Article Marketing
I have always been an advocate of Article Marketing for SEO and PR purposes. The toughest part for many is creating content. Robin Nobles, a celebrated author and one of the founders of Search Engine Workshops created an ebook: “Content Challenged No More“. It was designed to help you come up with ideas for articles, content for websites, newsletters, blogs and even affiliate marketing ventures.
The next challenge is getting more mileage from your articles. There are only so many hours I am willing to be chained to my desk writing articles and rewriting articles. I have tried software and scripts that scrambled the article contents in a feeble attempt to rewrite an article or make it unique. I was never satisfied with the results. The truth is no piece of software or scripting is ever going to be able to rewrite an article and preserve human readability.
I did find a free article tool that does not promise rewrite your articles all by itself, but it DOES help you create totally UNIQUE articles with intuitive tools like a thesaurus, an originality check, suggestions for alternate phrases or words, a quote library and much more.
Try the Article Spinner for Free. You just have to opt in but it is worth it.
Costly PPC Mistakes
Yahoo and Google both offer pay per click advertising across content, search partner networks and search engine page results. There are distinct differences between each and not knowing the difference can syphon cash from your bank account.
Search Networks for Google examples include AOL.com, Ask.com, CNN. your ads will appear in search result pages on those networks.
Partner/Publisher Network examples for Yahoo! include iVilliage, USA Today, NBC your ads will appear in search result pages on those networks.
The advantages of having your PPC ads appear in the partner networks is the immediate increase in reach for your ads.
Content partners usually offer contextual ads. Your ads appear on a page with a story or content, not search results. In this setting the search engine determines if the content of the page is relevant to your ad and keywords. The user is not necessarily in “shop mode” when viewing contextual ads.
The worst example of this type of advertising gone wrong was where an advertisement for a fast food chain appeared on the same page as an article about an e.coli meat recall. When shown to a room full of internet users for 30 seconds they all thought the meat recall had something to do with the fast food chain. This is where negative words in your ppc campaigns can save you a lot of PR headaches.
Contextual/Content partner ads and Search Network Partner ads should be turned off when starting a new campaign. Until you have a defined set of keywords producing a positive return on investment for your ppc campaign keep your testing limited to the search engine page results.
When you are ready to expand your ads, set up separate campaigns.
To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity
To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity
1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don’t Disguise Your Voice!
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.
4. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks . Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.
5. In the Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write ‘ For Marijuana.
6. Skip down the hall Rather Than Walk and see how many looks you get.
7. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
8. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is ‘To Go’.
9. Sing Along At The Opera.
10. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can’t Attend Their Party Because You have a headache.
11. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream ‘I Won! I Won!’
12. When Leaving the Zoo, Start Running towards the Parking lot, Yelling ‘Run For Your Lives! They’re Loose!’
13. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, ‘Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.’
And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity
14. PICK UP A BOX OF CONDOMS AT THE PHARMACY, GO TO THE COUNTER AND ASK WHERE THE FITTING ROOM IS.
Thank you Gail for sending this along.