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15, Mar 08
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a substance foreign to many people. Rarely a day passes when I do not get asked a few questions on the topic. So I decided to publish this article in the FAQ hopes it will help people to understand t...
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How to Use Article Directories to Increase Traffic
By: Cody Moya
SEO. Keywords. Metatags. Metadescriptions. Spiders. Robots.
Do you feel overwhelmed when you hear people talking about all these things? Most people do. Here's a quick glossary, and then the reason you don't have to worry about these words if you know a couple of web secrets.
* Metatags - Words embedded in your web page that tell viewers and search engine automatons about the content on your page. * Metadescriptions - Same as metatags, but in sentence form, and with the possibility of being used on search engines as your site description. * Keywords - The words you use in your metas and in the text on your page to describe your product or service. * Spiders or Robots - miniprograms or automations sent out to automatically browse the Web by search engines, they catalog your site by keywords. * SEO - Search Engine Optimization, this means your site has the appropriate keywords and structure to be properly cataloged by those spiders and robots.
Here's why this information isn't that important: it's archaic. Metas were devised in the early days of the search engines, when they weren't terribly powerful, so that your good content could be properly referenced by the engines. What they found was that unscrupulous webmasters loaded up the metas with keywords that were popular and would rank well, but that really had nothing to do with the content on the page. This is called search engine spam because it works the same way and is approximately as useful.
Spiders today don't pay much attention to the metas. They look for keywords in your content, and the most cutting-edge ones look for grammatical structure as well. It won't be long before they can tell whether your site is actually sensible. And they are looking for web pages that are frequently updated, not just static sites that contain the same information year in and year out.
Interestingly, your customers are looking for good content as well. One simple little trick can satisfy both of them inexpensively.
Good articles containing information about your product or service, rotated regularly.
Drive Traffic with Great Content
Not everyone can write well enough to fulfill this requirement. And not everyone has the time to sit and write these articles. For those who can't, there are several options.
You can hire a professional writer to ghostwrite these articles for you. This is an expensive and time-consuming prospect. Most writers charge a minimum of $35 per hour, and web writers often charge much more. And you'll have to sit with that writer, educate him or her on your product or service, and ensure they're ready to tackle writing about it before they start.
You can copy someone else's content with permission. This is an interesting idea. There are a number of online databases that provide pre-written articles optimized for your keywords, for free. The hitch: you must also display a resource box on your website referencing the original author of the article and providing a link back to his or her page. This makes them into the expert, not you.
You can purchase keyword-optimized articles from an article broker. This is the happy medium. You have good optimized articles, created for you by professional writers, published on your site with your name, and costing you minimal cash because they are mass-produced.
Using Article Directories for Your Purposes
But wait, there's more!
After you purchase articles to publish on your website with your name, you can also buy extras to publish to article directories. Not everyone's going to be as smart as you about how they put content on their site. Many will instead take the easy way, and download those free articles to publish, with resource boxes, to their own website.
If they download your articles, those resource boxes will point to your website. In essence, you can direct traffic from your competitors and from those who provide similar or complementary products and services to you, straight to your own website. And you can do it for free, after the cost of the article.
Some article directories online are:
* Go Articles: http://www.lelentrader.com * Ezine Articles: http://lelentrader.net * Idea Marketers: http://www.ideamarketers.com
Author: Cody Moya
Cody Moya writes about Article Marketing in his free 50 parts course on Internet Marketing. You can sign up for his Free Internet Marketing Course and get additional information at his website: http://www.lelentrader.net
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