Your articles serve many purposes, such as establishing you as an expert, pre-selling products and even helping to build relationships with your prospects. But you can also use them for list building by driving traffic to your site when you take the time to optimize them for the search engines.
Here’s the 3S Strategy for creating and distributing optimized articles:
S – Search, S – Sprinkle, S – Spread
Read on for the details…
Step #1: Search
Your first step is to search for the keywords your market is already using to find information in your niche. You do this by using a keyword tool such as Google’s Free Keyword Tool.
All you have to do is enter in a broad niche-relevant search term like “homeschooling,” “organic gardening” or “golf.” The tool will then offer you suggestions for related search terms which you can use to expand your list of keywords. In most cases, you’ll generate a list of hundreds if not thousands of possible keywords.
What you’re searching for are longtail keywords – these are phrases that are typically four or more words long. The key is that they have very little competition in the search engines, which means you can rank well for them.
Tip: Many keyword tools check the competition for you. For example, WordTracker offers a KEI (keyword effectiveness index) value, which looks at the number of searches against how many other websites are indexed for that keyword. The higher the KEI value, the better chance you have of ranking well. Look for words that have a KEI value of at least 100 – but the higher the better.
Step #2: Sprinkle
Once you’ve compiled a list of longtail keywords, your next step is to create content around these keywords. You can optimize each article for two keyword phrases if you like, but generally it’s easier to optimize for just one.
The key is to not stuff your article with your keywords, otherwise the search engines may rank it lower (rather than higher). As such, include your keyword in the title of your article as well as about two to three times for every 100 words of content.
Example: Let’s say your keyword is “hydroponic vegetable gardening indoors.” Your article might look like this:
Title: “Tips and Tricks for Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors”
Intro: include keyword at least once.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #1: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #2: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #3: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Closing: Summarize the article and include keyword once more.
Step #3: Spread
Once your article is complete, it’s time to spread it around by distributing it as widely as possible. You do this by:
* Posting the article on your blog.
* Offering it as a guest post on your JV partner’s blog (or newsletter).
* Create a Squidoo.com or HubPages.com page around it.
* Post it on social networking sites like your MySpace.com blog or Facebook.com page.
* Submit it to article directories such as EzineArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleValley.com, GoArticles.com and Buzzle.com.
That’s it. You too can get your articles to pull in search engine traffic for your list building when you use the Search, Sprinkle and Spread system.
