A lot of people are beginning to see the importance of mechanics of writing and publishing articles on the internet as part of their SEM marketing campaign. This is also a great way to improve the link popularity of your website as part of your SEO efforts, showcase your expertise and be seen as an expert in your field, not to mention drive traffic to your site. A lot of us know more about our field and how our product or service can help people than anybody else in the world. The challenge is where to start. I wrote this article to give us a starting point so that we can get some of our own ideas and solutions published.

Publishing your content online

Here is just a sampling of the hundreds of websites that allow you to publish articles online:

ArticleCentral

Web Articles

Ezine Articles

Power Publish Directory

1 Million Articles

1Line Articles

Some of the above sites require that you register with them and have a username and password every time you publish. My suggestion would be that you use the same username and password with each publication website. This makes things just a little easier. I would also create a template in Notepad so that when you are ready to entering in your articles you will have everything in one place.

Use the following as an outline for your template:

The following template outline and tips come from having several articles rejected. That's no fun.

Article title

This is the title for your article, make sure that you have your main keyword phrase in this title.

Author bio

200 characters some allow more, but I think shorter is better. Add at least, one link to your website in the bio. The ideal is to have the link pointing back to the page on your site where the article is sitting. Almost all the article directories do not allow you to have a link to your website in the content of the article. If you are allowed two links, make one to the page with the article and the other to your homepage.

Sample Bio: Terry Stanfield is a SEM consultant with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. His company, Clickadvantage, manages PPC and SEO efforts for his lead generation and ecommerce clients. For more information: http://www.clickadvant.com/se101.htm

In some article directories, they do not have a place for a box for your bio. In those cases, you can put your short bio at the and of your content. Remember, in most cases, the only place that points back to your website or the particular page of the article is the bio section. Make sure that you look for this box, and if you can't find it put your information at the end of your content.

Keyword list

It is best to start with one or two keyword phrases. Then think of the questions behind the search than write your article to answer the questions. Make a list of two or three keyword phrases that you want your article to be found on. Make sure that those phrases are in the content of the article. Limit yourself to 2-3 keyword phrase. The keyword phrases should be the core topic of your article. Keeping these terms in the forefront of your mind will keep you on track. In an upcoming article I will talk about "flow charting". This process will help give you great ideas for articles and keep you extremely focused.

Article Content

This is the content of your article. Do not include the title of the article in this box. I suggest that the articles should be about 500 to 550 words. The minimum number of words, allow in the vast majority of the article distribution sites is 500. If you do 550, not including the title, then you will be safe. If you are long-winded and have an article of a thousand words or more make two articles. A "part one" and a "part 2". If you are new to writing articles, let me suggest the following outline:

Introduction:

First one or two sentences introduce the problem that you're going to solve by writing this article. The next sentence states the three areas that you're going to cover or the top five reasons or the five things you should look for or the six misconceptions about? You get the idea.

Meat of the article:

Point1

Two or three sentences

Point2

Two or three sentences

Point3

Two or three sentences

Conclusion:

You might start this paragraph like: "We just looked at three ways around the problem of... The challenge is, what are you going to do from here." Make some suggestions on what to do next. Invite them to look for up coming articles on this topic or related topics. Very important, in your Bio add that you are experienced in helping people with the specific problem that you write about and for more information go to your website.

Finally

It is importance that you edit your article for spelling and grammar, but most importantly, key words and phrases and their positions in the article. I would also create the meta tags for that article so that you can have them when that page is added to your website. It is best to have the content added to your website and have it on your site for about a week before you publish the article. The reason you want to do this is to establish that your site had the content first.

Once you have used this outline for a while you will become more comfortable. Experiment with other styles. I am often asked where the best place to get ideas for articles. That's a good question, the answer is from questions that your clients are asking. In fact, this article was inspired by a question that a visitor to one of my seminars asked. Whenever I write an e-mail to someone about how to do something or how something works I save the e-mail and use it as the beginning of an new article.