How to write and submit an online article

Many of us working in Internet Marketing write online articles to inform or train others, and to build up our reputations as experts - and often ultimately in order to attract visitors to our websites (where subscriptions or purchases are hopefully made).

Anyone can write an online article! But, in order for your article to be ranked high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and so as to maximize traffic to your article/web-link (SEO), you need to bear some factors in mind:

1. Your article needs to be about a topic that your target market is interested in, something they need to know, or something that will help them solve a problem. You need to be in touch with what they need and want. Put yourself in their shoes – what types of problems might your target market be facing on a day-to-day basis?

In my example, I know that many of my target market (in this case, beginner Internet Marketers or those new to article writing) aspire to write online articles, because they see others doing it successfully or abundantly; but they don’t necessarily know how to write quality articles, or they don’t always know how to ensure their articles get read. So I decided to write a simple, practical article about this, to address this need.

2. Your article needs to be keyword-rich. Your whole article, but especially the title and introduction paragraph, need to include relevant keywords. Quite simply, relevant keywords are the words or phrases that web-users and thus search engines will use to search for the types of information they need to get.

So for example, if your target market are wondering how to use Twitter effectively for marketing, they might search for “Twitter”, or “Twitter marketing”, or “online marketing”, or ”using Twitter for internet marketing”, depending on their knowledge, expertise and experience.

You can check the types of keywords and keyword phrases you think might be relevant for your article, by typing some words or phrases you think may be popular into Google Adwords Keyword Tool (or https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Have a look at the numbers of search results for each word/phrase, as well as for related words/phrases; and choose a combination of the most popular words/phrases (usually shorter), as well as some less popular searches that are more specific or define the information more exactly (usually longer).

For example, I’ve just done a keyword search for some phrases about online articles and found the following results:

• “writing online articles” – not very many searches, probably too specific
• “online articles” – more searches, although people tend to search more for topic-specific or format-specific articles, as expected
• “article submission” – “submit article” or “article submit” are also popular
• “internet marketer” – “internet marketing” is more popular

As a result, I’ve changed my title and first paragraphs to incorporate some of the more relevant search terms (for example, my title was simply “how to write an online article” before).

Make sure the tags for your article match these keywords.

3. To make for good and useful reading, ensure your article is well-structured. Like most pieces of writing, it must have a clear start, middle and end (yes, just as your teachers always told you!).

The introduction, or beginning paragraph(s), should be general, an overview of what you’re going to talk about or why. This is where using keywords will help – by including relevant keywords in your title and first paragraph, you will find it probably forces you to write about the big picture, as an overall introduction, without getting too specific – which is how it should be.

The middle paragraphs should be the nitty-gritty, the how something is done, the reasons why, and/or the advantages and disadvantages (depending on the topic).

Bear your target market in mind, and also the topic – if you’re writing a ‘how to’ article, like me, do it in clear steps. Or if you’re writing about the purpose and uses of something, explain the positives and negatives in clear, separate paragraphs.

Whatever you’re writing about, put different steps/reasons/explanations in new paragraphs, as a signal to your readers that you’re talking about something else from the previous paragraph – it’s easier for them to read, understand and enjoy.

The conclusion, or end paragraph, should be a summary or wrap-up, something that closes off the article well, without leaving the readers thinking ‘what now?’.

4. Publish your article - either once only (let’s say on your blogsite or on an article website), or many times on various different sites.

This might mean re-writing a few slightly different versions of the same article, as some sites that you submit articles to require original articles written for their sites. It is not difficult to re-write your article a few times,  once you’ve got the main structure and ideas for your article pinned down. At the very least, rewrite the introduction and conclusion, using slightly different words and/or sentence order, while leaving the main body more or less as is.

5. Once published, you need to tell people about the article, in places where your target market congregates on the web, or on sites where people go to look for articles.

So you need to post links to the article in as many places as possible, without annoying your target market by being overly repetitive. You need to post these article links, with suitable and interesting introductory comments that invite people to read more by clicking the link to the main article. Post these on various article websites, on your blog, on others’ websites (with their permission), at online forums and discussion groups, and on social networking sites such as FaceBook or Twitter.

It’s worth noting that without lots of links to your article on the internet, it’s unlikely your article will be found or read. And it’s even better when your article is considered good by the readers, so that they re-post links to it or reTweet it, thus creating even more links and back-links to your article all over the internet.

If you take these factors into consideration, and follow these steps, your online article should be much more searchable, findable, and readable! And you may even end up having your article appearing on the front page or near the top of a Google or other SERP!

If you’re interested in finding out more about ranking high on a Google SERP, read http://aztecnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/how-i-got-ranked-on-front-page-of-google-serp-you-can-too/

And if you’re interested in using Twitter marketing more effectively, read http://aztecnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/effective-twitter-marketing-strategy/

If you’d like to get more details on all the things you need to know for successful Article Marketing, check out this ebook at http://www.ArticleMarketingSuccessTips.com

Please note that I will no longer be updating this blog. Instead please visit the new home for this blog, http://AztecInternetMarketing.com - for all these articles, plus many more recent articles and updates. See you there!

Hand and pen drawing: http://a08.ngu.edu/library/writing.htm

Keyword picture: http://www.eclickperformance.com/internet-marketing/keyword-analysis/

Cakes on shelves picture: http://ericriveracooks.com/2009/05/21/eric-riveras-puerto-rico-travel-guide-panaderia-bakery/

Announcing graphic: http://www.wpclipart.com/page_frames/announce.png.html

The Links signpost picture: http://blogs.kingston.ac.uk/maceteams/corrines-weekly-links-1/