Article marketing: Writing Attractive Headlines

Content is King in article marketing, but no one will see the content if the headline does not attract readers. “A comprehensive discourse on piscatorial product promotion methods” is a nice enough title if you are looking to attract old English professors who are interested in starting a website to sell fishing tackle online, but the rest of the online population will probably pass up on reading it.

Keep in mind that your article headline will pop up in a list of many articles, so it has to engage the reader immediately and effectively for them to select it. So your title should:

1. make it clear what the article is about
2. get the reader’s attention
3. not focus only on keywords
4. be search engine friendly
5. be accurate

An example of a not-so-obvious bad title would be “Little Rock guitar tutor: 5 things to look for”. The article deals with tips for finding a guitar tutor, not specifically guitar tutors in Little Rock. The location should be used only when the article specifically targets a location; for example “How to hail a New York Taxi Cab”.

There are three types of titles that you can experiment with which are popular and have a high rate of success due to their search engine friendly format.

1. How to – “How to oven roast a duck”, “How to create your own napkin rings in ten minutes”, etc
2. Top 10, 50, 100 – “Top 10 Cookie recipes”, “Top 10 Guitarists of all time”, etc.
3. Keyword – This is a tricky concept and should be used with care. Keywords should only be a part of your headline and should be used appropriately.
Always keep in mind that your headline is the “worm on the hook”, the better the bait the better the catch.

For those  that need help of experts in this area, we recommend Article Writing & Submission services of social media marketing company iclimber.

Article marketing: Developing a Good Resource Box

Article marketing is a great way for you to promote yourself and create a reputation. While it is essential that the content you provide is useful, insightful and well written you should also keep in mind that your calling card should hold true in these matters as well. The calling card in this instance is the resource box that you place at the end of the article.

Developing a good resource box is as crucial as the article; after all this is what will compel a user to follow you back to your own website. Don’t waste your time selling your product here, instead sell yourself and sell it well. Here are some points for you to consider in this regard.

1. Identity – Your name should be established clearly. Surprisingly many people skip this in favor of pushing their product and their links.
2. Bio – Your bio should be brief. If your article does not convince them that you are an expert in what you are writing about, a bio is not going to change their opinion. Make it short and effective.
3. Attract – Instead of saying “visit my website” or something similar, give them a compelling reason to go there. Offer freebies that the reader will be interested in which will keep them coming back to your site after the first visit.
4. Domain – There is nothing too wrong with www.stevejobs.com as long as you are Steve Jobs. But if you are not such a well known personality, a domain name which has “internetmarketingtips” or “free-real-estate-advice” for example is more compelling for the reader to click on.
5. Succinct – Usually article directories limit the amount of characters that can be used in the resource box. Use the space wisely.
6. Accentuate – Use characters like ==> or >>> in front of the URL to accentuate it.
7. Hyperlinks – Try to hyperlink keywords and phrases in your text back to your website. This practice will also improve your standings in search results. However you should keep in mind that article directories sometimes limit the number of hyperlinks you can have in the resource box, so once again use this technique wisely.

If you are too busy or lack the expertise to do it your self, then we recommend Article Writing & Submission services of social media marketing company iclimber.

Chinese Advertising Resellers Post Open Letter to Google

Google’s advertising resellers in China posted an open letter to the company on Tuesday, urging the company to resolve its issues with the Chinese government and avoid leaving the market. According to MarketWatch, a plea from more than two dozen local advertising resellers was posted on the state-run CCTV Web site, calling for Google to reach an agreement with the government over privacy concerns that has caused Google to threaten to leave the Chinese market.

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Chinese Advertising Resellers Post Open Letter to Google

Find Bike Routes with Google Maps

With the help of nonprofit Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Google has biking directions in the U.S. to Google Maps with information on bike trails in more than 150 cities.

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Find Bike Routes with Google Maps

Google Books to Feature Rare Italian Books

Google today announced an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage to digitize up to one million out-of-copyright works by Italian authors that were published before 1868.

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Google Books to Feature Rare Italian Books

Google Testing TV Search with Dish Network

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is working with Dish Network to test a new TV search function that would allow users to look for shows along with online videos from popular sites such as YouTube.

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Google Testing TV Search with Dish Network

Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 Deemed Official Online Fantasy Game for MLB.com

Yahoo! today announced a deal with Major League Baseball that makes Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball ‘10 the official fantasy baseball game of MLB.com.

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Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 Deemed Official Online Fantasy Game for MLB.com

What is Contextual Advertising?

The internet has gone through various models of advertising in its commercial existence. For a long time the prevalent method was – no method. As ridiculous as this seems, advertisers placed their ads wherever they found cheap or high traffic locations. Ads were displayed in predefined rotations, which to the user seemed to be random displays. In the recent past, this has thankfully changed and has been received with mixed reactions by internet users.

Defining Contextual advertising as “advertising based on keywords” is a bare bones definition but this is what it is at its core. The concept is very smart and the targeting it can achieve, is very accurate. This has proved to be a godsend for most vendors.

Let us look at a very specific example. A user visits a sports news website and clicks on Basketball News. The resulting page can have advertisements for New/Used basketballs, favorite team/player kits, etc. The user proceeds to browse through player names and clicks Michael Jordan. The resulting page might display ads for Jordan memorabilia, Chicago Bulls merchandise, championship game DVDs etc. What this means is that the page will display ads that are relevant to the content on that page. This is possible because the vendors are able to choose keywords that are connected with the advertisement.

The first major player in providing this type of technology was Google with AdSense. Google employed JavaScript to achieve the desired results, but with new players entering the market the technology has diversified. This method has proved to be very successful in online sales as it allows vendors to reach a specific target market based on their browsing and searches. But on the other hand, it has also annoyed a fair amount of users due to excess profiling and targeting.

Internet Marketing for Small Businesses

Small businesses often tend to skip Internet marketing due to many reasons. Unlike a popular misconception, Internet marketing is not only for the big players. If you think about it, small businesses really need to invest in Internet marketing methods because they have to get out there and advertise their products. Without decent amounts of exposure, small businesses often call it quits wondering why things did not work out for them. Success in Internet marketing is a combination of common sense and smart decisions.

Content is King – Whatever content you provide on blogs and articles should be extremely relevant to the product. The prospective customer should have 99 % of their queries answered in that content. If you need help in this area, a good content writing company is iClimber.

Cross advertising – If you sell digital camera bags, cleaning kits, straps, etc., make it a point to advertise on camera vendor sites, on photography forums, camera review sites, Photoshop forums, etc.

Social network sites – Promoting your website on social media networking sites here will take up a fair amount of time to get going and involves a lot of smart work but it offers you highly targeted markets. Doing it right will earn you some solid sales. Again, if you need help in this area, we recommend iClimber as a top social media marketing company.

Good old classifieds – Classifieds have successfully made the transition to the internet and are very effective provided you choose a legitimate site. Research the website well before you sink any money into this method.

Listings – Getting the business listed in some well-known directories is also advisable, but is not a primary requirement.

Using all or a combination of these methods will return positive results for any business. However they must be used effectively, so further research into these methods will give good returns.

Google Rolls Out “Starred Results”

Google is adding a new feature to its search results, reports PC World. As a new personalization feature, users now have the ability to give “stars” to certain search results in order to move them to the top of their personal results, along with syncing the results with a person’s Google Bookmarks and Google Toolbar. The feature is currently being rolled out and is expected to be available to all Google users within the next few days.

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Google Rolls Out “Starred Results”

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