On The Margins

Don't overthink things and become obsessed with the keywords–remember that you are writing for a human audience, so the object http:// blog.ircask.com is to write articles that would be useful to your target market, while keeping in mind the type of language that your target market uses (and that way your keywords and their variations will naturally pop up in your articles).

2) Write educational articles on the topic of your website.

Here are some guidelines for you:

Watch your word count. The article should be between 400-1500 words, but if at all possible try to hit the word count sweet spot of 700-800 words, as that length of article is most attractive to publishers and will fit nicely in an ezine.
Do not write about your own products, website, business, or affiliate products. In the article marketing world, articles that mention your own products, business, website or affiliate products in the article body are called "promotional" or "self-serving", and they are off limits! Remember, the article is for the benefit of the reader, rather than for yourself. You should not toot your own horn in the article body–the appropriate spot to talk about your business and website is your author resource box, which sits below your article (more on that later).
Focus on teaching your readers something–that is what makes the articles educational. Think of yourself as a teacher rather than a sales person–a teacher wants to impart objective information, while we all know what a sales person wants to do–sell! Save the sales pitch for your resource box. The cool thing with article marketing is that the educational articles you create can drive traffic to your website and increase sales.
Try to write 'How To' articles–Those are articles that give the reader step-by-step instructions on how to do something (and this would be something associated with the topic of your website). I would say 99.9% of my articles are of the 'How To' variety–it's all about teaching, and if you can teach in a step-by-step way it makes it easier for readers to read and also for you to write.

Posted by blog on March 01, 2009 at 08:13 AM PST #