Article marketing, with the end goal to get your material syndicated and republished on popular, relevant websites and blogs, or in newsletters, has no association with spamming the internet with hundreds, often thousands of spun, unreadable excuses masquerading as articles.

Over the past two years, Google has been implementing algorithm updates to weed out, and de-index these ‘trash’ articles, and often the spuriously named article directories hosting them as well. Consequently, the backlinks they had been providing disappeared, and so too did the websites they had been pointing to. Hence the hue and cry on forums such as the Warrior Forum, Digital Point, Wicked Fire, etc., proclaiming ‘article marketing’ to be “dead”.

Cue The Article Marketer

For the true article marketer, producing high-level, in-depth content for syndication, nothing could be further from the truth. Our websites and blogs have flourished amidst Google’s onslaughts; this, in spite of the fact that we never actually produce our content to please Big G. Google loves us because associated highly-ranked, authority websites respect our writing sufficiently to republish it for the benefit of their readers. This provides us with backlinks that are pure gold.

But this is actually secondary to the main benefit: hoards of focused visitors who have read our articles, clicked our links and arrived at our own websites to read more. This immediately presents us with the opportunity to establish ourselves as true experts in our niches; our websites as the places to go for the information they require. It’s the one reason why every article we offer for syndication should first be published and indexed on our own blogs and websites. We, quite rightly, should be recognized as the authority, but equally as important, each article should a building block cementing our status as the expert to be sought out and read.

Inform Never Sell

Articles written for syndication should never, ever sell; they should presell. Webmasters will never want to publish your sales letters, and preselling, when done correctly, is immensely powerful; it provides opportunities to establish loyalty and trust with readers. Trust is influence, never forget that.

When people enjoy reading high quality content, they often want to share it with others; another huge benefit. Focus upon providing value in every piece of writing you produce and you’ll be well on your way to succeeding as an article syndicator.

Perhaps now you are beginning to see why real, dyed-in-the-wool article marketers are so successful. We aren’t necessarily brilliant writers, although good grammar and presentation will, without a doubt make it easier to get your work picked up and syndicated. The key is to write naturally, as if you are conversing with your readers; establish a connection and provide them with valuable, relevant information.

The webmasters you hope will syndicate your content, often have readerships and mailing lists of many, often hundreds of thousands. They are always struggling to provide their readers with interesting, trustworthy, valuable, relevant information, and if you make that job easier for them, they will welcome you with open arms. It’s a win-win situation and the stakes for you can be enormous. I’ve had days following publication of one of my articles on an authority website, when my visitors have gone through the roof.

Surely you will agree that is a far better result to aim for than spamming the internet with spun, often unreadable trash.

Distribution For Syndication

Writing great content for syndication is only half the battle. You should of course submit everything to EZine Articles, for what is known as “passive syndication”, hoping that it will be found by webmasters, but for real success, you must also start actively syndicating your material.

Your goal is to do the following:

1. Write a fresh article
2. Publish it to your own website and wait for it to be indexed
3. Send it out to your list of webmasters who have agreed to syndicate your content (active syndication)
4. Submit it to EZine Articles for passive syndication

If you’ve been an article writer for any length of time, you will have heard the name Paul Myers. He has been involved in Internet Marketing as a writer for many years, and is the founder of the long-running online newsletter, TalkBiz. I’ve followed his writing for years.

Paul has earned a reputation for being honest and straightforward, and he uses his significant experience to produce high quality information products. One of these is a new ebook titled The Content Cash System.

If you have any aspiration to do Article Marketing the right way, this ebook is a must-have reference. I consider myself to be an experienced syndication writer, but I have to admit, reading this ebook has opened my eyes to an entirely new approach to actually getting my work syndicated. I recommend it highly.

For full details >>Click Here<<

Anne Pottinger +

I publish a lot of content in my blogs and at Ezine Articles, and, of course, my purpose is to get these articles picked up by niche-relevant webmasters and re-published in their blogs, newsletters, etc. But, they are required to leave my resource box with its backlinks to my own internet real estate intact. The vast majority of them do, but there are always one or two jerks who think the rules just don’t apply to them.

Implementing Google Alerts is one method I employ to alert me about people stealing my content, and I use it to good effect.

• Every time I publish anything, I always head straight to Google Alerts which provides me with customized, saved searches executed automatically and delivered to my inbox or RSS reader. To set up an alert, I pick one sentence or short paragraph from my article and enter it as a search term (exactly as you would for a regular Google search, with the same optional parameters). Then, I click the ‘Type’ field to define what source(s) Google should use: Everything, News, Blogs, Videos, Discussions, or Books.
• Next, I choose how often I need to receive alerts: ‘as it happens,’ ‘once a day’, or ‘once a week’. I usually select ‘as it happens.’ I also set the Volume to ‘only the best results.’
• Finally, I decide how I need the alerts to arrive: via email or feed; I normally opt for email.

Many marketers choose not to automate the process, and instead take that same sentence or paragraph and, at intervals, perform a manual Google search. Of course, this works in exactly the same manner, and it’s fine if you have a very limited amount of content published, but can you even begin to imagine the monumental task of keeping track of quite literally thousands of articles manually. I’m all for automation and Google Alerts is an unsung hero, working constantly on my behalf across the internet.

Then comes the crucial step in taking care of the content thieves swiftly, immediately you’re alerted to them. I have a multi-pronged attack.

First I search for an email contact on the offending website. This can sometimes be found on a contact page, or otherwise I go to the Whois Lookup Domain Tools, enter the website’s URL in the default ‘Search Domain Ownership Records’ text box and look for the email address listed for the Administrative Contact, and also the website’s hosting company. If the site is listed privately they will be one and the same.

Most of the time this will reveal the required information, but if this isn’t the case, I perform a TraceRoute. The last few ‘Hops’ will reveal the website’s hosting company.

I keep a reasonably friendly ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ form email which I shoot off immediately to the Administrative Contact’s email address, informing them of their copyright infringement. If it’s a private listing, I try admin@website.com and webmaster@website.com (replacing ‘website’ with the actual URL.)

Depending upon the results achieved by this first email (very often it will be ignored), I bring out the big guns and serve their hosting company straight away with a DMCA take-down notification. If I know the site’s email address, I’ll include a CC to them. This will demonstrate that you mean business and know what you are doing.

Here is a sample of a good, effective DMCA Take-down Notification:

Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement

My name is [Your Name] and I am the [Your Title] of [Company Name]. This is to inform you that a website hosted on your servers (according to WHOIS information) is infringing upon at least one copyright owned by my company.

An article written by myself was copied onto your servers without my permission. The original material, to which we own the exclusive copyrights, can be viewed at:

PROVIDE WEBSITE URL

The unauthorized and infringing material at issue can be found at:

PROVIDE WEBSITE URL

This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.

Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under US law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.

I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.

Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.

Thank you.
Your name
Your address
Your phone number
Your email address

If you subscribe to a digital signature, you should digitally sign this notification, or you can scan a copy of your signature and include it as an image in the email.

This letter will usually be enough and any reputable hosting company will take care of the problem promptly. Unfortunately there is one particularly large hosting company (I’ve never dealt with them personally) which, I’ve read, completely ignores all such requests.

I’ve never had to go beyond the steps I’ve outlines above, but if all else fails, your next resort is Google. Go to their Help Page and provide them with the necessary information. Once you satisfy them that the website is publishing your copyrighted content without permission or attribution, they can de-index the website and it will vanish without trace.

If the website publishing your content is also displaying Adsense Ads, you have another arrow you can fire; immediately beneath the ads you will see a link ‘AdChoices’. Click on that link and it will take you to a page where you can ‘Report a policy violation regarding the site or ads you just saw.’ Copyright infringements are also an Adsense TOS violation.

Anne Pottinger +

There are several options of converting your articles into videos. For instance you can use PowerPoint to create animated slides and convert them into a video format. You can use a flash program to create your videos. But these options really require technical know-how and most people may find it a little bit difficult.

The easiest way to convert your articles into videos is by using an article-to-video-converter software that turns them into videos in the shortest time possible. It is user friendly and it doesn’t require much technical know-how. But you need to select a good program that allows you to edit your article in any way you want. Secondly, you need to spend some money to use the service.

Normally a good program will have a variety of free images you can choose from to use as a background for your videos, with an option to upload your own images. A good program should also have a variety of free background music and a provision to distribute your videos to major video sharing websites like YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo Video, Daily Motion, Metacafe, Revver, Sclipo and many others at no extra cost to save you time and money.

Converting your articles into videos, using an article-to-video converter program, is a three-step process that involves copying and pasting your article into the program, converting it to video and uploading it for distribution to video sharing websites. It’s as simple as that.

Copying and pasting your article into the program takes just a second. After pasting it into the program, the software automatically separates the paragraphs, which then become your video screen descriptions. Each screen description corresponds to a specific paragraph.

To effectively convert your articles into videos, you need to edit the article. Editing entails making changes on your video descriptions. When you add so many words, you risk having very small words on the screen. It entails transforming your text into audio, using the voice-over tool. The program already has prerecorded voices of varying tones for both men and women. You just have to pick the voices that best meet your needs and use them. You also have the option of uploading your own voices.

The process of converting your articles into videos also entails adding background images and music that you consider to be good for your videos. After inserting the background image and music, make sure you preview your video to see whether it’s showing properly and is as you want it to be. If there are any changes to make, you can always go back on specific paragraphs to make your changes.

After converting your articles into videos, you are left with the task of uploading and distributing them to video sharing sites. There is an option of uploading them to your blog and to your Twitter and Facebook pages. If you have a website, you can still copy and paste the HTML code to your website. You can also adjust the settings to resize the width and length of your video on your site.

While turning your articles into videos, you need to optimize your keyword phrases in your video titles and high to enjoy the benefit of getting organic traffic. Secondly, you need to be creative enough to spice up your videos and to make them unique. When you do that then you are assured of getting a steady flow of traffic to your website. Does that help you?

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Complementary to article marketing is Guest Blogging, and when approached correctly, it can very easily produce superior results. Why should this be? Well, a blog post is an article, the only difference being, it’s published in a blog, not an article directory. However, that one difference can be amazing in the focused, quality traffic it attracts.

So, How Does Guest Blogging Provide Superior Traffic?
Simple. As respected as many article directories may be, they are not authoritative websites. When people are searching for information on a subject, or solutions to their problems, they will only read your article posted in a directory if they happen to stumble upon a link to it during their search. There is no way they are going to head directly to Ezine Articles or Article Base to find answers.

Article directories were created to be depositories for articles; a place where webmasters can go when they need fresh content for their websites, blogs or newsletters. Only when these webmasters publish your content, can it begin to attract focused readers back to you. Their ready made, niche relevant audience will read your content, and if your information is good enough, they will follow the links to your website in the resource box for additional reading.

When you publish an article in an article directory, it’s with the intention it will get picked up by niche relevant webmasters, but there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t stack the odds significantly in your favor and pro-actively seek out and approach these webmasters directly and offer to guest blog for them.

In fact, you really should make Guest Blogging a major part of your article marketing strategy. It will involve quite a bit of additional work on your part, but I promise you, the results will be well worth the efforts.

Here are a few tips to help you reap the best results:

Select Carefully: It’s critical you approach blogs which attract traffic relevant to your niche. You will be wasting your time contacting webmasters of unrelated blogs because a) Your guest post won’t be accepted, and, b) on the remote chance it is, their followers won’t be remotely interested in what you have to say.

Potential traffic volume will always be your overriding concern, but don’t let it blind you to quality of traffic. Is there any comment activity? Have they published other guest posts, and if so, are they focused on your article’s intended subject?

Highly targeted traffic will always deliver superior results and could probably provide more focused visitors than somewhat generically focused blogs.

Having said that, the whole point of guest blogging is to increase your visibility, so think outside the box; see your niche in a broader light. As an example, you may normally write about growing tomatoes, but parents could be extremely interested in reading about the dietary value of homegrown vegetables for their children. Write a guest blog post about healthy, home grown tomatoes and you’ll attract a whole new audience.

Carefully Read the Blog: Having found a likely candidate, read the blog you’re considering. Get a feel for their tone, the type of content they publish, and how they “speak to” their audience. Is there a particular topic they talk about more than others, etc.

Study the Blog’s Comments: These can be a goldmine because if there is a question frequently asked, or a subject regularly discussed, this could be your post’s theme, and you could mention this when you approach the webmaster.

Never Self Promote: Guest posts should always entertain and inform; they should never, ever sell anything. You should cleverly showcase your expertise in the subject you are writing about, but never in a way which self promotes. Your article needs to hold the readers’ attention all the way through to your resource box, where they will click on your link for more information.

Your Resource Box Is the Key: Your article should only provide part of the solution to the problem you are writing about; it needs to draw the reader to the link in your resource box which they need to click for the entire answer. Try not to satisfy them by telling them everything, or you will remove the reason to click through to you, but at the same time, don’t alienate them by blatantly holding back on critical information. You will need to walk a fine line.

Explain to the reader why they need to click on your link. The resource box is where you can self promote and explain what makes you special. Include a definite “Call to Action”; guide them, actually tell them to click on your link.

Another great idea is to offer them something free: an ebook or report closely related to the subject of your article. Once they arrive at your website, they will need to provide their contact information prior to downloading.

Include your name (or pen name you’re using) in your resource box to establish credibility and always mention the name of your website and include the full URL. Many people prefer to click on a URL rather than link text.

Now more than ever Guest Posting can provide you with amazing opportunities to showcase your website to a much wider audience, and improve your site’s SEO. Every guest post published will provide you with an authoritative, high value, one-way backlink; something Google loves.

In fact, SEO scholars have stated that just one of these blog guest posting backlinks will carry much more perceived “link juice” than many thousands of links acquired from the proliferation of low quality directories, blog comments, etc.

As I stated to begin with, Guest Blogging does involve a lot of time and effort, but as a marketing strategy, it can bring in floods of new, focused traffic.

Anne Pottinger +

Use the right keywords so that your content is found easily, but always write coherently, for your readers to enjoy. The worse mistake you can make is stuffing your content with keywords, just for the benefit of Google. Actually, Google’s algorithms are getting progressively smarter; throughout the year they have been de-indexing what I describe as SEO fodder, or material short-sightedly produced to please the search engines, rather than live, human readers.

When people enter a keyword and perform a search, they are presented with a list of links. If they click to visit your website because they are intrigued by your title in the search results, they do so because they expect your content to live up to their expectations.

Your opening paragraph will either entice them to read further, or drive them to click their back button. Your content needs to be fresh, helpful, and sympathetic to whatever caused them to search online in the first place. It should anchor them to your website, eager to consume more of your writing. Your content may be easy to find, but without its perceived, crucial empathy with your readers, little of it will be read to completion, and none of it will be shared.

Presenting them with re-hashed, keyword heavy “fodder” they may have already read, which is neither helpful nor relevant will do absolutely nothing for your reputation. Furthermore, Google now uses your site’s perceived “stickiness” in its ranking algorithms. This translates into good or bad news for your SEO; offer content which causes your visitors to disappear fast and your rankings will suffer; offer optimized editorial excellence, keep them on your site reading and Google will rank you accordingly.

Anne Pottinger +

When it comes to getting backlinks there are a lot of methods to consider. Matter of fact you might want to take into consideration all the methods that are available to you. I am not referring to black hat tactics, but legitimate methods of backlinking.

What some people do is rely on one “magic method”, but when it comes to getting backlinks to your site, there really is not one “magic method.” There are better methods, but there is no longer one method for backlinking. Depending on how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword, you will need to step up your game and implement several backlinking strategies.

First and foremost, unless your article, web page, or whatever you’re trying to rank for is optimized and contains great content, you won’t make it very far, and it won’t stay on the top page of search engines for very long.

Creating great content is the best method for backlinking. When others share your content, then you have a winning solution for any post, article, or webpage. So if you want a 100% whitehat backlinking strategy, then make sure it involves great content, great onsite optimization, and allowing others to link back to your site.

One way to get your site out in front of people is by utilizing basic RSS strategies and bookmarking. This is what I will cover in this article. I will show you how I do this.

However Be Warned: Some backlinking strategies can be aggressive, and in some cases will not be considered playing nice by Google. Remember that Google doesn’t like it when you try to build links with the purpose of getting higher rankings.

If you look around the internet and see some of the backlinking strategies outlined by people, you will see that they are not considered whitehat by Google, and they do carry some degree of risk. For instance, if you see an ad that says One Billion backlinks for a dollar, you might want to think twice about plopping down that dollar.

SEO experts will tell you that backlinks cannot hurt you, and while that is probably true in 99% of cases, it is wise to know that anything that you do in backlinking for the sole purpose of getting better rankings in Google carries some degree of risk. The risk is also strongly proportional to how aggressive you get with your backlinking strategies, the overall quality of your site, and your promotional endeavors.

Just know that whitehat backlinking strategies are generally considered more long term and sustainable, while greyhat or blackhat promotion aims to take advantage of current loopholes, and is much more likely to see traffic dry up or websites banned in the long term. You need to weigh the risks and rewards carefully.

So now that I have scared you, let me show you how to get backlinks to your site using a completely whitehat method. You can use this with any keywords and any site you may be trying to boost in readership.

This is a great whitehat method of getting instant backlinks to anything you place on the internet. It takes some upfront work but once you have it all put together, it runs on autopilot.

Automatic Backlink Formula.

First thing you need to do is get a Ping.fm account.

Next you need to look at all the platforms that Ping submits to and then sign up for those platforms. This is where your backlinks will come from automatically.

Once you have those accounts set up, you then connect them all together. In other words, every time Ping gets info on your post or article, you want it to send to all the social networks you signed up for. So post once, and have that posted to several social networks in one go. The downside to all this is that you have to log into ping.fm to do it each time.

One way around this is by creating a Hootsuite account, which takes RSS feeds that can be fed to Ping. So you send your RSS feed (such as the RSS Feed from your website), and connect Hootsuite to Ping. Now every time you post on your site, it goes to ping.fm (via Hootsuite).

The beauty is that now you are getting automatic backlinks and exposure from these social networks. There are more sites you can auto-post to other than those listed in Ping. You can look at Hellotxt, PixelPipe, and other sites that do this as well. So you go sign up to those sites individually and add your RSS Feed. Now every time you post you get backlinks and exposure from these sites too, all automatically.

Another thing to do is create a free account with Onlywire. This account gets connected straight to my blog. So with every post, I get a crazy amount of backlinks right off the bat.

But you are not only getting instant backlinks with this strategy!

If you are doing appropriate linking strategies within your posts or articles, you want to have a link about every 120 words. If you do this, then when all these places crawl and bookmark your site, or link to it, then all your links are getting crawled and indexed as well.

That means they are now following those links to the pages you linked. This builds authority and strength in these backlinks. SO…what you want to do is find a way to bookmark all the places and articles you create, so that you are getting links to links.

I hope this one tip will help you with getting the organic backlinks you need for your site.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

My writing policy has always put my intended readers first; that makes sense—they are, after all, my targeted customers. Many marketers advise differently, preferring to write purely to please Google, but I see that as a big mistake. Article marketing should not be viewed as a form of SEO, because it isn’t. Article directories were never created either as a means of obtaining traffic, or as a source of good backlinks; they fail miserably at both.

Unenlightened marketers are delighted when their articles posted in directories have a 25% click-through rate, but what they should really be saying is: ‘I lost 75% of my potential visitors’. Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?

Similarly, marketers believe the articles they publish on Ezine Articles will be credited with EZine Articles’ PR-6 page rank. Again, this is total misguided: pages achieve page rank, NOT websites. Ezine Articles’ front page has a PR-6 page rank, but every new article published appears first on a page with no ranking at all, then, after a while Google will allocate it a negligible PR-0 page rank. As backlinks go, links from a PR-0 page are as close as you can get to worthless, especially since Google’s recent algorithm change.

Not totally worthless though; if you work really hard, you will only need somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 PR-0 backlinks to equal one backlink from an authority, context relevant website! And just to put things further into perspective, if you follow the train of thought which promotes article spinning and article mass-submitting to thousands of completely worthless article directories, for every thousand directories you mass-submit to, maybe only one or two hundred (often far less), will actually publish your submission. Do the math—how many submissions will it take to achieve the low estimate 50,000 PR-0 backlinks?

Your aim should always be to produce high quality, people oriented content, and spinning, no matter which ‘exalted’ program you use, will never achieve this. On the other hand, if every article you write is purposed toward being picked up and syndicated by webmasters with very targeted traffic in your niche, the traffic and SEO benefits you reap can be immeasurable. In the end, it’s relevance which really matters.

The SEO and traffic benefits I achieve from article marketing, all result from having my articles syndicated on relevant sites. Visualize each article as a flagstone in the path to my business’s long-term success. Every article I write contributes step-by-step toward an ever increasing residual income. Over the years, for several niches, I’ve written and syndicated thousands of articles; some of them have been out there, quietly producing for me for years.

All of them have been written with human readers in mind; not Google, not SEO, not article directory traffic. I don’t want my years of work to be totally dependent upon Google’s algorithm tweaks and updates; that’s a foolish way to run a business.

Webmasters with a large, focused audience (customers), are always anxious to discover quality content to feed to them, be it via their website, blog or newsletters. Write that content and place it where they can find it, and it will work for you for years to come.

Anne Pottinger +

Don’t get me wrong, I used to fight exactly those same battles, just as you are doing; but then I stopped following the advice of the so called “Internet Gurus” and got smart. Actually, I began reading some revolutionary material from a few online marketing experts and educators who offered a new marketing approach; a list of entirely new rules!

From them, I learned that online marketing tools do not sell products and services, relationships sell products and services. Yes, the true meaning of marketing is maximizing relationships. Buying the latest shiny, online tool won’t make you successful; while strategy and solid relationships will.

The new rules of web marketing are all about breaking the old rules. The internet offers a wealth of opportunities for you to engage audiences and communities, and none of them involve kissing up to Google. Take article syndication for example: whatever your niche, there are ezine publishers out there with big lists, anxiously in need of quality material to serve up to their subscribers. By submitting your focused, well written articles to them, you immediately place your knowledge in front of thousands of content relevant readers, netting you huge amounts of highly targeted traffic.

I know this works; I’ve proved it for myself in the six, highly diverse niches I market to. All I need to do is take an article already posted on one of my blogs and send it to the list of niche relevant ezine publishers I’ve accumulated. There’s no guess-work involved, you know exactly how big each list is, how large an audience in total you are writing for.

Occasionally, one or two list owners may ask for fresh, new material, but from my experience, they are in the minority. Suddenly, instead of pumping out hundreds of mind-numbing articles each month, just a few become necessary, and every single one of them will be of enormous value to your business. No more hit and miss. This is powerful stuff, and it works!

This is why ezines are the ultimate niche-marketing tool.

The “bible”, or yellow-pages I use to find all the ezines relevant to my niches is Charlie Pages’ Directory of Ezines (or DOE for short). Charlie is the author of over ten eBooks on internet marketing, and comes with more than ten years of ezine advertising experience. He is considered the leading expert on marketing with ezines, and continues to teach his DOE members how to create their own success story using ezines. To this end, he has developed a phenomenal 14+ hour course of practical teaching titled Ezine Advertising Live.

This really is a spectacular course on acquiring lazer targeted traffic, and I recommend it without reservation. Nothing is as targeted as ezine advertising and, in my opinion, nothing gives a greater return on your investment.

Take a look at the video I’ve included:

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  For much more
  information Click Here…

Anne Pottinger +

The mistake most people persist in making, is perceiving article syndication as a means of obtaining backlinks, or “link-juice”. They write content and blast it out a to proliferation of article directories. Agreed, this will result in backlinks, but all you will achieve from article directories in SEO terms are non-context-relevant, PR-0 backlinks. Actually, it will require somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 article directory backlinks to provide the link-juice equivalent to one single backlink from a relevant authority-site.

Similarly, you should not engage in article publication as a direct means of obtaining traffic. Your highly targeted traffic will be created following syndication to other, popular, niche relevant websites and blogs. Look at it this way, when your potential customer searches on one of the keywords targeted in your article, which version of that article do you really need them to find? The version in an article directory (lost traffic)? or the version published on your own website?

Another major mistake occurs when marketers spend a lot of time researching and writing articles, but publish them to article directories, without first publishing them on their own websites or blogs. This is folly, unless of course they feel an inherent need to donate their work to the directories. The purpose for which article directories were created was to provide depositories which internet publishers could visit and obtain quality content for their blogs, newsletters, etc. They are not, and never have been, sources of targeted traffic.

Look at this way, suppose the version of your article, hosted in a directory, is read by 1,000 people and 20% of them click through to your website. That’s 200 visitors, agreed, but how about the other 1,800 readers? They are lost; gone forever.

Since Google’s February Panda update, it is now especially easy to outrank article directories with solid, authoritative content on your own website. Publish your work there first, wait until it has been indexed by Google, then move forward to offer it for syndication in front of highly targeted traffic, in a few of the best article directories. Don’t waste your time submitting to hundreds of directories, you won’t get any more passive syndication. From my own experience, the top web publishers go to just Ezine Articles, ArticleBase and GoArticles (in that order), when seeking content. After more than twenty years writing for the internet, I’ve yet to discover any of my articles syndicated from any directory other than those three, and Ezine Articles accounts for more than 95%. It’s way the best established, highest quality article directory, and it’s where web publishers invariably shop first for their content.

So, the actual syndication process aside, what can you do to increase the likelihood of your articles being picked up and published by webmasters?

1.  Always write articles of at least 1,000—1,200 words. Webmasters seeking content for their sites, blogs, newsletters, etc., love longer articles, simply because they fill more space. So, give them what they are looking for! For a long time, I followed others’ advice to create short pieces of content, but it wasn’t until I began experimenting with much longer pieces that I saw them being picked up for republishing consistently.
2.  Create catchy titles. You need your titles to grab the attention of webmasters seeking content, and encourage them to publish your article, as well as the readers on his site. This will do wonders for getting mentioned on social sites, as well as enticing people to click your links.
3.  Write a great first paragraph which carries on from the title and “hooks” the reader. Your opening paragraph needs to convince the reader that the entire article is worthy of his attention.
4.  Don’t just regurgitate the same ‘ole same ‘ole. Be funny, be controversial, let your writing entertain. Remember, you are writing an article you hope to get significant mileage from, so make it newsworthy and shareworthy. Research before you write and verify any claims or statements.
5.  Never, never use your articles to sell or promote. Doing this will kill your syndication prospects stone dead, because no webmaster wants to republish your sales material. Syndicated articles should be informative rather than self-serving; your writing should educate, illuminate, explain and entertain, but never sell.
6.  Rethink your Resource Box (Author Bio). Here again, the usually accepted, sales oriented Resource Box just doesn’t work. Instead, turn the final paragraph of your article into your resource box, with a couple of targeted key phrases linking back to your own website or blog. Blend the paragraph seamlessly into the flow and style of the article as a whole.

Also, make full use of your Author Page in Ezine Articles (and any other article directory you submit to). Use it to list and link to all your available articles and outline your expertize in the niche. Remember to do this for every pen-name you set up.

Once your content is published on article directories, follow up continually and efficiently. Discover exactly where your articles are being republished by taking a random text string from an article, placing it in quotes, (an exact match) and performing a Google search. You can also set up a Google Alert for that same string and receive an email from Google whenever it is discovered.

Begin keeping a database of web publishers who have used your content and offer to send them new articles before you add them to directories, (but after you have published it on your own sites). They will usually jump at the chance.

To differentiate between articles you may have submitted to different directories, just alter the punctuation in each; maybe substitute a semi-colon for a comma. Keep a record of these changes, and you will instantly discover which directory was used.

A final point: in addition to submitting your material to article directories, be pro-active; expand your scope by seeking out likely places where it can be republished. Build a list of relevant search strings, for example:

• [niche keyword phrase] +”write for us”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”submit”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”author guidelines”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”writer guidelines”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”article submission”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”submit content”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”submit an article”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”author submission”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”article submission guidelines”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”online magazine”
• [niche keyword phrase] +”online newsletter”

If you find you are discovering too many “content buying sites”, and those which only accept previously unpublished content, you could try adding +”powered by WordPress” (in quotes) to your queries. This will restrict the search to sites built with WP and still displaying the blog footer WP declaration.

You can also try adding +”Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com” to your search strings. This will return articles copied or pasted from Ezine Articles. As was explained above, you know these sites use syndicated material.

Take a look at the content already published on the sites these searches uncover, and if you feel it matches your style, contact the webmaster with a sample of your writing.

Anne Pottinger +

The most important step, is, appropriately enough, NOT to install WordPress using Fantastico! It’s unfortunate how, on forums etc., everyone posts saying use Fantastico, while I seldom read anyone explaining why this is actually such a bad foundation for a new WordPress blog.

Why? It’s simple: by default, a Fantastico installation sets “wp_” as the prefix for each WordPress table name. Knowing this, hackers find it especially easy to send malicious code targeting your wp_ based tables. It’s as if you’ve put a ‘welcome’ mat at the door for them. This knowledge makes it a doodle for them to change the appearance of your site, redirect your url to their site, plus a whole host of other nasty things.

But, virtually everyone reading this already has WordPress installed and running on their servers, so let’s move forward with how you can not only remove that ‘welcome’ mat from the door, but also install a burglar alarm.

Here is a link to the actual WordPress instructions for what they call a “Five Minute Install“.

Your Own Computer

To begin, you need to take a realistic look at your computer. Is it free from spyware, malware, and virus infections? I promise you, you can implement the tightest security on your blog, but if you have a keylogger lurking somewhere on your computer, it won’t do you an iota of good. Malicious keyloggers are very similar to viruses and trojans; they are used by hackers to violate user privacy. Keyloggers can take the form of software, or, on non-wireless keyboards, lurk between the keyboard’s plug and the computer’s keyboard. port. Spybot Search and Destroy will detect and remove most keyloggers. It is absolutely free to use, although users can make donations to its author Patrick M. Kolla

WordPress Updates

As with most software packages today, in order to address security issues, WordPress gets updated regularly, so, let me begin by reminding you of the importance to always stay updated with the latest version. Since version 2.7, WordPress has featured automatic updates, made available for you to install through your Dashboard, and although many purists will insist you do it manually, I disagree.

Provided you always make it a habit to perform a full backup first, there is nothing wrong with using the automatic update option, especially if it’s the difference between updating “now”, or leaving it “until you have some spare time”. But note my caveat: a full backup. Many backups do nothing more than backup the blog’s MySQL database and these are of little use to you in the event of a catastrophic loss. I use and highly recommend the WordPress Backup To Dropbox plugin.

Plugins and Theme

Similarly, always keep your plugins and theme updated to the latest version and delete any you are no longer using. Delete any plugins and themes you are no longer using.
NOTE: I always keep the default theme which installed with WordPress, just as a fallback in the event of any issues suddenly cropping up with your chosen theme.

Change Your Theme File Permissions

This is one of the most secure moves you can implement, and it’s especially simple. After your blog is set up, just change your theme file permissions to 444. They can be read, but they cannot be changed (ie- hacked by an automated bot).

The ONLY downside to this is whenever, in the future, you need to modify your theme you will first have to change the permissions back to 666 temporarily. But, this is a small price to pay when it prevents your blog from being hacked.

Delete the ‘Admin’ User Account

Everyone who’s ever dealt with WordPress knows that ‘admin’ is usually the default user account for WordPress installations, and most people never delete the account. This makes it especially easy to employ brute force cracking techniques since the username is already known.

So create a new account with administrator privileges and delete the admin account; you will be given the opportunity to change attribution of all posts to your new administrator username.

Passwords

Getting into the habit of using strong passwords is critical to security. You need to make it difficult for anyone to guess your password and hard for ‘brute force’ attacks to succeed. WordPress also features a password strength meter which is shown when changing your password in your Admin. Use this when changing your password to be certain your choice is adequate. Remember, your password is your ‘key’ to your blog.

When choosing a password, mix letters, numbers and symbols, and use case sensitivity (upper and lower case letters). This mixture is known as “pseudo-random alpha-numeric combination”; using this, it is almost impossible to “crack” somebody’s password. (i.e. instead of “password,” try “pAsS34%(6*2woRd,” etc.)

Install Login Lockdown. This plugin records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery. Currently the plugin defaults to a 1 hour lock out of an IP block after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. This can be modified via the Options panel. Administrators can release locked out IP ranges manually from the panel.

Use Secret Keys in your WP-Config File

The WordPress wp-config.php file is the file which stores the database information required by WordPress to make the connections correctly. This file contains the name, address and password of the MySQL database which stores all of your user info, blog posts and other important content.

Using a secret key, you can make it even more difficult for an evildoer to gain access to your account.

Worpress even provides you with an online generator. Go to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ and copy the results into this section of your wp-config.php file if you haven’t already set up a secret key.

Move Your Config File

Move the wp-config.php file up one level from ~/home/user/public_html/wp-config.php to ~/home/user/wp-config.php;

Keeping the config file in the expected ‘public’ place means sufficiently skilled hackers can inject malware or delete your site by compromising your WordPress configuration settings. Don’t worry, WordPress automatically knows to look for wp-config.php one level up.
NOTE: This trick will not work if your blog is located in a subdirectory (domain.com/blog) or as an add-on domain in cPanel. So beware, you can only do this if your blog is the original URL in your hosting account.

Hide Your WordPress Admin Login

NOTE: This method is for people who know their IP address doesn’t change. When in place, should someone a computer other than yours tries to login to your Admin, all they will see is a blank page.

To implement this:

1. Use your FTP program to download a copy of your blog’s .htaccess file
2. Below everything already in the file, paste in:
   order deny,allow
   deny from all
   allow from xx.xx.xx.xx
3. Replace xx.xx.xx.xx with your IP address
4. If you don’t know what your ip address is, just go to http://www.whatismyip.com/
5. Copy the IP address they provide (make sure you aren’t using any proxies at the time) and paste it over xx.xx.xx.xx
6. Save the text file as .htaccess
7. Upload it to your websites wp-admin folder using FTP
8. You may have to edit the name because sometimes, when uploaded, it changes to .htaccess.txt so just edit the name and remove the .txt
9. Go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin, if it loads fine then you are good to go
10. If you only see a blank page then something went wrong. Don’t panic, just go back into your FTP program and double check you put the correct IP address in the .htaccess file
11. If you still can’t figure out whats wrong, just delete those lines of text from the file

This method blocks everyone trying to go to your Admin login page, unless their IP address is allowed in the .htaccess file. If necessary, you can include more than one IP address to this file. Just add another ‘allow from xx.xx.xx.xx’ in another line.

Turn Off Directory Browsing

One very common mistake many people make is failing to turn off directory browsing from their Cpanels. This is a very simple operation, and will prevent your web content from being stolen. People will not be able to browse the contents of your folders by typing their names into their browser. To give you an example, if you type in www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins and directory browsing is not turned off, you will see the contents of the entire folder.

To turn off directory browsing, simple log into your Cpanel account and look for the Index Manager icon.

Click on it. This will move you forward to another page where you can turn off directory browsing for individual folders, or for the entire site. To turn off indexing for the entire site you should click on the root folder, which is public_html

Finally, change the settings from “Default System Setting” to “No Indexing”. This will instantly protect your folders from malicious peeping toms forever.

Recommended WordPress Security Plugins

As you may already know, I’m definitely against installing random plugins just because you read about them. But, I will list below three security plugins, all of which I recommend and encourage you to install.

1. Login Lockdown: I’ve already explained above why you must install this plugin, just look under the Passwords sub-heading above.
2. WordPress Firewall 2: This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple, WordPress-specific heuristics, to identify and stop the most obvious attacks. There are a few powerful, generic modules that do this; but they’re not always installed on web servers, and usually difficult to configure.

   This plugin intelligently whitelists and blacklists pathological-looking phrases, based on which field they appear within, in a page request (unknown/numeric parameters vs. known post bodies, comment bodies, etc.). Its purpose is not to replace prompt and responsible upgrading, but rather to mitigate 0-day attacks and let bloggers sleep better at night.

3. WordPress Exploit Scanner: This plugin searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.

   When a website is compromised, hackers leave behind scripts and modified content that can be found by manually searching through all the files on a site. Some of the methods used to hide their code or spam links are obvious, like using CSS to hide text, and we can search for those strings.

The three plugins recommended above are all free. There is one more I would like to mention called WP Bulletproof Security, which allows one-click .htaccess website security protection from within the WP Dashboard. It is offered in a free version and a much expanded paid version priced (as I write) at $39.00. However, while researching this plugin, I came across one or two negative reports from people who had installed it when found they were unable to access their blogs.

It’s not a plugin I’ve ever used, while I use all three I’ve recommended in ALL my blogs, so the complainers may simply be using it, or setting it up incorrectly. I have to admit, they appear to offer a great deal of customer support, videos, etc.

Liability Disclaimer:

By reading this document, you assume all risks associated with using the advice given above, with a full understanding that you, solely, are responsible for anything that may occur as a result of putting this information into action in any way, and regardless of your interpretation of the advice.

You further agree that the author cannot be held responsible in any way for the success or failure of your blog as a result of the information presented above.

It is your responsibility to conduct your own due diligence and make a full backup of your blog to ensure a safe outcome should you apply any of the information and something unexpected or unforeseen occurs.

Anne Pottinger +