Article Submitter Pro News

There was a time when you had a choice of about ten article directories to submit to. Now there's at least 1,400 to 2,000 of them, not counting ezines and email groups. Sure there are a few of these article directories that get virtually no traffic, but the vast majority have rather large and constant viewers all looking for new information. So how do you determine which of all these to submit to?

Some will say to just continue submitting to the top 10 that have been around for years. It's true these do get more traffic, however they also get more submissions, meaning you'll have much more competition for the viewers they receive every day.

And the fact remains, some of the newer article directories, not counted among the top 10, get a fair share of traffic too. And there's indications that traffic to these "lesser" directories are growing due to visitors looking for articles that benefit less from the directory's page ranking.

So the trend shows that people who understand how article marketing works, and go looking for articles to reuse on their own site, tend to go looking in article directories with a lower page rank so they can grab more of the value for the information. For example, if you found an article on a PR7 directory and your site had a PR2, the weight you'd receive for that information posted on your site would be much less than if you had taken the article from a PR0 or a PR1 site.

To explain this from a listing perspective, if you take an article from a directory with less page rank value than your site has, the likelihood of the article being listed in a search from your site rather than from the directory is greater.

You'd actually be stealing the "thunder" and adding the value to your site over the directory's.

Now from an author's perspective this is also good news, because if you submit your articles to a variety of page ranked sites, you'll have both the directories and those who seek to reuse your articles competing for top listing in a search. With your link back to your site securely set in your bio box, no matter who gets top billing, your link is in plain view for people who want more info on the topic.

Thus if you submit to high ranking sites you benefit from their value, but by also submitting to lower ranked sites you benefit from the page rank of those who go there to bolster their own page rank which in turn adds value to your article and link as well.

It's a win/win situation for those who submit articles!

So yes, submit your articles to the top 10 article directories. But don't leave all that potential traffic and page rank value on the table by not submitting to the lesser directories used more by people looking for content rather than information.

The key to success is exposure, so dig deep!

By utilizing everything available to you from an article marketing perspective, the viral quality of your campaigns will grow significantly.

So always keep in mind, attracting people who seek to reuse your content can be just as powerful as attracting readers. It's like handing them an email promoting your product and asking them to spread it out to their lists for free.

Technorati Tags: article directories, article submission, content, exposure, potential traffic

There's no doubt about it, article marketing is an extremely popular way to promote. But because its so enthusiastically used, there's also the risk your articles could get lost in the crowd. With virtually thousands of new articles being submitted every single day, how can you better your chances of getting seen and read?

To give you a visual example of how fast and often articles are being submitted, go check out Propeller's "Just In" section and sit back and watch. Though Propeller isn't an article directory in the pure sense of the term, it'll give you some idea of how actively submissions are made on a minute by minute basis.

Today there's well over 1,000 article directories on the web ranging on all levels of popularity and page rank, with millions of articles being submitted to them on a weekly basis. And now we have automated article submitters, content creators, article spinners, outsourcing, and you name it, all designed to pump out articles at mind boggling speed.

So how can you compete for readers in a scenario like this?

The late Silvia Ashton Warner, a well known novelist said this to put us on the path of understanding what an article needs in order to stand out:

"It is not so much the content of what one says as the way in which one says it. However important the thing you say, what's the good of it if not heard or, being heard, not felt."

What this means is, you have to go beyond the reader's eyes and reach their hearts. To put it bluntly, you have to reach the parts of them that triggers desire. They have to "feel" what you're telling them.

You have to engage them!

Of course this starts with supplying useful information, but even more so, the reader needs to see how that information applies to them and how it'll help move them from their current position to a "happier place."

Scientifically, humans understand things through pictures. Our memories are all pictures stored away for future reference, and when something new happens to us, our minds revert back to past memories to determine the next course of action. Naturally, we don't all have the same memories, but there are certainly commonalities to memory that can be tapped into to set a scenario most readers could understand.

This is why storytelling is so effective. Telling a story in your articles, whether it be generic or a personal experience creates that experiential environment that forces a memory based reaction, especially for those who are naturally drawn to your topic. Once you've tapped into a reader's memories, it's almost effortless for them to continue to the end of the story.

Now a story doesn't necessarily have to be a full blown narrative, and in some cases it might be inappropriate to use a lengthy "play by play" description. However, a simple analogy or two can have the same effect.

For example, supposing you were writing about balancing food cost with nutritional concerns. A very frustrating situation to say the least. Most "cheap" food is usually not very good for you, yet in this financial environment, there may be a need to cut budget costs at the grocery store.

Your goal would be to get your readers to "feel" the frustration, so perhaps you could use a "rock and a hard place" analogy to relate how difficult it is to find the middle ground between what's in your heart and what's in your wallet.

So you could explain that it's taking longer to shop because you find yourself pacing up and down the aisles comparing nutritional labels with your eyes while manning the calculator with your hands. And in spite of all that, you still don't come home with what you truly wanted to buy.

Having to feed your family foods that you'd rather not feed them can be a real crisis for many people, so highlighting the dilemma will bring them to the exact place you want them to be.

Of course your ultimate goal is to bring relief from the frustration with a real viable solution, or at least a lead in for hope to bring them to click your link.

So we could go on and on with other examples, but hopefully you get the drift. The thing is, you have a solution to a particular problem, and you want your readers to go for the solution, right?

Getting them to "feel" the problem and "see" how you personally understand it, will make them much more liable to follow through with your suggestions and recommendations. So when you sit down to write your next article, think of it as if someone is asking you, "so how do you feel about this and why?"

What a story that'll make!

Technorati Tags: analogy, article marketing, storytelling, using analogies, using stories