Economical search engine optimization, some say it doesn’t exist. It does, though. Have a read. It’s happening everywhere now, people are paying $5 per article to freelance services all over the web, then submitting the original content these ghostwriters make to various article directories across the web. As I populate my website with content, this is a question that strikes me personally.

Does article marketing work? And if it does, are there any best practices I should know about? Is there something I should avoid?

With this question in my head, I did a couple hours of reading and came to these conclusions:

• How do I optimize my articles for search engines?

Exactly the same way you would for a web page. Use your target keyword in the title, use the target keyword in your first and last paragraph, and somewhere in the middle of your article, or anywhere relevant (just dont overdo it). If this does not full answer your question read “SEO Copywriting”and “Website Content & Keywords”.

• Where should your articles be submitted?

Alot of people claim EzineArticles is the best place, but I believe it really depends on your topic. You might find you get better results from one directory over another simply because the “crowd” that could potentially be interested in your product resides heavily in one network. So the answer to this is to experiment. See which service gets the best results, and then focus your efforts on one or two (a list of submission sites is below this article.)

• The numbers game.

With so many different aspects contained within marketing and articles, from differences in writing styles to hundreds of submission services, it really can be a hit and miss operation. I would not overlook article marketing because of this, but I wouldn’t let my business rely soley upon it either, Instead, article marketing should be a small part of your overall internet marketing process.

Here are a few article submission services for economical search engine optimization:

1. http://www.ezinearticles.com
2. http://www.goarticles.com
3. http://www.articlecity.com
4. http://www.a1articles.com
5. http://www.ideamarketers.com
6. http://www.searchwarp.com
7. http://www.isnare.com/
8. http://www.amazines.com
9. http://www.articledepot.co.uk
10. http://www.articledashboard.com
11. http://www.easyarticles.com
12. http://www.articlebin.com
13. http://www.articlebeach.com
14. http://www.articlehub.com
15. http://www.articlegarden.com
16. http://www.articlesphere.com
17. http://www.articlealley.com
18. http://www.articlesfactory.com
19. http://www.articlewise.com
20. http://www.articlegeek.com

There are many pay per click search engine advertising mistakes but I will try to list the most common ones. Individual ad groups should contain two ads with few keywords. The idea is to have one PPC ad for a particular keyword, or very closely related group of keywords. At this point the ad should be duplicated so that  two instances of the advertisement exists. Then the second ad should be slightly modified. Only one element of the ad’s copy should be changed. This is called A/B testing. This allows the marketer to test various ads to determine which ad copy converts more clicks.

Another pay per click search engine advertising mistake a beginning PPC marketer might fall into is their daily budget, or perhaps a lack thereof. However, while doing A/B testing, it would appear that the marketer would not want to spend a great amount of money on unrefined ad campaigns. Without a proper budget, though, there will not be enough data to determine whether ad number one is getting the better results, or perhaps ad number two. An ad must be shown a number of times to determine a proper click-through rate(CTR).

Keywords can also play a large role in an advertisement campaign’s success or failure. One might discover that a particular keyword they are purchasing traffic for is generating traffic that is not in the “buying mode”. Sometimes these keywords can be easy to spot, with words such as “free” littered among the individual keywords. This is not always the case. Consumers will search for free things without telling the search engine exactly what it is that they want. On the flip-side, web surfers that search for “free” things, will oftentimes be persuaded to make a purchase, especially if they cannot find the free item they are looking for.

The largest pitfall to PPC marketing in my opinion, based on the materials I have been educated with, is that Google’s default setting cause ads to be shown on the Google Content Network. Marketers that do not realize they are bidding on more than just search engine keywords, could potentially lose variable sum of money because of this. In some instances, the Google Content Network can be your ally. Only by monitoring the results that are made available through Google Adwords can one really determine if the Google Content Network will generate or eliminate revenue you’re a particular company.

The second largest pitfall, based on opinion, would be the lack of the aforementioned A/B testing. Without testing, you get what you get. In order to refine the amount of clicks an ad is capable of receiving, one must thoroughly test ad copy and ad placement. Once a conclusion is made that  one ad is returning better results than another does not signify that the testing is complete. In this case you would drop the poorer performing ad, and replace it with a new one. Again, this new ad should contain only one element that is different from the other. By going through this process over and over, the advertisements in question should be performing better and better.

Search Engine Pay Per Click (PPC) offers a fantastic opportunity for a website to gather traffic that the website may not have gotten otherwise. The most widely used is Google’s Adwords. Surely you are familiar with the sponsored listings in Google’s search results.

Depending heavily on the amount of competition there is for a particular keyword, one might pay anywhere from five cents, up to five dollars for a click. The price you pay for a click is predetermined by the amount you are willing to bid to show your advertisement for a particular keyphrase. This is where the massive amount of keywords that you have that are longtail come into play that only get maybe 200 searches a day. On some of these keywords you may find little or no competition. While the traffic might not be there, the lack of traffic for each individual keyword can be made up for by the amount of keywords that you have. And since a lot of advertisers ignore these “lesser” keywords, you might be able to score first place on the paid listings for as little a ten cents a click. How nice would that be?

Search engine pay per click advertising is one of those things you want to test, though. You could lose money rather quickly if you just dive right in. Once your site is proven to convert visitors then you can scale accordingly.

Say that you knew for every 100 visitors, about 1 would purchase. If you make $25 from that purchase, then you need to spend less than $25 for 100 visitors (or less than a quarter a click make sense?). The concept is simple, the reality is not so much.

Website just launched? Here’s how to get indexed within 24 hours.

Be sure to only do this once, or you will be seen as spam.

• Upload your site.
• Go to Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site + submit a sitemap.
• Create an account at Digg
• Submit your website to Digg

That’s really all there is to getting indexed, but there is alot more you will need to do in order to acquire some traffic. This will simply get you listed somewhere in google and make them aware of your site. One thing to note however, before you pull off this procedure. As I mentioned in the previous blog entry, you wan’t to be sure to tell Google not to index your site’s administrative functions, and any duplicate content you might have for any reason.

Why do we just cover how to get indexed in Google?

70% of all searches done on the internet are done through Google. That’s a factual statistic and alot of other search engines acquire portions of their data from Google. The moral of the story here? If your site looks good to Google, it will look good to the others as will, and likely sooner.

After you have been indexed, you want to submit new, fresh, original content on at least a weekly basis. In my experience, google updates my site about every 12-14 days, and the idea is for you to have some new content for the google spider every time it visits your page. Google loves fresh, unique content, and Google said it themselves, “Content is King”.