A single approach can’t cover all your bases. The same applies to article marketing.

Article Marketing Strengths - Ability to deliver an interesting "sample" of your expertise - Long enough to be informative (600-800 words) - Reaches and speaks to tightly focused interest groups - Quickly delivers message throughout Internet - Long shelf life - some websites keep articles posted for years - Builds on keywords that your website uses - Incoming-links from websites that post your articles

Plan More than One Article at a Time

You can’t develop much momentum with one article. That’s like shooting a gun with a single bullet, or a PPC (pay-per- click) campaign for just one term. The odds of hitting your mark aren’t too good. Several articles written to reinforce each other generate more mileage. As you get more articles out there, people start paying attention, and you can target more keywords. Repeated publications develop a personality that readers recognize.

Plan a number of titles in advance, with a theme building from one to next. Keep each one tightly focused, but related to others. In that way, you develop in-depth "voice" of an expert. And your information won’t lapse into ho-hum generalities. Write first-rate articles when you rely on extensive free resources http://www.promotewitharticles.com at Article Marketing Academy.

Try writing some in a series (like, Part 1 of 3 parts) to build anticipation for future segments. Also, your message won’t be confined to 600 to 800 word article limit. Since each article in series resides on your website, readers needn’t wait to read them all (giving them an incentive to visit your site). Later, whole series can be offered as a special report or ebook (once related material is added).

Write with your keywords in mind. Maintain your primary message, with a different twist for parallel niches. Go to extra effort to say something new. That’s easy when you provide stories, examples, case studies from your own experience. As you dish out practical assistance in your articles, readers will be eagerly watching for your next ones. © Lynella Grant, 2005

Part 2 includes posting articles, writing to please search engines, and ways to re-use articles. Part 2 of 2, http://www.promotewitharticles.com/strategy102.html

Pros: Easy to install and customize. Relatively inexpensive. Cons: Limited optimization possibilities. More Info at www.x-cart.com

Prospect Path Ecommerce System

This is much less known shopping cart software but after checking out its features, we strongly recommend it to anyone who is serious about search engine optimization. It seems that this system was build with one thing in mind, search engines. It generates static pages automatically; that means that all pages in your web store are HTML with static URLs. System will also put name of product into title, keywords, description, alt tags, heading, body text and even file name of that product's page! All of this is done automatically as soon as administrator adds a new product. Prospect Path Ecommerce System also includes traffic statistic and ROI tracking. It can track buyers from affiliate programs, text links, banners and even magazines and newspapers (it employs promotion codes to tracks buyers from magazines and newspapers). This shopping cart is very easy to use but there is no installation wizard at this time. After purchase ABC4PC.com (creators of Prospect Path Ecommerce System) will install and configure it on your server for free. Cost of this shopping cart software depends on number of features you want but starting price is around $4,700.

Pros: Amazingly search engine friendly. Great tracking features. Cons: Difficult to install. Expensive. More Info at www.abc4pc.com