Article Marketing Strategy for 2010

Recently here at StartRankingNow we have been running a test to see what exactly are the best article directories to submit articles to.  There are many sites that will provide a list of the top 10 article directories to submit articles to based on Page Rank, but just because a site has a PR of 4 on their home page, does not mean that it will be valuable or profitable for you to submit your articles there.  As we literally submit hundreds of articles per month to the article directories, we have run a test to find out which article directories get indexed by Google the fastest without having to do any external link building. 

What we did:

We submitted 100 articles to each of the article directories over a 3 month period.  Within 30 days of submitting the articles and the articles being published, we checked all of the submissions to determine  if the urls generated by the article submissions were indexed in Google.  We gathered the data and determined what percentage of the urls were indexed.

Here are the results:

  1. Ezinearticles.com 100%
  2. Buzzle.com 100%
  3. Goarticles.com 89%
  4. Articlebase.com 91%
  5. A1articles.com 100%
  6. Articleblast.com 90%
  7.  Articlefeeder.com 96%
  8. Articlerich.com 83%
  9. Thefreelibrary.com 89%
  10. Amazines.com 32%
  11. Articlemonkey.com 30%
  12. Articlecube.com 35%
  13. Articlesfreedirectory.com 5%
  14. Articlesnatch.com 35%
  15. Articlepool.com 0%
  16. Ideamarketers 22%
  17. Ehow.com 40%
  18. Associatedcontent.com 40%
  19. Helium.com 40%
  20. Isnare.com 21%

Always remember to TEST your SEO activities and be sure it works.  If your SEO company is submitting to hundreds of article directories but your articles are not getting indexed, then those links don’t count! 

Do you know of another article directory we can test?  Please let us know!

Was this article helpful to you?  Please join our Newsletter to get more SEO tips directly to your inbox!

Keeping Your Social Media Strategy Professional

twitter-profileFor those of us that have Twitter and Facebook accounts it can be a difficult task to determine how to keep things professional if your main focus is to build a strong business network. Even if you start with the intention of keeping things professional, all it takes is one tweet or one photo to transform a professional site into something that some may find a bit unprofessional. We love social media sites because things are so instantaneous, but we forget that a single tweet can generate a rush of replies in mere seconds. So, policing your own accounts can become a full-time job. It is very important to make the purpose of your account clear from the first moment it is activated.

One of the things that can cause an issue on Facebook is the fact that people can tag you in on pictures they post without your approval. Therefore, your profile can be open to risk of unprofessional exposure. It is very important to monitor your Facebook on a daily basis for photos that may not align you as a business professional. All it can take to turn a potential business contact away is an unprofessional photofacebookprofie that you may not even be aware of.

Facebook has a number of privacy settings that can help you keep things separated. For example you can create a number of different friend lists so that you can have one group for friends, one for family and one for business contacts. This allows you to set up privacy settings for each group. For example, you may want to share photos of your family vacation with your friends and family contacts, but not your professional contacts. There are also settings on Facebook that allow you to remove yourself from public search results. This will help keep your personal information separate from your professional information. It also may be helpful to remove yourself from Google. This can also be done by going to your personal settings page.

There are also settings on Twitter that can help keep your postings private so that only people that you approve of can see them. It is important to understand that once you change this setting it will make any new postings private, but postings made before you changed the setting will still be public.

Doing a little research and taking the time to learn how to safeguard your personal information is a good idea on many levels. It will also help you to separate the information that you want to share with your family and friends from that which you want to share with your professional contacts. These things will help you to keep a professional rapport with your professional contacts while still sharing photos of your vacations with your family and friends. This will help you keep things professional with your professional contacts and they will not be distracted by personal information. Social media sites can be a great benefit to your business if you just take a few precautions.

How to Build a Solid Link Strategy

linkstrategyBuilding a link strategy that will work can take a bit of time and research. Linking is one of the most important parts of a successful internet marketing campaign. It is important to understand how to build links that will be useful to your business and not just be a waste of your time. There are a few things to look at before you start building random links to your website. You want to make sure that the time you are investing in building links is time well spent. If you decide to outsource your link building, these steps are also important to complete before you hand off this task.

Finding the Right Keywords

One of the most important tools for choosing keywords is the Google keyword tool. It is important to vary the keywords that you are using to build links to your website. This Google tool can help you find a number of quality keywords that you may not have even considered which will help you build a solid foundation for your link building strategy. You do not want to create hundreds of links for your main keyword, only. You want to vary the keywords which will build a more natural looking network of links pointing to your website. It is also important to consider long tail keywords when you are building links. These are more like key terms that people would associate with your products or services. In many cases you will find that you will rank quickly for these types of links since they tend to be more specific. While long tail keywords may not carry the search volume that a main keyword can, they are important to incorporate into your linking techniques.google-keyword-tool

Using Yahoo to Find Great Places to Post Links

Finding the best places to post links to your site can seem like a completely overwhelming task. The best place to look for clues on where to post links is right at your top competitors. In many cases they can provide you with a plethora of information that can help you gain the right exposure for your company. Everyone knows the saying “Don’t reinvent the wheel” which basically means if someone has already come up with an idea that works there really isn’t a need to start the process over from scratch. You can easily find out what sites your competitors are using to build links from by going to Yahoo. All you need to do is type the following into the Yahoo search bar and you will have tons of helpful information right at your fingertips: linkdomain:www.mycompetitorwebsite.com. This will give you an up-to-date list of which sites are linking to your competitors, so you can go after the same links.

Vary Where Your Links Point

The next important thing to do when building links to your website is to vary where you are pointing your links to. You do not want to point every link you post to your homepage. You want to make sure that you are mixing things up and pointing links to different pages on your website. This is as important to your link building strategy as picking the right keywords. If you keep these three tips in mind when you start building links you will have a solid foundation that will be very beneficial to your business which will help you make the most out of the time and money you are spending on your link building strategy.

Using Facebook to Grow Your Business

Started as a way for its founder Mark Zucherburg to connect with friends at Harvard, Facebook has exploded to over 200 million users and growing each day. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family and even reconnect with old friends from years past, but it also can be a great tool for your business. Facebook makes it easy to share information with tons of people, all at once, all you need to do is update your Facebook page and bam, everyone you know now knows the latest news about you, your family and your business.

facebook2Just remember, if you are going to be using your Facebook page for professional purposes it is important to keep things professional. While, the more contacts you have the more exposure you may get for your business, you want to make sure that the exposure you are getting is positive. If you just go and add every person you may have rubbed shoulders with to your account you may be risking your page to some unprofessional exposure. So, it is important to be selective when you are inviting people into your professional network.

That being said, social media marketing is a great way to share information about your business with tons of people in an instantaneous way. Say you want to promote a sale for your business or promote a new product you just added to your site. You can just make a quick posting on your Facebook “wall” and you have just updated all of your contacts with the latest and greatest news about your company. As you build contacts from people you know you are sure to create new connections in the process. Those new connections can then give you additional exposure which will allow you to build your network with people you may not have even known a day ago.

People are always looking for ways to make their business or job easier and more effective. By posting information that can be useful to the masses you are building credibility for yourself as a business owner and an expert in your field. By sharing business tips, along with information about your specific products, you can build a strong following that can quickly expand your network and build exposure for your company. Say you have a great tip about organizing your emails. You can post the tip on your Facebook status box. This will let everyone that has followed you see the tip and see that you are willing to share helpful information with them. This will build a sense of trust and confidence in you which will translate to a sense of trust in your business.

facebookFacebook is a great tool to help promote your business and build your brand. Sharing helpful business tips can build trust with followers which will translate into a larger network than you can imagine. Just make sure and keep things professional if you are using your Facebook for business purposes, otherwise, your exposure could quickly switch from professional to unprofessional and that can be hard to change back.

StartRankingNow.com Knows SEO

If you own an internet company you have probably heard the term SEO. You may know exactly what it is or you may not quite understand it. This is where StartRankingNow can really help. The experts at StartRankingNow.com know what it takes to get great rankings on the search engines. They know how to create unique web content that attracts the search engines and puts your business in the top search engine results. Their list of services include: website content, articles, blogs, Spanish SEO, videos, social media marketing and website design. Therefore, no matter what your needs are they have the experts that can help.

One of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is creating content that is 100% unique. At StartRankingNow.com they understand this and only provide unique content that attracts readers. The search engines want to ensure that they are providing relevant information to their customers, which is why unique content is so important. They would not want to show the same results over and over to their users because they would surely lose business. As long as the content you have is unique and follows the criteria that search engines like, you are sure to see great results. StartRankingNow.com knows what the search engines look for and creates content to meet the expectations of readers and search engines. This gets you more online exposure which translates to more traffic to your website.

Optimizing content for search engines is one of the most time-consuming tasks related to internet marketing. Creating unique content that is interesting and search engine-friendly is not a quick task. Finding the right company to entrust this crucial component of your internet marketing strategy can be a bit daunting. Once you have found StartRankingNow.com you can rest easy knowing that your SEO needs will be handled in a professional and timely manner. They stay on top of the latest SEO techniques so that you can spend time focusing on other aspects of your business.

SEO is so important because it builds confidence in your brand by placing informative content in front of people that are looking for it. Imagine the impact of having your articles, videos and blogs show up on the first few pages of the search results for your main keyword terms. Everywhere people search they will be looking at information that will lead them directly to your products and services. You will be getting targeted traffic right to your front door and StartRankingNow.com knows how to deliver great results.

SEO is crucial to the survival of any online business. StartRankingNow.com knows this and understands the impacts that great SEO content can have on your bottom-line. More targeted traffic means more sales and more profits, it really is that simple. SEO is one of those tasks that website owners know they should do, but never seem to have the time to do properly. Allowing a company like StartRankingNow.com to own this portion of your marketing strategy will be one of the best decisions that you have made.

StartRankingNow.com Knows SEO

If you own an internet company you have probably heard the term SEO. You may know exactly what it is or you may not quite understand it. This is where StartRankingNow.com can really help. The experts at StartRankingNow.com know what it takes to get great rankings on the search engines. They know how to create unique web content that attracts the search engines and puts your business in the top search engine results. Their list of services include: website content, articles, blogs, Spanish SEO, videos, social media marketing and website design. Therefore, no matter what your needs are they have the experts that can help.

One of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is creating content that is 100% unique. At StartRankingNow.com they understand this and only provide unique content that attracts readers. The search engines want to ensure that they are providing relevant information to their customers, which is why unique content is so important. They would not want to show the same results over and over to their users because they would surely lose business. As long as the content you have is unique and follows the criteria that search engines like, you are sure to see great results. StartRankingNow.com knows what the search engines look for and creates content to meet the expectations of readers and search engines. This gets you more online exposure which translates to more traffic to your website.

Optimizing content for search engines is one of the most time-consuming tasks related to internet marketing. Creating unique content that is interesting and search engine-friendly is not a quick task. Finding the right company to entrust this crucial component of your internet marketing strategy can be a bit daunting. Once you have found StartRankingNow.com you can rest easy knowing that your SEO needs will be handled in a professional and timely manner. They stay on top of the latest SEO techniques so that you can spend time focusing on other aspects of your business.

SEO is so important because it builds confidence in your brand by placing informative content in front of people that are looking for it. Imagine the impact of having your articles, videos and blogs show up on the first few pages of the search results for your main keyword terms. Everywhere people search they will be looking at information that will lead them directly to your products and services. You will be getting targeted traffic right to your front door and StartRankingNow.com knows how to deliver great results.

SEO is crucial to the survival of any online business. StartRankingNow knows this and understands the impacts that great SEO content can have on your bottom-line. More targeted traffic means more sales and more profits, it really is that simple. SEO is one of those tasks that website owners know they should do, but never seem to have the time to do properly. Allowing a company like StartRankingNow.com to own this portion of your marketing strategy will be one of the best decisions that you have made.