Hey How are things?
Good, good!
I recently received an email from one of my friends & MLSP Rep, Joe. He was intrigued with how I managed to get one of my articles (you can have a read here) to the first page of Google and over 1200 views in less than 4 months. He was also impressed that the article was in position 2, second only to the official company website for the particular search term.
YourNetBiz Article - Top Google Rank
You may or may not have heard of the company YourNetBiz, but that is irrelevant to what I am going to share with you.
I also got a call from another friend and MLSP rep, Steve from here in the sunny UK (Joke!). He wanted to know what I was doing to get traffic from my articles. You see previous to these inquires I helped another fellow friend Anam (click here for his article) get some good traffic through his articles, so I decided rather than explain it to two of my friends why not share with all of my blog followers!
So I am going to explain exactly how I do this so that you can get a head start from the rest of the competition, if this blog post is of value to you all I ask is that you show some love with your comments below! 
Basically there are 4 key steps that I follow:
1) IDENTIFY THE MARKET
2) SMART KEYWORD RESEARCH
3) ARTICLE STRUCTURE
4) LEVERAGE
1) IDENTIFY THE MARKET
I know this doesn’t sound sexy but DO NOT over look it. I learned a lot about the approach to this from Mike Dillards Magnetic Sponsoring, you may or may not know I won Mike’s entire digital collection worth over $3,000 using another strategy that I may decide to share with you all very soon (video marketing).
Anyway, you need to plan who your article will be targeted at, I focus my articles on prospects already in Network marketing/home based business or people who are buyers at the end of their reserach.
Why?
Good question, firstly they know and understand the industry so they are in the right mindset to embrace what I have to offer. Secondly they are open minded, and finally the majority of these who are business owners are finding their business hard work and need a solution to their problem.
You see, to put it bluntly, your prospects couldn’t give a stuff about your primary business!
What they do care about is their current problem or need. If you can identify and cure their problem or need you are on the road to success.
So you need to write your articles targeting a very specific person with a specific problem. However don’t forget your offer must truly satisfy their needs or you may as well not bother writing the article.
Example
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John has been in Network marketing for 2 years, his company is called xyz international, he is not lazy, but he has seen little to no results from his efforts. He makes $10 a month and spends about $20 on advertising/business cards/gas, etc. Yes, he is making a loss!
He is determined to succeed but just needs to find a solution to his problem.
Can you see where I am going with this?
You need to write an article that will help John and benefit you. A win win situation. Now John is searching the internet for solutions to his pain.
A suggestion, create a targeted article for John!
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Ok, let me relate that to this true life example, my top Google ranked article above is targeted at an individual who has a need. They are searching on a very specific company term so they are half sold on the concept already. So what are they looking for?
They are looking for a No B.S. review that they can trust to make their final decision. What is there problem? Their pain is they want to invest in an opportunity but are not really sure if its the right choice.
You with me?
So I have targeted a buying customer who is already sold on the idea of home business and is itching to make a buying decision.
2) SMART KEYWORD RESEARCH
No matter what marketing strategy you choose you will find it hard escaping the need for keyword research. I got some great tips on this from a very smart marketer called Casey Gentles. Look him up sometime he knows what he is talking about.
Anyway, I am going to teach you the right way to do your keyword research.
Synonym Search
Firstly you will need the FREE Google Keyword tool.
Following on from our previous example we are going to target John in the xyz international company. So we will use xyz international as our “seed keyword”. What is a “seed keyword”? Good question, basically it is a “theme” for all the keywords that will be generated. This will become clearer in just a second.
Put your seed keyword into the tool with “Use Synonyms” checked.
Google Keyword Tool > Use Synonyms
You will then be presented with a list of results. Add all the “long-tail keywords” by clicking the add button next to these keywords. Basically you want to add all the keywords that have 3 or more words.
when you have added them all, click the export to text button - All of your keywords will be conveniently exported to a text file.
You then want to copy and paste this entire list into the Google free keyword tool, but this time do not check the use synonyms check box and select “exact” in the match type.
With these lists of results click add next to every keyword that has at least over 300 monthly searches. Trust me you don’t want to waste your time on low search volume, your aim is to target the most highly trafficked keywords. However they also need to not be too competitive. I will explain that now.
Same as before export keywords to a text file. You now want to take each keyword and search for it in Google. Yeah, the standard Google!
Ok, are you still with me?… Good!…
Right, You are looking for one of these high traffic keywords that has less than 30,000 search results. Ideally a lot less, if you can find under 10,000 even better. When you search be sure to search with the keyword in brackets, like this:
“My Long-tail keyword”
Why? Well, you are looking for content that has been specifically optimized for your keyword. This is your true competition.
Repeat this for all the keywords on your list.
Once you have done this you will have a list of keywords that you will use to produce your articles. And indeed any other marketing strategies you want to explore in the near future. The sharp ones among you will notice in my real example above the screenshot indicates over 70,000 results. Well spotted! Bare in mind I got in early wheeey before it had even 10,000 results and dominated the search term.
3) ARTICLE STRUCTURE
Ideally you need to keep your articles to at least 400 words, the reason for this will be explained when I get into leveraging. I submit all my articles to EzineArticles, why? Basically they are the biggest and best out there. They are like the YouTube of articles.
Title
This is one of the most important parts of the article, get this wrong and your article will be forgotten!
You want to ideally use the keyword in the title and also make the title stick out and grab the readers attention. I tend to go for controversial titles, as you may have gathered! 
Make the title long, this may seem like a minor tip, but it makes a big difference. If you have a long title length it will make your title stick out. Not necessarily for Google but in EzineArticles itself. Remember your article will be searched in EzineArticles as well.
Keywords
As I mentioned include your keyword in the Title. Also include it in the tags and in the body. However you need to be careful with the article body. If you over do it you will get rejected for keyword spamming. I tend to do no more than one keyword per 100 words. That is good yard stick to use.
Article Body
I break the paragraphs up so that it is easier on the eye. Generally I will create three or four paragraphs. An intro, the meat, and the pre-sell. Remember you are writing the article for a reason which is to get traffic to your website. So plan out how to angle your article to what you wish to gain from it. However you want to make sure your first objective is to provide quality info to the reader or it will never be seen or respected.
Strong Call To Action
With every article you get a resource box. The resource box is basically your opportunity to provide a link back to your website. Create a very strong call to action explaining exactly what you want your reader to do when they have finished reading.
4) LEVERAGE
What do I mean by leveraging? Basically using back-links to your article to improve your SEO ranking. The search engines will see each back-link as a unique vote for your content/website. This is a very basic explanation and in all honesty it can go wheey over my head and probably yours. I want to keep this post as basic as possible to ensure you get some results from this without frying your brain!
The key thing here is working smart rather than hard. You want to re-write your article and create back-links to your original Ezine Article. So how am I gonna do that Wayne? Good question my friend, your gonna use the other article directories out there. And this is the reason I said that you should make sure your articles contain at least 400 words.
Because whilst Ezine Articles accept as little as 250 words, many others won’t. So 400 is a good yard stick! There is no real rule about how many back-links you create, really it is about quality back-links. However volume does still play a factor.
You can do this all for free, however I am going to be honest I use a tool for the leveraging part because I am lazy! I use Mass Article Control, I use it because it is a one off cost instead of an expensive monthly service. However there are some really goodl monthly services that I have used personally in the past, shout me if you want to know about any of them.
Anyway, Rewrite your article and submit it to each article directory with a link back to your original Ezine Article to add strength to your originals articles SEO ranking.
Ok, what i have shared here with you is NO FLUF, NO B.S. its exactly what I do. It is not the only way and there may be 100s of other ways which may beat this method. The point is it works for me and I am willing to share it with you today for FREE, just for passing by my blog to see me!
I hope this has helped you to get started and on the right path. I personally wrote loads of articles that dived at first until I found this stuff out, so its all up to you now to take action. As I said earlier if this article has added some value show some love with your comments.
All the best my friend,
Wayne
P.s.
If you want to harness some great skills like this on a recession budget and generate hundreds of leads for your primary busines leave your name and email below:
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Sat, Sep 12, 2009
How-To & Tips