It was only a few weeks ago that Google hit ‘link farms’ which can artificially inflate links to a site, again with links back to sites on very low quality pages. (you can read my post about this here – Do You Care Where Your Links are From). This latest update is a continuation of Google’s latest clamp down on spam to increase the quality of their search results and the user’s experience.

As you can imagine, this latest clamp down hasn’t been good news for some sites, in particular some of the popular article submission sites such as Ezine Articles, Hubpages and Squidoo. Even we’ve suggested to clients and through our blog posts that these sites are useful for recycling content and gaining more traffic to your site. Until now these tactics have worked well. However, it’s the quality of the article that is key. Although we’ve recommended using these sites, submitting low quality articles won’t have the desired impact as it’s unlikely anyone reading a poor quality article will be likely to bother visiting your site. Just submitting a low quality article for the sake of a link is never a good idea anyway.

Ezine Articles responded very quickly to Google’s latest update as they lost 35% of their traffic literally overnight! To prove to Google that they’re worthy of regaining rankings, they’ve revised submission guidelines to improve article quality and increased the length of articles, which you can read here, Quality Matters.

I personally think this is good news, not only for Ezine Articles themselves, but will help to improve the quality of content on the internet. Unfortunately as more and more people get their own sites, and let’s face it, you can be up and running with a free site in a matter of minutes, the more dross is out there, with some people still believing that putting up a sub-standard site with sub-standard content will somehow still lead to overnight success and lots of £££s!

I’ve been fed up with coming across an awful lot of rubbish out there for quite a while, with people jumping on the latest trendy ‘bandwagon’, offering misleading information, and it’s no wonder anyone starting out online to promote their site ends up getting totally confused and frustrated! I hope that this is the start of a big clean up of online content that is well needed. I realise it’s not as black and white as this and there are some genuinely good sites which have been hit, however, these changes will hopefully help to convince people that writing sub-standard ‘lazy’ content will no longer work.

To read more about these latest changes, there are a number of articles well worth reading:

Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update – from SearchEngineLand.com

Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change? – from SearchEngineLand.com

Where, Why, When & How To Benefit From Google’s Farmer Update – from SearchEngineLand.com

Finding more high-quality sites in search – from The Official Google Blog

Some Farm Aid for the Afflicted: Google Farmer Update – from HighRankings.com

NB – these changes only affect sites ranking in Google.com, but will be rolled out across their other sites (other countries) in due course.

What do you think about these latest changes in search? Do you think that it’ll  help to improve the quality of content on the internet? Please share your views!

Image: Beef Portrait by Alex E. Proimos, on Flickr

Whether you’re writing articles for your newsletter, to post on your blog or submit to directories, constantly coming up with new ideas of what to write about can be hard to do.

It’s true that you need to be consistent and write about topics within your area of specialisation, if you want to keep your readers interested.  The problem is, after a while, there doesn’t seem to be anything new left to write about.

Now, an important point to remember here is that your readers won’t remember every article you’ve ever written (sorry to disillusion you, but it’s true).  And, if you’ve been writing for a few years, new readers may not have seen your earlier work, so you don’t have to feel obliged to think up new ideas all the time.  By rearranging some of your previous work, it could be given a new lease of life,

Another idea is to use different formats or article styles.  Here are a few you might want to try:

Q&A – Take a look at questions your clients have asked you recently and provide the answer to one in an article.  Or perhaps you’ve answered questions on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter that you could rewrite and expand upon?

How To - If you’ve learned something new in your field recently, you could share the steps with your readers in an article.

Top 10 Tips – Whether you have 10, 7, 5 or any number of tips, they are always a useful basis for an article (a bit like this one!).

Review – This could be a book you’ve read, a newly acquired piece of technology or other equipment, a blog, a new network.  What did you think of it and would you recommend it?

Common Mistakes – What seems obvious to you often isn’t to people outside your area of expertise.  Articles listing common mistakes and how to avoid them are always popular.

As we’ve mentioned before, planning out an ‘editorial calendar’ well ahead of time is a good habit to get into, and will help you avoid being stuck for ideas of what to write about.

How do you come up with ideas for articles?  Please share in the comments below.

And then I looked a little closer …. a sidebar banner ad was inviting clicks for introductions to pretty oriental girls, and the rotating image at the top of the page was focused on latest celebrity gossip.  Perhaps this wasn’t an appropriate article directory site for us after all

Not just because of the banner ad and images – but people looking for news about teen idols aren’t likely to be in our target market.

Have you come across the saying: ‘Fish where the fish are’?  Well the same applies to where you post your articles.  While you want maximum exposure for your business, why waste time and effort submitting to sites your ideal customers are never likely to visit?

Which brings me onto another trap to avoid – the ‘article spinners’.  These are inexpensive, automated programmes which take your articles and promise to submit them to numerous directories.  As regular readers will know, Sam and I are all in favour of using online tools that make marketing easier. The problem with these particular tools is that they often make so many changes that the resulting variations no longer resemble what you originally wrote!

Here’s someone else’s view on the topic of article spinners.

Do share your article marketing experiences in the comments below.  And if you enjoyed reading this post, we’d really appreciate a Retweet

While a previous post focused on some of the benefits of article marketing, today I’ll explain more about the ‘nuts & bolts’.

Title – Just as with emails and newsletters, article titles are very, very important.  People will often decide whether they want to read the article based on the title.  Make it clear who the article is for and what it’s about to help them decide.  Using a cute or clever title could work against you.  (there’s a new & nifty-looking tool from ezinearticles.com called ‘Title Suggestions’ – it’s free for Platinum and Premium authors)

Layout – Keep sentences short and paragraphs brief.  Use sub-headings and bullet points (bolded text too if possible) to act as visual markers and help the reader.  You’ll know yourself how much harder it is to read  long chunks of unbroken text on a computer screen.

Length – To write anything meaningful is more difficult in less than 500 words, while articles exceeding 2000 words may be better split into two separate submissions.

Quality – Providing high quality information is key to succeeding with online article marketing.  Poor quality content and badly spelt articles won’t be shared and can damage the author’s reputation.

Frequency – I know quite a few people who submit articles every single day!  If you seriously want to get good results from this marketing technique, aim for weekly (in my previous post I said monthly – but that was back in 2008 and article marketing has become more important since then, with the growth and spread of social media).

Ideas - If you’re having trouble coming with ideas for articles, perhaps this short video from Ezine Articles will help to inspire you!

Right, I’m off to write and submit more articles, how about you?

What’s your biggest Article Marketing challenge?  Let us know in the comments below … and if you found this post helpful, please share it by retweeting!

Many businesses are regularly writing great stuff and the further it goes and the more you re-use it, the more word will get out there about your products and services. If you’re not sure what to do with articles and papers you’ve written, here’s a few ideas for you.

1. Newsletters
Include articles in your newsletters and if you’ve some great stuff that may be a bit old, there’s no harm in re-using or updating it. Why write fresh stuff each time if some of the older articles you may have written are still relevant, perhaps just needing a bit of a tweak here and there?

2. Blogs
Blogs are great for re-using papers and articles, and if they’re quite long, you can break them down into bitesize chunks, which are great for blog posts. I revisit old blog posts and update them and it saves a great deal of time when updating your blog.

3. Article Submissions
There are loads of free article submission sites out there, but the best one is Ezine Articles and you can often find articles which have been submitted to this site ranking quite well in the search engines too. If you’re writing new content quite regularly for your blog or newsletter, then don’t forget to submit it as an article to Ezine Articles and perhaps a couple of other article submission sites as it gets your name out to even more people.

4. Offering Content
Not only can you submit articles to sites as above, but some sites will  happily accept third party content as they can’t possibly write all the content themselves. Find out which sites within your area of expertise may accept articles regularly and most of them will give you a link back to your site as well as send traffic, so it’s well worth it as often these sites are quite popular.

There are many ways you can recycle your content, and if you’ve got any tips or found other ways of recycling your content, please let us know!

Isn’t it amazing how many different ways we have to communicate with one another?  The letter; telephone; mobile phone; text; fax; newspaper; emails; websites; blogs; twitter; audio; radio; television; video – just some that come to mind.

I’ve always been an avid reader.  As a child I wasn’t allowed to read my book at the breakfast table so I’d have to make do with studying the cereal packet ingredients!

These days I’m spoilt for choice and frequently have a backlog of articles & blog posts waiting to be read.  But over the last few months I’ve noticed a growing trend – of stuff that isn’t worth reading!

Everyone who has an opinion or knowledge they want to share, can do so quickly, easily and at minimal cost.  The speed at which information travels is now so fast it brings a completely new meaning to the term ‘breaking news’

A whole generation of internet users is determined to have their say and contribute to the gazillion pieces of information already out there.

Let’s face it, most of the blog posts and articles out there are simply rehashes of someone else’s.  Yes of course there are some truly great thought-leaders whose articles are inspiring and innovative, but they are rare compared to the many thoughts and opinions which would really be better left unaired!

Another major difference between the excellent publishers and the wannabes is their ability to write – to spell correctly and use punctuation appropriately.  While a conversational style of writing makes for easy reading, lazy writing makes me click away.

Other means of communication – audio and video – are further highlighting the differences between those who have something worth saying and those who don’t.

What I believe it all boils down to is that the people who communicate messages worth reading, watching or listening to, work hard to make sure they are.  They research and study; they edit and rewrite; painstakingly perfecting each piece before publishing.  And as with any professional, they make it look effortless.

But of course it isn’t, and that’s the difference.

Have a plan
While you still have to write the piece, at least you’ll know what the topic is!  Plan at least a month ahead, and don’t forget to tie the topic in to any new event, product or service launch you have coming up.

Capture ideas
Just as I encourage my coaching clients to keep an ‘ideas book’ for their entrepreneurial flashes of inspiration, ideas for articles will often occur to you at the oddest times!  Write down those little gems immediately and return to expand on them at your leisure.

Record it
If you really find writing difficult, try using a digital recorder to talk about your topic.  Then get someone to transcribe it for you and, voila, you have an article ready to go!

Use it again
When you’ve been writing for a while, you’ll accumulate a nice stock of articles.  You don’t have to write brand new material every time.  Sorry to say, but your readers won’t remember every one of them as clearly as you do.  Use them again.

Re-purpose material
If you’ve written an article for your newsletter that you’re pleased with, don’t keep it a secret! Submit it to other publications, both offline (your local newspaper perhaps) and online (ezinearticles.com is the best known).  If it’s a long article, publish short ‘chunks’ on your blog to make up a series of posts.

These are just a few ideas.  Do you have any writing tips to share?  We’d love to hear from you.

These days, I do ask if people mind being sent my newsletter – it’s a bit more polite than sending it regardless!  Over the years, I’ve found several very effective ways to build my list of contacts – both online and offline:

Business Card – Article Writing – Public Speaking – Direct Mail – Website/Blog

The common denominator for each of these activities is to have something to tempt people to part with their name & email address.  Gone are the days when a regular newsletter was reason enough, your prospects are much more demanding now!

For example, on this blog you get the rather excellent ‘Ultimate Small Business Guide to Marketing via the Internet’.  This is delivered as a pdf file as soon as you enter & confirm your contact details.  Other ideas of give-aways could include an audio file, a series of tips delivered at regular intervals via email, a free consultation or sample.

If your give away is of poor quality, you will damage your prospects’ perception of your paid products or services.  Do make sure that what you give away is of good value, and not simply a poorly disguised sales pitch. 

It needs to be something you’d be proud to sell, and have a ‘Wow!’ factor when they get it.  Give it a monetary value to enhance the desirability and encourage people to sign up and stay on your list.

The resource box, otherwise known as the ‘blurb’, is what you see immediately following articles on the internet.  It usually tells you a bit about who the author is, what they do and how to contact them. 

Most people however, miss a great marketing opportunity here because, while they usually take great care with how each article is written, the resource box is often bland and non-descript – just a few words tagged on, almost as an afterthought. 

The words in your resource box need to be crafted with great care.  A good resource box will increase traffic to your website, and a bad one can actually cancel out the benefits of an otherwise good article.

For example, it isn’t necessary to list all your qualifications.  This is not the right place for that.  Nor do you want to give your contact phone nos. or even your email address (spammers love scraping those from article sites!).  Just your website address, hyper-linked of course, is quite enough. 

Think about the purpose of your resource box.  It’s to get people to want to learn more about and from you, after reading and enjoying your article.  That’s all.  You cannot make a sale from your resource box, so stop trying.  Less is once again more!

1. It’s free – whereas you usually have to pay for advertising, you can submit your articles to different directories free of charge.  Of course, you do have to write something that’s informative and interesting for your target market.
2. Reach more people – if you want to reach a national or even international readership, then article marketing is definitely a strategy to consider.
3. Establish yourself as an authority – even if you want to concentrate on attracting clients just in your local area, being able to say that you have articles published gives you immediate credibility and positions you as an authority in your area of speciality.
4. Get more visitors to your website – by giving a link back to your website, interested readers of your articles can click and visit to learn more about you and your business.
5. Increase your store of reusable material – every article you write can be re-used!  In your newsletters and/or as blog posts.  Collect your best articles together and publish as an e-book or set of tips.  You could also record and post to your website.  There are lots of ways you can re-use your articles.

Article marketing needs to become part of your overall marketing activities.  Submit them regularly (preferably each month), so people can always find fresh information from you – giving them a reason to keep visiting your website or blog.