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The Role of Articles in SEO - Achieving Top Rankings in Weeks
By Darren Chow (c) 2009

You have employed every trick in the SEO handbook but that first
page ranking in the search engines has been eluding you. You are
about to give up. But before you do, perhaps you may wish to
consider taking up article marketing.

First of all, what exactly is article marketing? Article
marketing is the process of writing and submitting original
content to article directories. This is not a new concept. For
years, marketers have been publishing content in newsletters,
magazines, and other publications to gain exposure for their
businesses.

The process starts by submitting an article to an editor. If the
content is suitable, the editor publishes the article, and the
marketer gets some exposure. The process is then repeated with
as many publications as possible. In theory, if each publication
brings just one customer, then a hundred publications may bring
a hundred customers. A hundred customers may just be what a new
start-up is looking for.

On the Internet, the results can be astonishing. There are
literally thousands of article directories on the Internet. With
each article you submit, you are allowed to include two to three
text links in the author resource box. Do note that most
directories won't allow you to include links in your article
body. So keep them to your author signature.

Every time an article directory publishes an article, the
website will experience an immediate surge in traffic. This
traffic comes from the subscribed readers. After that, the surge
dies down a little. The marketer now waits for the search
engines to index and rank the articles. Once the article ranks
in the search engines, the marketer will receive a constant
stream of traffic from the indexed articles.

In addition, the links in the articles will also give the search
rankings of the website a much needed boost. When someone writes
and submits articles, the wheels of SEO have already started to
turn, whether the marketer is aware of it or not. Each published
article carries at least two links, pointing back to the author
website. In other words, the author website gets high quality
back links from well established authority sites whenever an
article is approved for publication. But to achieve high
rankings in the search results, you need to execute article
marketing in the correct manner.

How to Prepare Your Articles for Submission.

Article submission can take up a lot of time. So you want to be
sure that you get the highest rate of approval from the editors.
Here is what you should do to ensure that you get most of your
articles approved.

Appropriate word count - Articles should ideally be 500 words
and above. You can write whatever you want. But bear in mind
that the editors are looking for valuable content that their
readers will enjoy reading. So your articles should not be self
promotional. All promotional materials should be included in the
author resource box, which will appear at the end of the
article.

Proper formatting - The article does not have to be perfect. But
it has to be legible, and relatively free of grammatical errors.
The style of writing is not that important. Most styles will be
accepted. Use the hard return to separate paragraphs, and do not
include any HTML. Not all article directories accept HTML tags
in the article body. As long as the article is of decent
quality, it should be approved.

Include target keywords in article title - Your target keywords
should be included in the article title. This will increase the
chances of your articles rising to the top in the search
results. Having keywords in the article title is also part of
SEO. When performing SEO, you want the search engines to find
relevant content that links to your sites. Having your target
keywords in the title is one way of letting the search bots know
that the content in the article is related to what you have to
offer on your website.

Write a catchy title and interesting summary - The title is very
important because if it cannot capture the attention of your
reader, you have just lost a potential visitor. Your title
should be speaking directly to your target audience. The article
summary should also be clear and concise. Don't beat around the
bush. You can elaborate further in the article body. For the
summary, use short and powerful sentences.

Delivering the promise of your article title - Make sure that
you stay on topic and deliver the promise in the article title.
For example, if your article is about link building, then make
sure you share some methods on how to build one way back links
quickly. Don't stray and write about your pet and then forget
to go back to your main topic.

Using anchor text in links - Anchor texts are the words that
are in between a set of HTML link tags. Before going into
article marketing, you should already have a set of keywords to
target. Use these keywords not just in your article title, but
also as your anchor texts. For instance, if you are targeting
the keywords "Search Engine Optimization", use these words in
your links. Don't use words like "click here" or any other
generic term.

Once you have the above in place, you can start submitting the
articles to the article directories.

How to Submit Articles Quickly and Easily.

Before you start submitting articles, you must first get a
list of article directories. Your list should contain at least
200 article directories. Choose directories that have been
around for years, and have high page rank.

The article submission process can be grueling if you don't
have the right tools to help you. As a business owner, you
shouldn't be doing such manual tasks yourself. You have more
important things to do, like developing products, marketing, and
so on. The process shouldn't be consuming too much of your
valuable time. Here are some quick suggestions.

Use a free form filling tool to help you - There are tools
available for download, such as RoboForm that will help you fill
up the forms at the article directories. Once you set this up,
it's just clicking and submitting. That will save you from
having to copy and paste the article into each and every
submission form. A great way to submit articles if you are on a
shoe string budget.

Invest in article submission software - There is special
software on the market that will help you submit your articles
either on a semi-automated basis, or on a fully automated basis.
If it's a fully automated process, you don't have to be
actively involved. You will, however, have to let the software
complete the submission process before shutting it down.

Outsource article submission - You can hire someone else to
submit the articles for you. This can be a dedicated person that
you work with, or it can be a professional service provider. The
difference between this option, and that of using software, is
that you don't have to monitor the submissions. Simply place an
order, and you can switch off your computer and go work on other
stuff.

Article marketing, when done right, can bring short, mid and
long term traffic. The short term traffic comes from the current
readership base of the article directories. The mid to long term
traffic comes from the search engines and the articles. As
articles remain online indefinitely on the Internet, they remain
as traffic baits and help to attract more visitors to your
websites.

If you have done your keyword research, and heed the advice
given above, your site could achieve top rankings in the search
engines within weeks.
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Darren Chow is a full time article marketer. He founded a
successful article submission service
(http://www.fastsubmitarticles.com/) and has been offering high
quality article writing and submission services to hundreds of
Internet Marketers worldwide.
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