hasing Bing: The Truth behind the Hype

In recent weeks, we’ve noticed a surge in clients calling us to ask questions like “what’s up with Bing?” Or, “are you optimizing for Bing?” Even “are you taking advantage of Bing?”

In other words, people want to know that their search engine optimization company is taking special steps to ensure adequate representation on the newly created, much hyped search engine. And to answer the first question, what’s up is MSN’s umpteenth attempt to create a search engine that garners a significant amount of market share from its more formidable rivals - namely Google and Yahoo!. Microsoft has not been shy to promote the new engine; the current advertising campaign is estimated to cost around $100 million.

How is it going so far? It depends on who you listen to. The metrics vary wildly, depending on the source you consult. In a recent analysis of statistics, Hitwise ranked Bing as the seventeenth most popular website out of 450,000, while StatCounter noted that the engine was in third place behind Google and Yahoo!. ComScore’s ratings showed that Bing increased MSN’s average daily searcher penetration by 1.7% (from 13.8% to 15.5%). These numbers and ranking criteria are enough to make anyone’s head spin. But, when you get down to it, the event everyone is looking forward to is what will happen when the budget runs out, and the promotional period ends. Will searchers remain loyal or return to Google and Yahoo! and never look back? Nobody can really tell if any positive results are sustainable over a long term period.

Most reviewers put Bing in a good light, noting its ease of use and searching options, and some are even scrutinizing the accuracy and relevancy of Google and Yahoo! results against Bing. In the June 08, 2009 edition of B to B magazine, for instance, one reviewer appreciated the shopping comparison tool while another stated that searchers seeking refined results will be more likely to take advantage of Bing. Admittedly, the engine’s clean, streamlined look is pretty exciting; the home page features a new, interactive image each day; searchers click on certain parts of the image and trivia, facts, or additional links pop up. But after that, a simple search will provide users with results similar to its counterparts - images, video, maps, news, and the like.

Another Iteration - This Time with a Pretty Bow

But there are a few reasons not to get so excited. Number one - we have no idea where the market will settle and if the market share for Bing will continue to grow. Without this data, there’s no way to say if tailoring a website specifically for Bing is worthwhile, especially if it negatively impacts existing Google and Yahoo! rankings. Number two - no matter which stat you look at, Google still owns the lion’s share of the search market; add Yahoo! to the mix and Bing is dwarfed. Number three - Microsoft has no track record of success in the search world; its developers and visionaries have tried many different search iterations, so far to no avail. The company is banking on two things: the quality of the engine and a willingness to spend money to promote it.

And, finally, number four is a byproduct of MSN’s past explorations into search engines; the brand name is construed by many as a liability that carries a somewhat negative connotation.

Possibly, a good option would be to take the MySpace/NewsCorp route. When MySpace was bought by NewsCorp in 2005, business went on as usual; MySpace was just MySpace. NewsCorp understood what made MySpace ‘cool’ was its reputation of independence. Yes, it was crushed by Facebook down the road, but that’s a different story. Microsoft chooses to end every Bing commercial with blatant ‘by Microsoft’ wording and logos as if this is a positive - I’m not sure that it’s necessary or even wise.

In light of this information, what’s a search engine optimization company do?

Two Ways to Approach the Situation

Irresponsibly:

1. Optimizing for Bing at the potential expense of other engines that have long-term records of market share is foolhardy. At the end of the day, Bing may be new and exciting, but it still possesses a tiny amount of market share in comparison. A prudent search engine optimization company will likely recommend waiting until the numbers stabilize before charting a course of action.


2. Compromising for Bing at the expense of Google and Yahoo! is not wise. A search engine optimization company can certainly optimize for Bing, but hopefully not at the sacrifice of current rankings on more popular engines.


3. Assuming that Bing will have a static algorithm is foolhardy; if Bing does indeed gain market share in the coming weeks and months, black hat practitioners will try to “game” the system, meaning that we can expect the algorithm to change and evolve rapidly. What works on Bing right now may not work in a matter of weeks.

Responsibly:

1. However, a forward-thinking search engine optimization company can be prepared by creating test sites that are optimized specifically for Bing and learning as much as they can about the algorithm.


2. If ideal rankings are achieved, then your search engine optimization company can determine how these rankings translate to Google and Yahoo!. Obviously, it will be important to follow these statistics closely to see if Bing can gain and maintain ratings or if it will mimic Microsoft’s history of poor engine performance.


3. Your search engine optimization company should also locate specific pieces of the Bing algorithm that do not compromise rankings in Google and Yahoo!, but that may help rankings in Bing. Finding attributes of the Bing algorithm that can be applied to your website that will garner higher Bing ratings is obviously in the best interest of the site; we just want to make sure that existing rankings aren’t compromised on the road to success.

The Proof Is in the Pudding

Not surprisingly, this is not the first time we’ve had clients calling us because of some new search engine. And like any other search engine optimization company, we’ve certainly seen this hype before. There was a time when people were asking us if we were optimizing for the search engine iWon. (Anyone remember that? Didn’t think so.) To a lesser extent, when Ask.com launched a media blitz a couple years ago touting its new features, many of our clients asked (no pun intended) what our course of action was. With a historical 3% market share, the answer was “not much.” We watched as the numbers blipped upwards for a very brief, but stellar moment, and then fell back to previous levels. Of course, any good search engine optimization company will follow these types of numbers closely, but they won’t take the reliable engines that they’ve been driving for granted.

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Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, an Atlanta-based search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cbeyond, and DeKalb Medical, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. To see how we can help you achieve your online marketing goals, please contact Medium Blue.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

How to Get Your Blog Published on Amazon’s Kindle

When Oprah announced on her show that she “LOVES” Amazon’s Kindle, millions of people rushed out to get one. First introduced in 2007, the “Kindle” is Amazon’s electronic replacement for books. It’s a portable, wireless device that allows you to download books, magazines, newspapers, even blogs instantly and take them with you anywhere.

Since the Kindle can hold over 1,500 books, that’s like carrying around an entire library in the palm of your hand.

The wireless connection is built in and provided at no charge by Amazon. There’s also a built in browser for viewing websites and reading emails.

Amazon’s Kindle Store has over 230,000 ebooks to download, plus U.S. and International newspapers, magazines, even blogs. Almost all of the ebooks sell for $9.99 or less. The latest model is a larger more improved Kindle DX which was made available this year. Boosting a bigger screen and longer battery life, it can even read to you out loud. Now that makes for a nice bedtime story. It also holds over 3,500 books and sells for about $489.00.

The Kindle can also display PDF’s which you can transfer from your computer with a USB cable. The older versions of the Kindle could read PDF’s and Word documents, but they had to be emailed to Amazon first to convert them to a format readable by the Kindle. This option is still available as well.

So what does all this mean to you? Well, if you’re a blog publisher you can now publish your blogs in the Kindle Store where users can subscribe to them for a monthly fee. This is a great way to make some money and increase your subscriber base all at the same time.

First you’ll need to go to http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com to set up an account and submit your blogs for approval. Once approved your Blog “goes live” in the Kindle Store within 12 to 48 hours.

The Kindle gives the user full text and images from the blogs they are subscribed to, which unlike an RSS feed only gives you the headlines.

When submitting your blog for approval here’s the information you’ll need:

Blog Title

• Blog Tagline


• Description


• Image from top of your blog (banner or masthead)


• Screenshot of your blog (optional)


• Posting Frequency

So how does the payment process work? Good question, nice to see you’re paying attention. You’ll be paid 30% of the monthly blog subscription price. Amazon sets the price, not you. It’s priced on what they think is a “fair value” for their customers. For example, my two blogs were set at $0.99 a month.

All blog subscriptions are free for the first 14 days. Then they’re billed at the monthly subscription price. Blogs are wirelessly updated throughout the day.

You’ll be paid by check or EFT, your choice. Electronic Funds Transfer has no charge, but if you opt for a paper check and live in the U.S. you’ll have an $8.00 fee attached. Payments are sent once your earnings reach $50.00.

If you publish a blog I’d strongly encourage you to get it listed in Amazon’s Kindle Store. It won’t cost you a thing but a few minutes of your time and makes for great free exposure..

By Merle- The pay-per-click Authority when it comes to paid search engine advertising. With helpful articles, how-to’s and tips that will help you make the most from your advertising investment. Download a FREE “How To” ebook by subscribing to our ezine at http://www.PayPerClickResearch.com

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Unhappy With SEM? You’re Not Alone

A company called X+1 released a study last week that highlighted the pain felt by many buying keywords from Google and the other engines. Satisfaction with the performance of their companies’ SEM campaigns was egregiously poor: on a scale of 1 to 7, only 12% of respondents gave SEM a top-ranked 7, with 57% ranking SEM a 1 or a 2. Performance satisfaction with fairly simple search campaigns (30 to 100 keywords pointing to customized landing pages) didn’t do any better: a full 42% reported being either “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied.”

The study didn’t really explore what these marketers were doing wrong, but contained a few clues worth mentioning. About 60% of survey respondents were doing SEM in-house. I’m not going to say that it’s impossible to conduct competitive SEM campaigns in-house, and I’d need to know a lot more about the level of automation and staff experience of such in-house teams before laying blame, but it’s still a warning sign. Another cause for concern: key SEM decisions were often made by fairly low-level people, including analysts (48%), strategy/results people (45%) and implementer/tacticians (36%). I’m not saying that these people aren’t qualified to accomplish operational search tasks, but I must question their suitability for high-level tasks such as procuring a suitable SEM agency.

Disappointment over SEM’s performance didn’t seem to dampen these marketers’ willingness to lay out more money in the months ahead. Most (65%) of survey respondents reported that they were planning either to spend the same amount of money in 2009 that they spent last year, with a handful (13%) planning to spend 20% more. I’d hate to think that this is a case of “throwing good money after bad” but one must hope that the survey respondents are taking active steps to reform their operations before handing the search engines even more money.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet for all the dissatisfaction. SEM agencies (and yes, I work for a SEM agency) will likely use this data to hammer companies that continue to do SEM tasks in-house, promising to ride to the rescue. Unfortunately, the reputation of many SEM agencies isn’t exactly stellar; otherwise “agency churn” wouldn’t be as high as it is. Sadly, there are situations in which agencies have done a far worse job with search tasks than a qualified in-house team. Spending more to better train in-house search teams and equip them with an appropriate level of automation will help some, but such investments are difficult to justify in a recession, and the fear that one’s best-trained people will up and leave when the economy improves is well-founded.

If there’s one sure cure for avoiding disappointment, it’s to manage your expectations correctly. Paid search is an exceptionally difficult marketing medium to master, despite the perception (promoted by the search engines) that it’s a self-serve, plug-and-play road to profits. Here, failure isn’t just an option: it’s practically guaranteed for the unwary and the unequipped. Buyers must always be wary, whether they’re buying keywords, staffing in-house teams, or shopping for SEM agencies. The good news is that if you approach this medium with fear, respect, caution, and a first-rate, executable plan, you just might wind up being happy with your results.

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Steve Baldwin is editor-in-chief at Didit, an agency for search engine marketing and auctioned media management based in New York. You can reach Steve at steve.baldwin@didit.com.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Google Adsense May Be King But There are Other Options

When it comes to making money with a website, one of the most popular methods is running text and/or image ads on various pages. It’s referred to as contextual advertising and “inline ads”. Text or image ads are shown which match the content of the pages. Inline ads appear as highlighted words on the page when the visitor hovers over highlighted text on the page. Ads appear in small boxes. Contextual ads are often displayed to the right or left of website copy, or as blocks within sections of the text. The ads shown are related to the content of each individual page. As visitors click on these links, you earn cash.

Probably the largest and most used of the contextual ad programs is Google’s Adsense. Google really is a giant when it comes to the Internet, and their talents go far beyond just being a search engine. Adsense is used by many site owners to bring in a monthly income.

If you’re interested in running Adsense ads, first you’ll need to apply and get approved. Once approved for one site, you can place Adsense on any other site that you own. You can decide to run only text ads or choose from image and text. Various sizes are offered, and you can custom select colors to match the look of your site. Once the code is generated, you paste it on your HTML pages where you want the ads to appear. Simple & easy.

But what happens if you’re not approved by Google, or for some reason your Adsense account were to be terminated? What would you do then? There are other ad network options out there and I’ve gathered some of the best alternatives together here.

Before signing up for any ad program, make sure you read their terms of service and any requirements to make sure it’s a good fit for your website. Also, review the payment options so you’ll know how and when you can expect to be paid. Let’s review:

1) Text-Link-Ads.com: http://www.text-link-ads.com/

Once your site is approved, you insert the code on your page and they sell simple text ads that appear on your site. You have final say over any ads being published. Payments are made via Paypal or Clickbank. You receive 50% of the sale price for each link they serve up. This ad network is acceptable to be run on the same page as Google Adsense as this is not considered contextual advertising.

2) Adbrite: http://www.adbrite.com/

A variety of ad formats to choose from. You can run text ads, banners, inline ads or even full page ads. You can choose to approve or reject ads before they appear on your site. Pays monthly with the default minimum check amount of $100.00. Once your site is approved, ads will appear within 24 hours of your pasting the code. Adbrite has no policy against using other ad networks on your site at the same time.

3) Kontera: http://www.kontera.com/
Contextually relevant ads and ad units which are linked to keywords on your web page. Ads displayed will match the content of your site. For your website to be approved it must be in English, be content rich with more than 50 words per page. You can run text, image, billboard, and video ads.

4) Quigo.com: http://www.quigo.com/publishers.html

Quigo offers content-targeted advertising to those with strong traffic. Publishers with 500,000 or more monthly page views are encouraged to apply. Once approved, simply copy and paste the code.

5) Yahoo Publisher Network: http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Works very similar to Google’s Adsense program. You design your own ads, choosing colors and formats, then paste some code on your page. You’ll be paid per click. Advanced ad targeting and display capabilities can sometimes improve your results. You can choose to be paid via Paypal once your earnings are $50.00, or a check when you hit $100.00.

6) Chitika.com: http://chitika.com/

A full service online ad network which serves over two billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites. Chitika ads are not contextual and can be run on the same page as Adsense. Twenty-four different ad sizes are available. Payment is via Paypal once your account is at $10.00, or a check when you reach $50.00.

7) Miva: http://tinyurl.com/oha28n

Miva offers a wide variety of ad formats to choose from: content ads, inline ads, search ads. You’ll be paid on a per click basis. Payments are made monthly by check or Paypal once your balance reaches $25.00. You can also block competitor ads from appearing on your site.

AffiliatesGarage.com: http://www.affiliatesgarage.com/

A different type of ad network which allows you to display affiliate ads in an “Adsense Style”. You can run Clickbank and Paydotcom text ads on your site or blog and earn up to 75% commission.

9) Bidvertiser.com: http://www.bidvertiser.com/

Display text ads on your website and let advertisers bid against each other. Ad formats are skyscrapers, banners, rectangles, buttons. They even have ads for your RSS feeds. Payout is monthly via Paypal once your balance is $10.00. This one pays on a cost per click basis.

10) AmaSense Ads: http://www.amasenseads.com/

This service allows you to create Google Adsense styled ads for Amazon products. Different ad formats are available which makes it easy to integrate into your site. Amasense can also be used side by side with Google Adsense without any problems.

As ads are clicked on, you earn a percentage of the product which is paid by Amazon depending on the type of product that is bought. You must have an Amazon associate account first before signing up. To get one go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

As you can see Adsense is not the only game in town when it comes to running ads on your site. If you have multiple sites, you may want to use one of the services mentioned above, then test, to see which one is a better earning opportunity. You might be surprised at what you learn.

It’s against Google’s terms of service to run another contextual ad service on the same page as Adsense, but there are exceptions to the rule. Most of the services above will tell you if you can run their ads alongside Adsense.

If your websites are mainly information based, network advertising is an excellent way for you to earn an income with little effort on your part. No matter if you use Adsense or another service, it just makes for good dollars and cents.

Merle’s Mission Blog- “Rants, Raves and Random Acts of Kindness” a self proclaimed “Internet Junkie” with a passion for net marketing, affiliate marketing, social networking. An avid Blogger and writer with several niche sites to her credit. Find out more at http://merlesworld.blogspot.com/

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Three Tips for Effective Article Marketing

One of the best ways to get free advertising and links back to your site is to write good articles and publish them on blogs and websites around the Internet with a link back to your site. Doing this in a systematic way is usually called “article marketing.” I have done it for years and believe me it works! However, my enthusiasm for article marketing is started to wane due to an avalanche of poorly written articles which do not provide end users with useful information.

In the same way that reciprocal linking was destroyed by misguided users trying to “game” the search engines, article marketing stands in a precarious position today. I publish three article directories and I can assure you that most of the articles submitted should be consigned to the recycle bin because they go against the basic idea of providing good useful information in an easy-to-read fashion. In case you are writing articles, or about to have some articles written for you, here are three important tips for doing it properly.

1. Provide Information and Not a Sales Pitch

It is futile to write directly about your product and explain how great it is. If this is what you want to do, it is better to write a press release and explain the newsworthy features of your work. An article for publication on another website should be related to your area of expertise, but should not be bragging about you or your product.

For example, if you operate a garden supply business, then write “how-to” articles helping people to solve some of the gardening and landscaping problems that they might be facing. You don’t have to say how great your garden supply business is. If you write well and provide useful tips, then the readers will be impressed and they will want to click through on your link and find out more about you and your business

People who visit your website after reading a good article are high quality visitors, because they have been “pre-sold” on you. They already regard you as an “expert” and will be more inclined to buy your products or subscribe to your newsletters than someone who clicks through on just any old link.

2. Write the article properly or get the article written by someone who can write!

If you were to submit an article to your English teacher in high school or college, would you want to hand in something with obvious grammatical mistakes even in the title itself? Of course you wouldn’t but that doesn’t stop people from hiring unqualified ghostwriters to write tons of sub-standard articles for them at $5 per article.

Try writing an intelligent 500 word article. Can you do it in ten minutes or even twenty minutes? Probably not. Take the time to write your article well and if you are hiring someone then you should opt for a native English speaker who will give it a reasonable amount of time. You may have to pay more for it, but you will gain in the end.

How will you gain? Well written and informative articles get reprinted at a much greater frequency than the junk or filler articles. You will gain with more links and most importantly you will get more credibility as an expert in your field.

3. Format Your Articles Properly

One of the keys to effectiveness is the readability of your article. Do you like looking at a long block of printed words without any paragraph breaks? Take the time to divide your articles into short paragraphs punctuated by sub-heads. It will give your readers a chance to assimilate your message more easily.

The reason why I am particular on this point is that many people use automated article submission systems which push all the paragraphs together. Editors have no time to make these corrections for you and may delete the articles. Alternatively, your article may be published, but in a way that turns off the reader, rather than inspiring her to read the whole article. Submit your articles in a proper format and make sure that your submission system sends a well formatted version to the publishers.

If you follow these three tips then you will be “adding value” to the Internet rather than clogging it with useless filler. You will be doing a service to the public, and in the end it will work to your benefit too.

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Donald Nelson is a search engine optimization and article marketing specialist. You can read more of his articles at his website http://www.a1-optimization.com

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Search Engine Optimizing your Wordpress installation

If you’re obsessive about SEO you likely already have a domain name that contains one relevant keyword, an entire keyword phrase or even a targeted search term. This is a great practice if you have a website that is highly targeted to one topic or set of keywords, but there is a lot more you can do that will help to boost your search engine ranking position (SERP) and possibly outrank the sites that DO have your keyword in their domain name.

The keyword appearing in the URL is important, but more important than that is the keyword appearing in the title tag. Somewhere in between or just underneath is something called the H1 (which is not surprisingly followed in importance by H2). Naturally your keywords should also appear in the content here and there (not everywhere). If you write about your keywords on a daily basis you are probably already on top of your SEO situation, but if your blog is more relaxed topically and you like to drift and touch on anything you like, then you may benefit from doing a few SEO best practices for Wordpress.

1) Title Tags

The title tags are the most important thing. It may not be most important to the Search Engines, but it certainly is to the reader. Even if something is the #1 result in Google, a reader wont likely click on a title that has nothing to do with what they are searching for. That is why it is good to serve your post headline in the title tag instead of just the blog name.

You can do this by editing your header.php to include the appropriate Wordpress template tags within the HTML Title tag. This may also mean using an IF statement to determine what type of page is displaying and what tags to use.

2) The H1 Tag

There is a high degree of confusion circulating the web on the proper use of h1 tags with Wordpress. The basic purpose of h1 is to let the search engine know what a page is about. The last thing you want is more than one h1 on a page. This confuses the heck out of search bots and, as a result, drops your SEO score.

The typical belief is that serving your blog title in the H1 tag is proper. This makes sense because you have your keywords in your blog title, but what about the individual posts? Aren’t the post titles more relevant than the name of your blog?

If you have a post on your blog about “99 Ways to skin a cat” isn’t that particular page about skinning cats rather than your blog’s title, which may be “catskinners.org”? The solution here is that you want to have your post titles on the single post page inside the H1 tags. Since there shouldn’t be more than one H1 per page, this means you need your title or logo inside a div.

If you have more than one post on your homepage (which most people do) then you should place your post titles’ inside of H2 tags and your logo in an H1. This tells the SE’s that your homepage is about whatever your title is, and the post headlines are the next most important thing. Once a user clicks through to a single post the most important thing becomes the title of that post.

3)Inbound/Outbound links

A huge part of blogging is sharing the link love and creating conversations between one blog to the next. It is typical in the blogosphere to see someone quote a post from another blog, add their own 2 cents and then link the blog where the topic started. This is a fine thing to do and it will even help you gain a few links yourself as your own sharing attitude encourages others to share. You just have to be careful not to have too many links out and balance it with your links from your blog pointing to your own blog.

People often forget that a link to your blog from your blog still counts as a link to your blog (how was THAT for a sentence?). Since one of the best things you can have linking to your blog is some good relevant anchor text that contains your keywords, why not go ahead and link any of those words within your posts back to your homepage?

Here are some more things you can do to make the best use of your internal links:

• Linking from your posts to older posts (when relevant)


• Linking from your posts to your homepage (whenever possible)


• Keep your navigation consistent across the whole site


• Link every page to your homepage at least once (more is ok too)


• Use a sitemap template that includes all your single posts and pages as well as the date and category archives

4) Anchor Text and Keywords

You probably already know at this point that one of your main goals in offsite SEO is to get links with your keywords in the anchor text (the text that makes up the active link). This is one of the single most important factors to both your SE for your determined keywords and your PR. The more links you have, the better your PR. The more links you have containing your keywords, the better your SERPs for those keywords are. It is healthy to mix them up and use different combinations of your keywords to help monopolize your grip on a given topic.

We’re almost finished. There is one more important spot we need to place our keywords. If I were a keyword where would I be? In this blog post! You can have all the SEO you want on your Wordpress template but it isn’t going to matter much if you don’t talk about your keywords in your blog posts. You obviously don’t want to come off as a spammer so be wary not to simply randomly throw in long and short-tail keywords in every single sentence. However, there is nothing wrong with using your full keyword search term whenever the opportunity arises. For instance, if you have the option to use a pronoun or the actual keywords you should choose the keyword.

You can optimize your Wordpress for search engine rankings quite simply by sticking to some of the concepts we’ve covered here. It can be done over time or all in one shot. However, it would be handy to come back to this little guide each time you are setting up a new installation of Wordpress. Remember that not all Wordpress themes are search engine optimized so you may have to get your hands dirty and shine up the code of each template you use on your blog. A good start is making sure the markup is semantic and Google recommended.

Written by Ryan Edmunds from Needless Productions

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Article Marketing: How To Capture A Reader’s Attention With Your Article Summary

When you’re doing article submissions, you’ll notice a field on the submission page that asks for an article summary (aka, short description).

As an author, you may not realize all the places where your article summary is used, but the article summary is a prime opportunity for luring readers to your article.

How is the article summary used?

The short description of your article will appear on the summary page of an article directory and also in Google and the other search engines in search results pages.

There are a few different types of summary pages on an article directory–there’s a summary page for a particular category, for each individual author (usually a list of your articles with their summaries), and if your article appears on the main page of an article directory a reader will see your article title and your article summary.

Is the article summary important?

Yes!

Think of your short description as a billboard along the interstate miles away from your business. You can’t see the billboard from your business, but depending on what you write on the billboard, you can effectively lure someone from the interstate to your business.

Google is the interstate and your article summary is the content on your billboard. Don’t you want to take advantage of all that traffic and direct readers to your article?

A potential reader is doing a Google search and is scanning a list trying to decide what page to click through to, and your short description can be the deciding factor as to whether they click through to your article.

What makes a good short description?

Whether you know it or not, you probably already know the answer to this. Go to your favorite article directory and look at the list of titles and article summaries.

Some are better than others, right? Some of the short descriptions make you want to read more, while others make you say, “No thank you–next!”

When you’re doing your next article submission, here are a few tips for capturing a reader’s attention with your article summary:

1) Your short description should tell what your article is about. Give specific info–what is your article topic and what info will you be providing in your article?

2) Try to lead the reader into your article from your article summary. Here’s an example:

“With some creativity you can transform your articles into multiple pieces of marketing content which can save you time, extend your marketing reach, and create more doorways for potential customers to find you. If you’re in the mood to stretch your marketing content mileage, try one of these 3 creative uses for your articles.”

This summary tells the reader what the article is about, how the information can benefit them, and what awaits them when they click through to read the entire article.

3) Write in complete sentences.

Sometimes you will see an article summary that just says something like: “Article about windshield wipers”

That’s it–end of story. Not a very compelling enticement for a reader to click through and learn more, is it?

No matter what the topic of your article, you can phrase your article summary in such a way that readers interested in that topic will say, “Hmmm, I want to know more!”

4) A short cut may be to use your intro or closing paragraph or some other part of your article as your short description. You don’t necessarily have to write your short description from scratch. Lots of times I will look over my finished article and pick out phrases and sentences that I think represent the article and would be good at luring a reader in.

Bonus tips:

• Mind your word count–Usually a publisher will require a short description to be 450 words or less, including spaces.


• Do not mention your own business or website address in the article summary, as many publishers do not appreciate that. The article summary is not your resource box–the article summary is a description of your article, while your resource box is the place where you can talk about yourself, your business, and your website.

Writing an article summary is not hard, but you do need to put some thought into how your summary will appear to your readers.

Think of your article summary as being a little advertisement for your article. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who is looking at a long list of results in Google–what sort of summary would make you want to click through and read the entire article?

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com