do you get noticed in a crowd? Have everyone point at you!

Website Promotion is all about getting as many websites as possible to point at yours, successful promotion will bring both additional visitors & page ranking to your websites.

Article Marketing is one of the most powerful Marketing Techniques available & should always be incorporated into any marketing campaigns you are considering.

What makes one back link more valuable than another?

Content

Quite simply a back link from related content sites are much more important than links from a website in a different market.

For Example - A Back link from a Dentists website to a furniture web store won’t provide much benefit.

The Context of how the Link is shown

The context of how the back links are displayed is also a very important factor, Body Keyword anchor text, is far better than linked banners, raw URL’s, or domain names.

Article marketing gives both content & context back links.

What can Website Promotion using Articles do for you?

Article directories unlike Std web directories are full of keyword rich content, your article has its very own page, plus the title & keywords of the page will be your articles. Posting & having your articles accepted on high page ranking article directories, gives you both quality back links & almost instant search engine recognition.

Most Article Directories offer webmasters the ability to republish their article content provided the resource box stays intact. It’s therefore possible that well written & on topic article will spread your back links to many more sites.

Your Article may very well end up being higher ranked than your web site or even provide you with multiple top 10 search results. This is great for traffic however the search engines duplicate content filter will slowly remove these additional articles & back links from their databases.

This also happens if you use submission software to post your article to multiple directories, you will get an initial surge in back links, ranking & traffic only to see it fade away because of duplicate content filters.

Similar but Unique Articles keep your articles listed & your back links intact.

With a little additional work during the writing process it is possible to submit truly unique articles to directories & blogs maintaining all the listings & back links they generate.

Be warned don’t even consider article spinning, the software is a waste of time & money, all it does is replace synonyms & your Articles will end up reading like someones first attempt at writing English.

We hear a lot of talk these days about the global financial crisis, economic recession, repossessions, mortgage sales and unemployment.  For many, a successful future is hard to imagine.

There is, however, an industry that is powering - and it’s easy to be a part of it. No experience necessary, no college degree, no financial outlay.  It sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?  The great news is though that it is all above board, it is honest, and the opportunities are limitless.

The industry I am referring to is internet marketing.  Every business, whether it is a large corporation, or a granny selling an ebook of her favorite recipes, has a place on the world wide web.  You just have to think about how many times you search for things using Google or Yahoo. It could be to find out how to make lasagne, how to grow organic vegetables or prepare your child for school.  There is a website for each of these topics, in fact there are probably hundreds for each topic.

Those website owners face the challenge of their site being one of those on the first page when people search for their topic.  What they have to do to achieve that is to have unique, relevant and valuable content on their sites, and traffic coming from different sources.  The search engines see this, and will rank them as being valuable enough to be on that first page.

Great internet marketers are good at what they do, but they aren’t good at everything.  Most find writing the necessary material to drive traffic to their sites tiresome.  So they are outsourcing this writing to everyday people.They neither want, nor are willing to pay, professional writers.  They want everyday people who have an interest in everyday topics, or who are prepared to research them.

Writing for internet marketers takes various forms, from 350 word (1 page!) articles, 150 word short pieces, to 50 page ebooks, and more.  And there is SO MUCH work out there, and many places to find it.

There is a great resource, Overnight Writing Income, that explains how all this works, where to find the work, and how to land the jobs.  Writing for the internet is the perfect work from home job, whether you are a student, mom, retired - whatever!

Article marketing is great for getting visitors to your site, but it’s also hard work.  The problem is that someone has to write these articles and make sure they are relevant to the content on the site.  That writer not only has to be able to discuss the site and what it offers, but he or she also has to know how to make use of keywords and other online marketing strategies.  The whole process is made much more easy by the service offered by Articleranks.com.

Articleranks.com is the brain-child of Musa Aykac, an online marketing expert and accomplished SEO.  He grew tired of all the dross floating around online so created Articleranks.com as a means to acquire links but without any of the spam that is usually involved.  When he realized the massive potential, he opened up Articleranks.com to everybody, thereby making available thousands of user generated articles.

Articleranks.com has two main features: users can add their own website to the directory and receive unique content automatically.  All available content is free to receive for your sites.  A fantastic feature also available is article distribution.  All users will have the ability to upload their own articles to the system and have them distributed across the network.

Once they join the site, users can decide just how many articles they want each day.  Every article that is displayed on a users website, lets them accrue credits.  The user can then exchange these credits for their own articles being published on other users sites.  All users also have access to an article spinner which will help them rewrite each sentence as many times as they like.  A content assistor is also on hand to make this process easier.

An affiliate program is also available to users on Articleranks.com.  By bringing in subscribers, users can receive a percentage of any credits those subscribers buy.