This is a list of some places you can submit your blog to.

This list will grow as time goes on...

boingboing.net
dir.blogflux.com

portal.eatonweb.com
wutzle.com
5starblogs.com

Blogdust Blog Directory

Article writing and article marketing today are very effective means of getting traffic to your website. I look at articles that I have written over a year ago and still see traffic being sent to my website from these articles. The key is having an article that is high enough quality for web masters to publish them on their web sites, and for people to read your articles to have enough interest to go to your web site after reading your article. This article goes over the features your article should have that will achieve these results.

1. Your Article Should Provide A Solution Or Answer A Common Question

Your article should provide a solution to a common question or a problem that your target audience has. You can easily research questions that your target audience has by going to places such as yahoo groups or yahoo answers to see what people are discussing and wanting help with. Another great way to find relevant and interesting topics is to search for niche forums within your target market and see what questions people are asking there. This exercise will give you a goldmine of very relevant data that you can use as subject material for your articles that will be valuable to your readers.

2. Your Article Should Leave The Reader Wanting More

Your article should be useful and provide valuable content, but let's face it, you can only do so much in an article, even if it's 750 words or so. You should write your article so that the reader feels like they have received some value, but they are now interested and they would like to know more. I have found that using lists such as ("The Top 5 Things People Can Do To Relieve Stress") and then making it clear to the reader that there are 5 other things they can do that are also just as effective in your article. This tactic is a good way to create further interest in your topic.

3. Your Article Should Give The Reader A Strong Call To Action

Your article should end by giving the reader a strong call to action. This is telling the reader where they should go to get more information (the rest of the stress reduction tips). I find that setting up the call to action in the conclusion and stating it strongly in the resource box is a powerful way to do it. Remember, your article is not a sales letter, so the call to action is really the only place that you have to get the reader to go to your website, sign up for your mailing list, or call you on the phone.

If you are going to set up your call to action in the conclusion, then you should make sure you recap the article, and then just add a sentence or two that brings up a question or similar thought that would cause the reader to want more information. Most English teachers are probably rolling over in their graves right now, but you are writing your article to get more traffic to your website, not to win an essay competition.

A quality article will be published by others more often as well as give your readers the idea that you know what your talking about and they would feel comfortable finding out more about what you would have to say on that particular subject. It is relatively easy to find topics that will be of interest to your target market, as well as structuring your call to action so your article drives visitors to your website in larger numbers. The features listed in the article combined with other featurs, such as how to structure the research box and how to use keywords in your articles help to increase the traffic to your website even further. They are all things that you need to keep in mind when writing your articles to make them even more effective in driving traffic to your website.

Discover more tips that will teach you how to write powerful articles that will drive qualified traffic to your website. Go to http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles and access the goldmine of information on how to write quality and effective articles.

Article Resource Directory

Writing and publishing articles can be a very effective means of marketing for most businesses. It builds credibility, creates branding, drives traffic, and increases link popularity to your website. Like any other marketing method however, there are effective and ineffective ways to do article marketing.

A key component to making article marketing effective, is making sure the resource box is used effectively. Article directory managers, see a number of mistakes made in resource boxes that have greatly reduced the marketing effectiveness of the article. The good news is that most of these mistakes are very easy to fix.

1. The Links in the Resource Box Are Broken

Many articles that have been submitted to article directories don't have links that work correctly. A huge opportunity for traffic is lost because the link in the resource box sends them to the wrong website. If the reader wants more information after reading the article, they will have no where to go, especially if the artcle is very well written and draws in the reader to want more information.

The most common problem with broken links, is that the linking code isn't formatted correctly. This creates a broken link that usually points to a page that doesn't exist. Many authors leave the 'http://' off of the beginning of the URL, causing the link point to a page like 'http://theirarticledirectorysite.com/www.yourwebsite.com'.

To avoid this problem, it is crucial to add the 'http://' to the beginning of your link (make www.yourwebsite.com into http:// www.yourwebsite.com) so the link will send visitors to your website when they click on it, and not some non-existant page. If you use article submission software, or a service, carefully review the instructions on how to add links to your resource box so you can avoid creating broken links. If you need to add the links yourself, make sure you understand enough HTML so you can correctly create a link.

2. No Active Links in the Resource Box

Another common problem with articles submitted to directories is that there are no links at all in the resource box. In this case, the author just writes the link to their website without making it an active link. It is just a text listing of their link, such as 'http://mywebsite.com' that isn't clickable.

The most common cause of this problem is that the author doesn't realize that many article submission software services do not work the same as email. In most email programs, a link that includes 'http:' will automatically make the link clickable in their email reader.

Most article submission software and services don't follow these same rules. In most cases, the links aren't automatically created, and the author has to create the link themselves. Read the article submission guidelines very carefully to determine what is required to add links to the resource box. If you have to do them yourself, then make sure you know enough HTML to create a clickable (active) link

3. Resource Box Not Related To Article

The resource box of the article serves many purposes. Some of the biggest reasons are to give credibility to the author and to guide the reader to where they can find more information about the subject material of the article they just read.

There are many articles out there today with resource boxes that focus on topics that have absolutely nothing to do with the written article. Some people will write articles that talk about how to improve your time management skills, and then take you to a credit-repair site in the resource box of the article.

If readers want more information, they want to read more about time management and not credit repair. This mistake will make the reader question the authenticity of the article and the credibility of the author in regards to the subject matter. After all, if they were experts and had a lot of information about the subject matter, wouldn't they have more information on their website that they would want their readers to know?

While article marketing can be a very effective means of marketing, not making the best use of your resource box can bring you poor results in getting quality traffic to your website. Poor linking strategies and poor followup are some of the biggest reasons for reducing the effectiveness of the resource box. Knowing the ins and outs of any article submission services will go a long way towards eliminating much of these problems.

Understanding how to write effective resource boxes and effective articles will go a long way towards making your article marketing efforts worthwhile. Fortunately, there are many resources online that you can use to help you improve the results of your article marketing efforts.

Tags: article marketing - resource box - article promotion

While blogging originally had the purpose of easily allowing people to post their personal thoughts online, blogs today are used for a number of different reasons. Now some of the most interesting and useful blogs are used for educational purposes, where the focus is to educate an audience about a specific topic. When using a blog for this purpose however, there are a few additional steps that you must consider before you create your blog and customize it to your website. Most of these steps are rather straightforward, but should still be taken into consideration.

Determine the Target Market for Your Blog

Choosing your target market is a standard step for any online or offline business endeavor you choose to go into. This is especially true for an educational blog, because when creating an educational blog, in addition to determining your target market down to the specific niche, you also have to decide what knowledge level your desired target audience has of your subject material. The knowlege level will also have an impact on the content contained in your educational blog.



Are you educating people who have almost no knowledge of your topic, or are you educating people who have a basic knowledge of the subject and are enhancing what they know. Both audiences will require very different kinds of information, even if it is the same subject or niche.

Determine How You Want to Educate Your Users

In order to know how you want to educate your users, you will need to decide what it is your blog is going to accomplish. Will it be to provide a place to post comprehensive details about specific products you offer, a place to post class homework and lessons, or perhaps a way to share answers to the most frequently asked questions you get in your business? Once you have determined the specific type of educational purpose your blog will serve, you will need to set up the blog to allow it to support your specified goals.

Determine the Format for Your Blog

Once you have determined how you want to educate your users, or target market, you will need to determine the format for your blog, or how you will present the information.



If your purpose is to answer frequently asked questions, you should set up your blog to have many categories, which are listed on the side. This will allow visitors easy access to your questions. You would also want to have links to the latest FAQ entries in your sidebar. The title of your FAQ entry, should be the question, and body of the blog post should contain your answer. If you have the ability to put a link in your blog entry, you should link to another part of your site that gives even more detailed information about the related question if available.



If your purpose is to provide instruction sheets about specific products and services, you should set up your blog to have enough categories to define the largest grouping of products. The title of your blog should be the product name and the phrase 'feature set', or 'instructions'. The post body should be the instructions or feature set, or it could be a brief description with a link to a downloadable pdf file of the feature set or instructions.



If your blog's purpose is to post lessons for students who are taking an online course, then you would typically only need categories if you are teaching more than one course through your blog, and in this case, each category would be named after the course. Each specific blog posting would have the title of the lesson being taught, plus the lesson number (I.E. the category would be Computer Science 101, the title would be Lesson 10: Functions and Procedures). The actual post body could be the entire lesson, or a brief description of the lesson and a link to a downloadable pdf file that the student can print out and use, or both (posting lesson in the blog with a link to a downloadable version of the lesson.

Allow Users to Comment on Your Postings

Allowing users to leave comments on your blog will enable them to ask questions about lessons, or other educational content. Using comments is a great way to get feedback that you can use to fill in any missing pieces that you may have overlooked. Comments from your users will also provide additional perspectives to the subject matter at hand and will allow other blog readers to answer questions if appropriate.

Allow Users to Download Files From Your Blog

If you use your blog for educational purposes, you will probably have additional resources that you will want to make available to your users such as white papers, lessons, product information sheets, or a syllabus. Depending upon the nature of your educational based blog, some of the information you may want to convey is best done as a pdf file instead of a blog entry. Most of the good blogging software today will allow you to upload files to your site that you can make available to your readers/students. This will give you more flexibility in the way you can educate and communicate with your readers.

An educational blog can be a powerful means of communicating and teaching your audience the specific information you wish to share and it can be done in a number of different ways. Once you have the content in your blog, it can be a great resource and tool for your visitors for years to come, and is very easy to maintain and update as new material becomes available. Your next step should be to learn how to incorporate other features into your educational blog that will allow you to earn revenue so your blog can pay for itself.

Don't just stop at creating an educational blog. Create a blog that will pay for itself, so you can put your resources into building it up more or putting it into other things entirely.
Find out more about blogging at thisArticle Dirctory
. Learn how to make money with Educational Blogs.


Tags: blogs - education - blog marketing - business blogging

Your blog is your means of expressing yourself to the world. It is a very powerful way of branding yourself and a very effective means of building a relationship with your readers. In order to take advantage of the power of blogging, you should make sure you follow some simple rules that will keep you on the right side of blogging and make both your visitor's and your experinece much more enjoyable.

Be Timely With Your Postings

If you publish a blog called "The Wednesday Afternoon Report", and you start out posting to it every Wednesday afternoon, then your audience will begin to expect a new posting every Wednesday afternoon. You can think of your blog like a newsletter. Consistancy is key. This consistance is what will increase the number of visitors that come back to your blog. Returning visitors gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with your readers.

Give Credit to Where Credit is Due

Sometimes the perfect and most timely posting is commenting on a news item, another blog posting, an article, or a web site. This is appropriate to do, but you should give credit and a link to the source document. You can link to the source document from within your post, or link to it as a footnote at the end of your post. If the source document is another blog, you can refer to it through what is known as a trackback link.

Be a Good Networker

Your blog is a good place to spotlight other bloggers. Most blogging software out there allows you to do this through a feature referred to as a blogroll. It is basically a list of links to other bloggers who you like, or other bloggers that are blogging about the same subject as you. This will add value to your visitors experience and give them additional resources to explore.

Structure Your Blog Site Well

Structure your blog so that it is easy to read, and find past postings. Don't put so many graphics that it detracts from what you are trying to say. Highlight relevant postings that you may have made in the past that relate to your current posting. A good way to highlight them is to link to them directly from the blog post, or if they are more general, and relate to many postings, you can list your latest postings to the side, next to your blogroll.



Another good technique to use with your blog is to separate your postings into categories when it makes sense. That way, visitors can access a more specific group of postings they may be interested in. For an even more robust blog, a search function will allow easy access to your postings, especially when you have quite a few posts.

Keep Content Fresh

You will want to set up your blog so the most recent postings are placed at the top, or on the first page. It is set up in the reverse format of a diary. Instead of the most recent entries being on the last page, the most recent entries are on the first page. Most blogging software today is setup to work this way so that your newest postings are seen first by your visitors.

Be Consistant and Reliable

The best way to be reliable is to provide content that is true and accurate. Double check your facts and be prepared to back them up. Remember, your blog is a powerful means of branding yourself, and if you keep to the truth, you will build the strength of the words you say in your blog, and magnify the influence you have with your readers. Once you build your word, your recommendations will then truly mean something to your readers.

Respect Privacy

There are many privacy issues that come into play with a blog. If you have a newsletter that your blog readers can subscribe to, you should make sure to respect the privacy of your subscribers and never rent or sell their emails to a third party. You may promote a third party's goods or services to your list, but those emails should never be given to a third party.



Another area where privacy may come into play is within the actual postings themselves. If you refer to someone by name, from your personal life in your postings, you should get permission from that person first. Other potentially sensitive issues, such as partnerships, business dealings and internal company policies should also be considered as being appropriate, before posting these things to your blog.

Give Readers a Reason to Come Back

Blogs that have a personal and human component are more interesting to read than blogs that have no personality. Putting unique and personal experiences in your blog, like how your computer meltdown experience relates to today's posting, add a wonderful new dimension to your blog. Visitors actually want to connect with you and sharing your personal experiences is a great way to connect with them.



Increase the deliverability of your message by being passionate and conveying emotions in your postings. People are emotional beings and connect on an emotional level rather than an intellectual one. Adding emotion to your blog will add an additional way for your readers to connect with you.



Blogging can be a very rewarding experience, a powerful way to connect with your visitors, is very flexible and can be done to fit anyone's style. However, no matter what the style of blogging you choose, certain rules should still be followed to make the reader's experience more enjoyable. You can also learn other techniques to increase reader participation and reader response rate that can make your blog a powerful tool to earn and additional stream of income. Research the many good ebooks available, that cover these techniques in detail.


Tags: blog - blogging - publishing - marketing - internet

The term blogging has recently found its way into the standard Internet terminology. While most people don't have a blog, or don't even know the first thing about blogging, they have heard of the term and have at least a vague idea of what it means. If you decide to venture into the world of blogging, there are some things you must do to increase your chances of making your blog more successful. Most of these things are common sense, but some of them may be new to a first-time blogger.

1. Identify the Target Market for Your Blog

You should focus on one topic area, or related topic areas for your blog. If your blog wanders too much in many different direction, it becomes a general discussion blog, and you risk losing the more motivated readers to your blog. For example, if your target market of interest is travel, then you would want to focus your blog on topics related to travel. You could broaden your topics to include adventure travel, cruises, all-inclusives, hotels, etc., however the more focused you are in your topics (if you just stick with cruises), the more effective your blog will be in terms of branding you as an expert about cruises, and the more responsive your readers will be to your cruise related posts.

2. Give the Readers to Your Blog What They Want

Unless your blog is set up to just display your random streams of consciousness, the readers to your blog are going to want valuable and timely information that is accurate. If you are making statements about policies or current events, you should back them up with links to the sources you used to make those statements. It is also important to keep the reader interested by giving your own personal insights, or giving a new way to look at current events. Putting your own personality into your blog is essential and will keep your readers interested in what you have to say.

3. The More Creative Your Blog, The Better

Creativity is within reason of course. However with so many blogs out there today, it's now more difficult to have your blog stand out from the rest. Your blog must have personality and depth to keep people's interest. Also realize that your blog will not appeal to everyone, and that is OK. Your blog is not meant to appeal to everyone, that is why you first went throug the step of determining your target market and targeting your blog to those readers.

4. Your Blog Should Be Clear

While your grammar doesn't have to be exactly perfect, or at a college level, it should be easily readable. If your blog is written in such a way that people have to re-read it 3 or 4 times in order to understand it, then you will quickly lose their interest. Remember, your readers don't want to have to work to read your blog, and they shouldn't have to if they know how to read. Make sure your spelling and punctuation are correct. The points you wish to make in your blog posts should also be to the point and clear, and not wander to far from the main point, as this will confuse the reader, or cause the reader to lose interest before they finish your blog posting.

5. Keep Your Blog Content Up To Date

Think of your blog as your way of communicating with the world. Communication is an ongoing activity and your blog should respond in the same way. Make regular updates and postings to your blog to keep the content fresh. One of the easiest ways to do add fresh content is to make the blog posting where you comment about what is going on in the news, and relate that news item to your topic. It may require some creativity, but it should be quite doable.

6. Make Your Blog Interactive.

One of the best ways to develop your blog into a powerhouse is to allow other readers to comment on your blog. If your blog is really interesting and inciteful to your readers, chances are they will want to comment on what you have to say. This provides more points of view and is also a very easy way to keep your blog up to date without you having to write everything! Also comments on your blog posts by other readers, will make your blog more interesting to your target audience.



Be sure to keep a close eye on your comments however as there are spammers who will post irrelevant comments on your blog just to get a link back to their own site. Many blog programs now come with verification features that will force a live user to enter a comment. This doesn't stop spammers completely, but it does stop the automated programs from filling your blog with comment spam.

The world of blogging is a great way to allow individuals to express their opinions, businesses to strengthen their customer relationships, and website owners to bring more exposure to their websites. The more successfully you follow the above tips, the better you are able to brand yourself as an expert in that area, and the more exposure you will get to your blog and/or business. Your next steps should be updating your blogging style to include the above steps, and learning more about blogs, discovering what software is available, and finding out where you can read more about blogs.

Tags: blog - blogging - target market

With so many blog software options available today, it can be a difficult task to decide which blogging software you should use. Each blogging software solution will have its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages, so you should determine your needs first, and then decide which blog software solution will work best for you. Whatever you determine your needs are, your solution should, at least, have the characteristics described below.

1. Your Blogging Software Should Be Easy to Install

There are many blogging software programs available today for many different platforms. Most of them are good and will provide much of the needed functionality a person needs to blog on their website. However, if the blog software isn't easy to install, and if you are not a programmer, you will have some trouble getting your blog started.



Even the easiest of install programs will be challenging to someone who is just barely familiar with using a computer, but if the installation is easy enough, you can pay a programmer or even a web designer a small amount of money to install your blog for you.



Blog software is easy to install if you only need to perform the following steps:

1) upload the software to the webserver

2) fill in your specific information such as: the URL of the blog, the database information, the username and password to administer the blog, and an email address.

3) click the install button, and your blog is installed.

4) log into your blog program, and personalize the blog for your website.

2. It Should Be Easy for You to Change the Look and Feel of Your Blog

Your blog software programmed should be set up so that it is easy to change the look and feel of your blog through a quick menu selection. Most blogging software comes with several pre-defined templates that will allow you to change the look of your blog very quickly and easily.



The blogging software should also be set up so that it is easy to add templates. Usually it is as simple as uploading the new template into the template folder of the blog software - if it is more difficult than that, you should find a different blog program.

3. Your Blogging Software Should Automatically Ping Blog Servers

One of the best features of blogging software, is it's ability to inform other websites that your blog has been updated. This process is called 'pinging'. Pinging is an important feature because it tells the world that you have new content on your blog and they should come and check it out. Pinging is a powerful way of getting exposure and visibility to your blog relatively quickly. Search engines love to find new content so they have services that specifically search the web for new content. When you 'ping' one of these services, you are telling it to check out the new content on your blog.



Some of the better blogging programs available will have an interface that will let you easily choose what pinging services you can ping about the new content on your blog. Most blog programs include some of the more popular services as a standard feature in your blog software. If you want to ping more services, sometimes you will have to go into the program and change the code. A competent programmer should be able to do this for you in a few hours.

4. Your Blog Software Should Have Search-Engine Friendly URL's

Most of the better blogging software programs that are out there today store their entries in a database. This means that many of the pages are dependent upon parameters being passed to them before they can display the pages. For web browsers, the way that parameters are passed are usually indicated with characters such as '?' and '&'. Some blogging software requires that several parameters get passed before a single page, or blog entry, gets loaded.



Search engines usually don't index url's with a lot of parameters passed to them (lots of "&" in the URL), because the search engines can sometimes choke on these types of URLs. The better blogging software programs have an option to automatically 'convert' these URLs to more 'search engine friendly' URLs that don't 'scare' the search engines away. These converted URL's will allow the search engines to index your entire site, and all of your post entries, which makes it easier for visitors to find your blog.

5. It Should Be Easy to Add New Features to Your Blog Software

As you become more comfortable and knowledgeable about blogging, you will eventually find the need to add new features and functions to your blogging software. If your software is designed to be 'plug and play', it should be very easy to add features to your software. All it takes is to upload a new feature 'module' to your modules directory. Some blog scripts require a lot of code changes in order to add new features, and that can be a huge task for someone who isn't a programmer, and sometimes it's a huge task for someone who is a programmer.



If your blog software isn't designed to have feature plug-in add-ons, chances are the software isn't designed for easily adding on new features. If this is the case, you should choose another blogging software program.

If you select a blogging solution that has the included characteristics listed above, you will be well on your way to using a system that will grow with you as your needs grow, and is designed to bring more traffic to your website. The next step is to see what programs are available for you to use as your blogging solution. Some of them are free and some of them cost money. Places like http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles/Category/Blogs/4 have numerous articles that you can read to find more information about blogging solutions.

Your blogging software can lock you into a solution that might not be the best for your needs. Read more articles about blogging at http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles/Category/Blogs/4 . Find out how you can make money with your blog here:
Learn Business Blogging.




Tags: blog software - blogging - blog

The growing popularity of blogging by the general public is making business blogging a necessary marketing tool to stay competitive. There are many factors that can determine the success or failure of business blogging, and how successful it is with the business's target market. These factors include how well the blog is marketed, how easy it is to comprehend the blog content, and how well the blog entices people to take action. Determining the name for the blog is one important factor in driving the right kind of targeted visitors to the business website.

Why the name of the blog is important

The name of your blog is important because it sets the tone for the blog and it is the first line of marketing for your desired visitors. If a business names their blog 'Jim's Blog' or 'Jane's Blog', it isn't descriptive enough for people at a first glance to decide if they even want to visit your blog.



Another important result of how you name your business blog, is that most blogging software will put the name of the blog in the title of the browser. Many search engines will list the title of a web page in their results page. If your blog name isn't very descriptive and accurate, you will risk losing potential customers or prospects coming to your site if they stumble upon your blog from a search engine results page.

Research the keywords for your blog

This is an important step because you will want to include some keywords in your business blog name to get maximum results. In order to determin which keywords you should use in the name of your blog, you will need to research the viable keywords for your industry. There are many free and paid tools that you can use that will tell you what keyword phrases are being used in searches. This information will tell you what phrases your target market uses to find businesses in your industry.



While performing your research, you will find many results for keyword phrases. The ones you should be most interested in are the keyword phrases that don't have too many words (no more than 4), as we will be adding more to the name if possible. You will also want to pick the keyword phrases that have a relatively high number of total searches for the month (10,000 or more).



Once you have decided upon a few keyword phrases, experiment with some different arrangements of the words to create the beginnings of a compelling business blog name.

Pick a clear benefit of your services to use in your blog name

You are in business to fill a need or pain for your target market. If you aren't doing that, you won't be in business for long. Pick a clear and concise solution to a problem that your business provides for your target market, and try to incorporate that benefit into the name of your blog. You should end up with a name that will include relevant keywords and also contain a benefit for your clients or customers. Following these steps will give the title of your business blog a more relevant and enticing name.

How to put all the elements together for the name of your business blog

How do you put together a keyword phrase and a clear benefit to create a powerful blog name? Let us go over an example for the travel industry. We will use a hypothetical company that provides travel insurance to travelers. A common problem for travelers that need travel insurance is to replace lost property and luggage. This travel insurance business provides coverage that is over and above what the other travel companies provide, or provides a service that makes it quicker to process claims.



Our keyword research for this industry finds that 'travel insurance online' has just over 10,000 total keyword searches for the month (total of all 3 of the major search engines). So in creating the name for the blog, we could call it 'Quick Claims in Online Travel Insurance' or 'More Than You Expect From Online Travel Insurance'. We have included a benefit, and the keyword phrase in one short sentence, and we did not make the name too long to make it look awkward.

As you have seen, the name of your business blog serves a couple of functions. The biggest function is that it can be used to help drive targeted visitors to your website, but the name also plays a role in search engine optimization for your business blog. When choosing a name of your business blog, don't leave out the fact that it should also fit into the branding strategy of your business. Choose wisely and do your research well and you could reap the benefits and rewards for your business.

Do you want to know more about business blogging but don't know where to start? Go to http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles/Category/Blogs/4 to read more articles about blogging. Learn more about making money with your blogs here: business blogging.



Tags: business blog - blogging - content - keywords - keyword research - blogs

Articles are a great way to get added exposure to your website and business, and also a great way to increase your status as an expert in your field. Because of this fact, article writing and article submissions have skyrocketed. It is still an effective form of advertising, but you must be careful not to do things that will waste your time and effort. As an article directory manager, there are some things I see that cause me to delete articles that are submitted to the article directories I manage. These are 80% of the reasons I delete articles, so if you manage to avoid these problems, you will probably have a very good chance of getting your articles accepted by many of the article directories.

Submit Articles That are Relevant To the Article Directory Subject

Most article directories are general in nature and have a subject in just about every area, but there are now more article directories popping up that have more narrowly focused and specific subjects. These are called the niche article directories. They are not as large as the general directories, but their subject matter is much more highly relevant to a specific niche.



Visitors like to focus on these niche directory sites because they don't have to wade through thousands of unrelated articles. Article directory managers like to manage these sites because they are much easier to manage. niche directories don't grow as fast, but when it comes to having a site that is tightly focused, it's hard to beat for bringing value to the sites visitors.



Having said that, it still amazes me to see so many people placing obviously irrelevant articles in these directories. As an article directory manager, these articles get deleted without a second thought. Continuous offenders will get their accounts deleted. It does no good to continue this practice and only promotes bad will.

Don't Submit Articles That Are Taken Unchanged From Reprint Rights Packages

The overabundance of private label articles rising out of nowhere, creates a lot of temptation to just take the article, add a new headline and post it willy-nilly to all of the article directories you can find. This tactic is becoming less and less likely to work as article directory managers are now aware of the article redundancy. No one wants to have a site with 10,000 articles only to find that there are really 3,000 unique articles. When I find articles that are like this, I delete both articles from the directory.



Remember, most article directory owners are wanting to provide value to their visitors first and foremost (I did say 'most' as there are always exceptions). Having someone slog through 10 articles where the only difference is the synonyms used, isn't providing the reader much value. Article directory managers who care about their visitors will usually delete these types of articles, and sometimes the accounts of the repeated offending article submitter.

Link to Decent Sites in Your Resource Box

A nice benefit to reading articles is that it allows the reader to go to another site to find more information if they are interested in the subject of the article. Nothing is more disappointing than clicking the link on the resource box and going to a site that ends up advertising viagra or some other completely unrelated and questionable topic.



Look at it this way, if you don't feel comfortable sending your own mother to the site, then you can probably bet that someone who is reading about gardening tips or home repair isn't going to be too happy about ending up at a site like that either. I have deleted some, what I thought were good articles, because they went to these sites, or they went to some really crappy software generated site that provided the reader absolutely no additional value. Those article submissions unfortuantely were a wasted effort.



Think of it this way, as linking becomes more important, in the eyes of the search engines, do you think people are going to willingly want to link to sites that are sure to get banned, if they haven't been banned already?

Write Articles That Are a Useful Length

Articles that are too short (usually less than 350 words) are considered more like blog entries or extended ads. Article directory owners like articles that provide value to their readers, because articles that are higher quality will be picked up by more website and ezine publishers who are looking for quality content.



Articles that provide value usually solve a problem, tell a reader where they can find information to solve a problem and why it is a good source to use, give the reader a fresh spin on a particular topic, or just educate the reader about how to do something. Articles that are only a few paragraphs usually tend to be glorified ads to a product or service. You will get much more mileage out of writing valuable content, with a link back to your site in the resource box, than by writing 3 or 4 paragraphs as to why someone should use your product or service.

Writing and submitting articles to article directories can be a very worthwhile marketing activity, however you can waste a lot of your valuable time if you use the techniques that will get your article deleted. Just use common sense about what you write, how you write it and your submission process, and you can enjoy rewards that article publishing can bring you.

Find out more about how to use web content to generate or increase your online income? Go to http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles to see more articles about how to earn an income from content. For more information ecommerce you'll want to get this online course while it is still free. Online E-Commerce Course

Tags: article submission - directory - content

Blogging is a practice that has been around for at least 5 years. It began with average, but opinionated people with something to say, who wanted to share their opinions with anyone who would read them. While it has been popular with the general public, it hasn't caught on with many businesses until recently. Blogging can be a powerful tool for marketing and exposure for any business if done properly. This article will cover the first steps businesses will need to take to set themselves up for successful blogging.

1. Select the Appropriate Hosting for Your Business Blog

You first step is to select an appropriate host for your blog. There are a couple of solutions that you can use to host your blog. You can:

1) Host it on your own server
2) Host it at a blogging hosting server, such as livejournal.com or blogger.com

If you host your own blog on your own web site, you will need to find blogging software that you can use on your web site. You will need to determine what your web site server capabilities are, and then determine what blogging software will work within your server environment. You will then need to install the software and configure it in order to begin blogging.

If you host your blog on a blog hosting system, then everything is already set up for you. All you have to do is sign up for, and configure your account. Some of these blogging services are free and some of them will have a monthly hosting charge.

2. Configure Your Business Blog

Once you have determined how you want to host your blog, and have installed it, or signed up for your blog service, you will need to configure your blog.

Configuring your blog includes, what template you want to use with your blog. Most blogs whether they are on a blog hosting service, or software that you have installed, will come with several templates. If you are new to the Internet, and don't have a lot of programming experience, it is probably best to stick with one of the templates that has come with the software or service. It is however, better if you have some programming background, or have the funds to hire someone, then you can get your blog to look like your business web site. Even if your blog is hosted elsewhere, you can do amazing things with the templates to get your blog to look very similar to your business web site. Most services will allow you to modify the templates that come with their subscription.

Other things that will need to be configured are settings such as the name and description of your business blog, the email address you want messages from your blog to be sent to, how you want your blog archived (posts saved for future access), what ping services you want to notify when you update your blog, and other settings too numerous to mention in this article.

3. Determine the Content of Your Business Blog

This next step can be done before you actually install your blog, but you will need to determine the topic of your business blog, and how you want to convey your information to your target market. The content and topics of your blog should relate to your industry. You can focus as narrow or as wide as you choose think is appropriate. In general, it is a good idea to cover many areas within your industry and then separate the different areas of your industry into different categories within your blog.

For example, if you are blogging about your real estate business, the big topics would be commercial real estate, residential real estate, and investing in real estate, etc.

However, it would be better to specifically focus in your main category/industry. For example, if your main industry is residential real estate, you could have topics such as renting out your home, buying a home, and selling a home. Each of these would be a separate category within your blog.

Lastly but most importantly, you should choose topics and categories that will be of interest to your visitors. You will need to research the keywords that your customers would use to find you. There are many keyword research tools available on the web today that will tell you what exact phrases, and how often, your target market is using to find you. These keywords will determine the topics of your blog entries. You should also use some of the phrases you have found in your research in your business blog posts.

4. Begin Blogging for Your Business

The last step is to start blogging. You can choose from a number of different formats to add entries to your blog, as blog entries can take on any format. Some formats that you may want to consider include:

1) Writing articles and posting them to your blog.
2) Finding related news items in your industry and posting them with comments as to what you think of the news item.
3) Answering frequently asked questions you get from your clients.
4) Writing reviews of products/services in your industry
5) Writing "how to" posts
6) Using a free-style posting of anything you feel would be of interest to your potential clients and/or customers.


Your style of posting should match what your target market would find interesting.

Now that you know the basic steps of what needs to be done to begin business blogging, you can choose how you want to host your blog, what keywords your target market uses to find you, and what format would make the most sense to begin blogging. There are many web sites that have more articles and in-depth information about business blogging. You can use these resource sites to help guide you through the process from making your first post, to getting your first customer from your business blog.

Don't waste time learning about things you don't need to know about blogging. Get right to the heart of the matter and learn how to get your blog set up and working for you in a matter of a few hours! Go to http://www.allwebcontent.com for more information, go here.
Business Blogging

Tags: blogging - business - content