Article Marketing 102 - Article Marketing 101 Taken Beyond

This step is in fact quite simple, but it's also one of the steps most people have a wrong idea about.

Usually, everyone tries to find that untapped holy grail, a niche with low competition. And although such niches do exist and you can profit from them, that's not where the real money is.

You want to go for a niche with extremely high competition, where there are proven buyers and massive demand, otherwise there would not be such competition to begin with.

Untapped niches normally have a low demand, and hence not much profit can be made there, at least not so easily.

High competition is only a good thing, because there are several ways in which you can leverage, intercept and profit from that demand, without having to beat the titans at it.

Anyone with decent writing skills can make great profit using this in a highly competitive niche.

Step 2 - The Research and Implementation.

Here's another commonly misunderstood step, often skipped altogether. When in fact, this is the pillar of Article Marketing.

Most beginners and even some advanced internet marketers believe that you can acquire massive amounts of targeted traffic by simply submitting hundreds or even thousands of articles. That would be wrong.

This concept comes from the idea that high traffic article directories, such as EzineArticles, will get your article more views and therefore you will receive more traffic.

The articles will get more views, but you won't receive more traffic. All those views are coming from people surfing the article directory, so they are completely untargeted, they don't want what you have to offer.

They will not click on your link and much less purchase whatever you're promoting.

The true key to article marketing is not in how many articles you submit, but in the search engine rankings achieved with those articles.

In fact, 10 articles can beat 1,000 articles if you know what you're doing.

So I want you to grab your favourite keyword research tool.

If you're on a low budget, I recommend using the Google Adwords Tool. Pick all countries and territories, english language and exact matches.

Unless of course you are geotargeting a specific country and you wish to promote a local business. But remember, global means more traffic.

If you can actually make a small investment (which you should as soon as you have it), then I highly recommend Micro Niche Finder. (Google: "mnf vs market samurai" - it's position #1).

Now, go read my Warrior Forum keyword research thread (Google: "keyword research & implementation 101" - again position #1)

You DO NOT have to target specific niches and directly related keyword phrases. Barely related will do. You can even just target demographics.

For example: Someone interested in fitness, will also be interested in weight loss.

Someone interested in self defense, will also be interested in pepper spray and tasers.

A 25 year old bachelor will be interested in getting rock hard abs. And so on...

After you're done, come back here in order to proceed.

You must find 100 keyword phrases with less than 500,000 competing sites in Google and at least 3,000 monthly searches each.

To find out the number of competing sites, simply Google the keyword phrase under quotes, i.e: "keyword phrase".

A lot of people will say that there are several other factors when measuring the competition, and they're right.

But under this scenario, and with what I'm about to show you, this is the only thing that you need to know.

Once you have that 100 keyword phrase list with those parameters, we can continue.

Step 3 - Pick The Article Directory.

In my experience, there are only 3 article directories out there that work for this precise purpose.

1. ArticlesInAClick - The best article directory in terms of SEO, I personally contributed in the search engine optimization of this site. It's also free. Not only is it based on Wordpress, it also has built in social bookmarking and the best part, it distributes your articles to the top 25 article directories out there, including GoArticle and EzineArticles.

2. GoArticles - The second best article directory in terms of SEO, but the design is horrible and it has way too many ads, which will only result in you losing traffic to them.

3. EzineArticles - The best positioned and highest traffic article directory out there. Third in terms of SEO. But it also has way too many ads which will result in you losing traffic to them.

Since my favourite is ArticlesInAClick.com, I will use it here as the example.

Step 4 - Article Writing and Optimization.

I suggest that you write you articles in Notepad, simply because it's clean. Microsoft Office might bring some weird html elements into it.

Grab 1 of your keyword phrases from the list and do some research about it. Head to Google and do a search for it, read 3-5 sources about your keyword phrase, then head back to Notepad and start writing on the subject.

Your keyword phrase exactly as is, must go once in the title, once in the first sentence and every 100 words.

The length of the article should be of 400 words or more.

Now, when you are about to publish it, choose a category related to the subject, add the keyword phrase as a tag and also in the SEO keyword field.

Rinse and repeat with all 100 keyword phrase. 100 articles, each optimized around one of the keyword phrases. Each one must be optimized around a different keyword phrase.

Step 5 - The Resource Box.

The resource box is perhaps one of the most important things in the article, your traffic depends on it.
Make sure it flows naturally as if it was just another part of the article, stay away from bios.

Here's a no no: "John Smith is the greatest guy alive, he is a and expert on the subject with an MBA from, blah blah blah... Visit his blog to find out more about his awesomeness: [Insert link]"

And here's a yes yes: "If you truly wish to succeed at [insert article subject], then you must visit the world's best resource. Go to this site immediately: [Insert link]"

If you are using article marketing for the backlinks, make sure your link is in anchor text with the keyword you want that page to rank for.

Anyway, this guide is about article marketing traffic generation, but I will also chip in a few ideas on how you can monetize that traffic.

1. You can simply add an affiliate link or CPA link in the resource box and send them directly to the merchant's page.

2. You can point to your own sales letter or opt-in squeeze page.

3. You can point to a landing page or review site.

Note: EzineArticles only allows top level domains, so if you want to add an affiliate/CPA link there, it must be a redirected domain.

The Ultimate Step - Rank #1 in Google, Yahoo and Bing with your articles.

A lot of people will come here and say: "Why would you do this with articles, if you can do it with your very own site/blog?"

Simply because ranking with well positioned article directories is much easier, everything is already done for you.

Building a site or blog up to their level will take about a year. Whereas you could be making relatively fast money right now.

With that being said, now that the whole article writing and optimization is completed. You must make those articles rank #1 in the search engines for their respective keywords.

For low competition keywords it's not hard at all, usually you don't even need to do anything. RSS Feed distribution, using Incansoft's RSSBot will suffice.

However, I told you to grab keywords with less than 500,000 competing sites, those are medium-high competition keywords.

You need an extra punch.

You need authority backlinks of high PageRank from third party sites pointing towards your article, anchor texting the respective keyword.

For more information on how to pull that off, grab my free e-book (Google: "make all articles rank #1 in google, yahoo and bing" - position #1 again).

After you are done with all 100 articles, your articles will be ranking top 5 in the search engines guaranteed.

This method will bring you at least 25,000 unique targeted visitors per month and up to 75,000.

Do the math: 25,000 x 2% Average Conversion x $20 USD Average Price Point = $10,000 USD per month.

Don't complicate yourself guys and gals, this is a lot simpler than most people would like you to believe.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Have fun,

- Daniel Molano