Why search engines love blogs? And so should you!

Ask this question of any SEO expert and they will tell you “fresh content” and “backlinks”, other than Google took over Blogger. The last one is my favorite as no one can argue with that.

Search engines like fresh content as its valuable for their users, and links show that other sites or blogs (and not just your own website) think that the information on your website is useful to their readers.

A blog can be an individual’s viewpoint, a life journal, a school girl’s diary, a poet’s space, an artist’s expression, or just about sharing your moments with family and friends. One can share information, pictures and even videos with no previous knowledge of designing and programming.

Companies use blogs to promote their latest products, introduce new services, announce upcoming events, share event pictures and videos, announce special offers/discounts, run opinion polls, introduce new team members, special announcements, build loyalty, and invite their customers to leave comments and give testimonials.

Home businesses and young entrepreneurs use blogs to increase awareness and attract traffic to their online business, new ventures, and daring expeditions into the unknown.

Professionals use blogs to brand themselves, create awareness and credibility, make money (yes that’s possible), and share their knowledge and experiences.

Housewives use blogs to share cooking tips and recipes, their children’s growing moments, travel log of the last trip, and shopping expeditions.

We SEO experts use blogs for achieving higher rankings for specific keywords. Unbelievable, and yet in many instances my blog link appears higher on search engines results page than pages that I optimize personally for the same keyword.

Getting started with blogging is relatively easy. You can sign up with www.blogger.com or other such blogging platforms.

If you don’t own a domain name for your blog, no worries, you can start with a free subdomain with Blogger. Eg. www.thisbemyjourney.blogspot.com or map it to your company’s domain name Eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html.

Statistics on Blogging

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay!

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
• Facebook: 41.0 million MySpace 75.1 million
• Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008)
• 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
• 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008)
• 184 million WW have started a blog 26.4 US
• 346 million WW read blogs 60.3 US
• 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report is now available. For a detailed report go to http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

The report states that Brands make up a major part of bloggers' online conversations. More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate. Even day-to-day experiences with customer care or in a retail store are fodder for blog posts. Companies are already reaching out to bloggers: one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates.

Bloggers believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as information sources. One in five bloggers don't think that newspapers will survive the next ten years. Half believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.

Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

But wait, that’s not all. The report also states that Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences. So there is potential for profit from blogging. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

Well you are convinced, and you start writing periodically, uploading photographs and videos and have shared your blog link with many friends, but a few months down a nagging worry start to hit you (this is for those who don’t track their readers using tracking software’s like Google Analytics) that you are writing for “you” alone and your mum who thinks “my son is the best”.

While there is nothing wrong with writing, just for the pleasure of writing, I am sure you all want to reach out and touch someone else with all your hard work. The real challenge is to get your target audience to read your blog whether its family, friends, colleagues, or readers around the world who would be interested in what you are writing about.

Trust me even friends will betray you if what you write does not make them want to come back, so pay close attention to the questions below and answer them as honestly as you can.

What would make your blog special to your audience?

Why would they want to bookmark your blog?

Why would they want to link to it and tell others?

What is my ultimate goal for this blog?

While the first 3 questions require you to dig down deep inside your minds and hearts, the last question is most critical. What do you ultimately want out all the hard work, late nights and coffee cups invested into your blog?

Well, whether your blog is for the purpose of sharing knowledge, gaining credibility, increasing visibility and rankings, building customer loyalty, sharing information, making money, or assisting our fellow men in the journey of life, the bottom line remains - search engines love blogs, and so should you!

To know more about promoting you new blog, read my blog postGet your New Blog Noticed (Part 1) and (Part 2).

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords (Part 5)

For those who have not read Success with Keywords Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4, I suggest you do that now before you read any further.

Welcome to the last installment of the Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords. I hope you have had a great journey so far, and as I had promised we will continue our keyword discovery process and try and find additional keywords that could drive business to my website.

In this article we are going to explore some of the tools and resources available that will assist you in your journey to finding winning keywords.

Each keyword you target becomes a funnel of traffic to your website, each keyword will have competition, and each keyword targeted is potential business.

So the KEY to SUCCESS is in the KEYWORDS you select!

Till so far we have managed to create a list of around 50 great keywords that are focused around my business, my products/services, my target audiences, and my competition.

A quick recap of keywords identified so far…

Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, mumbai seo expert, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india,

seo services mumbai, seo services in mumbai, seo services india, seo services in india, seo content services mumbai, seo content services india, seo link building mumbai, seo link building india, seo directory services mumbai, seo directory services india, seo consulting mumbai, seo consulting india,

seo marketing mumbai, seo marketing india, internet marketing mumbai, internet marketing india, seo jobs mumbai, seo training mumbai, seo training india, seo outsource india, outsource seo india, sem mumbai, sem india, sem services mumbai, sem services india,

Seo specialist mumbai, seo specialist india, seo firm mumbai, seo firm india, seo mumbai, seo india, web marketing mumbai, web marketing india, mumbai seo, seo in mumbai.

In the end of Part 4, I had left you with some food for thought …

From the keywords list I have created so far:

1.How many users are actually searching for my keywords?

2.What is the search trend and search volume for my keyword over the past 4 years across top search engines?

3.What competition am I up against for my keywords?

How important do you think it is to know the above metrics? How will the above data assist in planning a seo strategy for my website? How will the above data affect my rankings?

If you are still reading further, you have obviously understood the importance on knowing the metrics of success. So here goes…

The key to successful search engine optimization begins with a simple keyword phrase. Everything depends on that keyword phrase. You'll be including those keyword phrases in your META tags, your title and other important tags, as well as in the body content of the page itself.

I have listed a few tools and links below that I have found very useful in my research:

(This list is dedicated to my partner in the SEO Company, Rajesh, who will smile when he reads this ------> Enjoy)

Google Insights:

Google’s recently launched Google Insights offers search marketers and online businessman a chance to look at the vast amount of user search volumes in Google universe over the past 4 years. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames for a keyword, and even compare it against other keywords.

Search by Categories: Narrow data to specific categories, like finance, health, and sports.

Examples: Entertainment category in India (last 30 days) Seo in India in 2008, 2007... The top vehicle brands in France (last 30 days)

Search by Seasonality: Anticipate demand for your business so you can budget and plan accordingly.

Examples: soccer in 2006 vs. 2007 basketball in 2008, 2007,... hotel in 2008, 2007,...

Search by Geographic distribution: Know where to find your customers. See how search volume is distributed across regions and cities.

Examples: pizza in Italy vs. the USA ski in Australia vs. Switzerland soccer in Brazil, Italy, Germany, UK

Wordtracker:

Wordtracker is a Web-based service is a great tool for anyone who is serious about identifying the right keywords. Be sure to check out WordTracker's KEI, Keyword Effectiveness Index, which is an index factor built into WordTracker that compares the 24-hour results (the *potential* for traffic) with the number of competing Web pages to help identify which keywords are most effective. The higher the KEI factor, the more effective the phrase will be, based on the phrase being both popular but having low competition.

Thesaurus.com:

Use a thesaurus to discover keywords and phrases you've never considered.

http://thesaurus.reference.com/
http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus

Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture):

Offers a Search Term Suggestion Tool, which is available through the advertisers' area. Simply enter your keyword phrase, and you'll learn how many people actually searched for that term during the previous month. This tool won’t tell you how many people are searching for your keyword phrase at other engines, but give you an idea of how popular the keyword phrase is.

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There are many more tools out there; all you have to do is “ask for it”. The above tools will help you get started.

In the beginning, there was a word, and that word was KEYWORD.

For those who have taken the time to journey with me over the last one week, thank you and hope to you again soon.

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords (Part 2)

For those who have not read Success with Keywords – Part 1, I suggest you do that now, and then this article will make a whole lot of more sense to you.

As I had promised we will continue our keyword discovery journey and try and find additional keywords that could drive business to my website www.seo-optimization-experts.com.

A quick recap… My keywords list now includes Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india.

Now let me list out the seo services I offer:

1. Keyword research
2. Optimization services
3. Content creation
4. Link building
5. Directory listing
6. Consultancy services

Now how would someone search for seo related content services? You got it, by searching for seo content services mumbai. I have added the location in the keyword, as explained in Part 1, so I won’t get into detail. In this way I can list out all the services I offer and create compelling keywords that the user would type to reach my website. The above list could have been created based on products I offered as well.

As you can see, by adding the services in my keywords, I have created focused keywords based on services that I can actually offer. There is no point in targeting keywords just for the additional traffic and then having no value to the user on the link. The search engines dislike that, and many websites that capture keywords but have no content are soon being banned from the listings.

My new list of keywords can now include: seo services mumbai, seo services in mumbai, seo services india, seo services in india, seo content services mumbai, seo content services india, seo link building mumbai, seo link building india, seo directory services mumbai, seo directory services india, seo consulting mumbai, seo consultants india.

And the more competitive keywords would be seo content services, seo link building services, seo directory services, seo services. Generic keywords have lots of competition, and as in everything else with life, good things come only with time, commitment and patience. So while your local keywords start the ball rolling, always keep targeting the bigger pies of traffic.

I have seen companies generally tend to start slagging in their seo strategy once they start getting good rankings for a few of the non-competitive keywords.

There is no better way to say this…so I will say it straight out…forget about seo and your online business, if you plan to stay committed for just 3 months, 6 months, or even a year. Search engine marketing is a marriage and once you commit there is no turning back.

It only takes a few weeks to undo all the good online business you have been doing for the past year, so make seo part of your integral business strategy.

Don't think that you have to focus ONLY on your products or services. What are your USP’s, something you offer and no one else can? What are your customers looking for when they come online? Give them the information they're looking for, and you'll be pulling in targeted traffic from keyword areas that you may never have considered before.

And, most times, those keyword areas are much less competitive than trying to target your individual goods and services. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't target your products -- only that you need to look at other avenues from which to pull traffic as well.

The journey has just begun, and the path ahead is full of surprises and mysteries to harness the true power of your online business.

In my next post in the Mumbai SEO Expert series I will explore the target audience I hope to attract and see what kind of keywords and keyword combinations come up…. (To be continued in Part 3)

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series – Success with Keywords (Part 1)

In the beginning, there was a word, and that word was KEYWORD.

As a SEO Expert in Mumbai, I am often asked why I have “seo expert mumbai” appearing in some form or another in most of my blog posts, articles and my website www.seo-optimization-experts.com.

In the two lines above lies the answer to that question. As a Seo Expert, I obviously want to excite any user or a company who is seeking the services of a seo expert or seo company on a search engine like Google to find me easily.

And I, like any smart businessman want anyone typing seo expert in mumbai to land to my website or my blog post. The reason I have added Mumbai (location) is common sense. Since I am based in Mumbai, it’s highly probable I will more easily attract the users who want to find a seo expert or seo company in close vicinity.

So seo expert mumbai is primarily a KEYWORD.

It’s the KEYWORD that will drive potential customers to your website or blog that will translate into traffic, and eventually sales.

Now I have clients in Middle East and in US as well, but having location in my keyword ensures targeted traffic from my city of business. Also, as any smart SEO expert would know, that targeting a common term like “seo expert” would be more difficult to achieve, as I will have to compete with thousands of other SEO experts worldwide for that keyword (of course that does not mean that I intend to give up).

In fact it is one of my personal goals to rank No #1 for seo expert, but in the meanwhile why let good business get away.

To demonstrate the power of putting location in your keyword when it comes to search engine rankings, type in seo experts in mumbai in Google, and my website appears on Rank #1, but only if you are searching from Mumbai, but would appear Rank #11 if you were searching from, say New Delhi or London.

If you notice the individual keywords “seo” and “experts” also forms part of my domain name www.seo-optimization-experts.com. This is a key factor in achieving high rankings for a particular keyword phrase, i.e. get your keyword or individual keywords, into your domain name.

For those who are cringing about now, thinking they already have a domain and it does not include the keyword, don’t worry, there are ways of getting around, one of them being, you can setup sub domains.

E.g. www.abcd.com is in the business of property development in Dubai. Now the primary keyword company ABCD wants to target is “Property developers in Dubai”. A sub domain can be set up like http://property-developers-dubai.abcd.com which would be great to get higher ranking for the keyword “property developers in dubai” in search engines.

Simply put search engines rank sites higher which contain the keyword the user is searching for in their domain name. There are various other factors like optimizing each page around a keyword, building quality links and fresh content that will influence search engine rankings, but that’s another story.

Another sub domain e.g. http://mumbai.seo-optimization-experts.com will target keyword “mumbai” which is a part of the keyword I am targeting seo expert mumbai, but not currently part of my domain name.

Since Mumbai is located in India, it also makes sense for me to target users who are searching for seo experts in India, so we have seo expert in India as another important keyword.

If I had an office in say London (feels good to say it), I would also have created a sub domain http://london.seo-optimization-experts.com. In this way I would have “seo”, “experts” and “london” in my domain…and a user typing in seo expert in London would find my website in search engine results (if I have done my page optimization around that keyword properly that is).

So you can see how I started with one keyword seo expert mumbai, and additional keywords phrases got created in the process of writing this article.

So as you can see, my keywords list has gone up a bit, Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india.

Notice that though the keywords above look similar, the search ranking for each of those keywords is different. You can never be sure what the user will type in to reach you, so identify longer versions of your keywords as well. A user searching for seo expert in mumbai, and if I am optimized for that exact keyword as well, rather than only seo expert mumbai, my page would be found higher in the search listing.

I have also targeted mis-spelt words like seo exprt mumbai which means that even when a users mis-spells by mistake you ensure your website comes up. This is becoming soon out of date with Google suggest, and their new browser Chrome that suggests possible keywords based on each letter you type.

This is just the beginning into a wonderful journey of finding the right powerful keywords that will generate business for you, where you start with one keyword, and eventually create hundreds of powerful keywords that become traffic funnels to your website.

Having hundreds of focused keywords around my business would mean… you do the maths. Like I always say, I am not a SEO expert, I am just a smart businessman.

In my next post in this series I will explore the services I offer and see what kind of keywords and keyword combinations come up…. (Continued in Part 2)

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What’s in a Title?

Any SEO expert worth his salt will tell you that the title tag title (don’t neglect me title) is one of the most important tags for seo, and yet the most neglected.

While explaining to a client about rich targeted keywords, traffic generating blogs, rss feeds, article submissions, link building and directory building, social networking and social bookmarking, wiki’s, youtube, adwords and other such popular SEO’s big guns, one tends to ignore explaining in detail about the little meta tag called title. So just how important is this title tag?

Ask a journalist about the title aka headline and he will tell you it’s the most difficult part of writing a story for it can make the difference whether the story one so painfully wrote amidst the hills of Afghanistan, is read by the reader or not. If the headline does not trigger the reader within 2 seconds of reading it, they can choose to skip to a better story. It’s not that the reader would not have found the story itself interesting, it’s just there is an overload of information out there, and just 24 hours in a day, so it’s up to the journalist to captivate the reader with his headline. At the end of the day, no journalist wants to wind up having his mum and close related family as his only audience.

How does this story translate when it comes to understanding the significance of the title when used in the virtual online world? In an online scenario a visitor enters his keyword phrase in the search engines text box for e.g. the user types in Seo expert in mumbai hoping to find a suitable seo expert in mumbai.

Let us assume that using brilliant seo techniques, a seo expert, say like me, ensures that my website’s link www.seo-optimization-experts.com comes up in the first three listing in a Google search. Now that quite an achievement, but before I can give myself a pat on the back, I have to see if the user is actually clicking on my websites’ link or not? If SEO opens the door, it’s the title tag what invites the visitor to come in to check out the goods.

What conveniences a visitor to click on a website of a seo expert in mumbai who is listed on the 5 th place rather than a seo expert in mumbai who is listed #2 or #3 place. To understand this you have to understand the visitor’s mind when it comes to choosing a link they feel would satisfy their need of finding a seo expert in mumbai.

Honestly there is no good way to find out what the visitor is thinking (probably about this bad ratings due to lack of a good seo expert) when they choose a link over another, but we have to do our best to find new and innovative ways to entice the visitor to click on your link, and not your competitors.

The title tag is what the visitor sees in the search engines results page for e.g.
When you search for seo content services in india on Google, you will find www.seo-optimization-experts.com raked # 1.

Now what do you see on the search results page.

SEO content service in India at affordable rates! (This is my title tag)

SEO content services India, is a team dedicated to delivering high traffic to your Web site? We, at SEO Expert India, offer SEO content writing services which keep both your customers, and search engines happy. (This is the description tag)

So would the above title and description convenience you to click to my website. I would like to hope so.

Notice how I mentioned affordable (people always like the price feel good factor) in both the title and description. Like price, time is also a good factor to include in title wherever applicable e.g. SEO content services 24 hour delivery. Asking the visitor a question in the title or description can entice the visitor to action as well, as in the modified example below:

e.g. Do you need affordable seo content services in India? We, at SEO Expert India, offer SEO content writing services which keep both your customers, and search engines happy.

I have ensured the keyword “seo content services in India” is present in the front and if possible again somewhere close to the end, in both the title tag and the description tag so that keeps the search engine happy.

Be creative! A title tag should build curiosity, educate, offer value, put forth a question, or grab your visitor’s attention in any way. After all even the best written titles and descriptions if they don’t entice the visitor to click to your website are of little use. Try and build trigger to action for all keywords, it could include certain USP’s your product or service has, some highlighting benefits, or an offer to hard to resist.

Once you have a great title and description, keep working on it, check your Google analytics to see which of your titles the users are clicking, and which of them they are not. Don’t be afraid to play around with different titles to see what works and what does not.

Tips for choosing a title that captivates:

1. Use copy that triggers certain emotions or call for action on part of the visitor
2. Build the “what’s in it for me” factor into your title copy
3. Create honest titles that are related to your sites content
4. Keep the title around 80 characters and your descriptions around 200 characters.
5. Spend as much time understanding the title, what will make it more captivating, and what will entice a visitor to click through.
6. Build important keyword phrases into the title and description ensuring it still reads well

While the above are a list of things you should be doing, there are a few things one should never be doing like keyword stuffing, where the keyword is repeated unnecessarily in the title and description just for the purpose of fooling a search engine. The search engines are smart enough to figure your little ploys, so unless you want your pages to be labeled spam, don’t stuff the keywords unnecessarily in your meta tags. Make sure you read the tile out aloud to see how it sounds. The visitors do the same thing, they read out your title in their minds, so if it makes sense to you, hopefully it will make sense to them.

Also avoid using terms like “best”, “top”, “guarantee”, “world class” etc which are generally used in traditional marketing...in the online world there are a lot of useless guarantees floating and no one takes them seriously anymore. Certain words are stop words for search engines … basically they are words that add little or no value to the sentence like where, how, or, not, but etc. List of stop words available at http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=981.

In life we take the titles a bit too seriously, marketing manager, father, president of goofy club, great golfer, and many more.

In seo practice, we need to take the TITLE, A LOT MORE SERIOUSLY.

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SEO Guide to Article Writing

Have you ever though you could write on a subject you love, that many others would find interesting or even better, useful? If your answer is yes, then you could harness the power of article writing to gain reputation and credibility as an expert in your domain, other than gaining those, so hard to get, quality links to your website.

I am not talking about reciprocal linking, which kind of reminds me of those childhood games, I will show you mine if you will show me yours, but quality links from authoritative sources that vouch for your credibility which would generally take thousands of dollars to accomplish (sorry to my dear friends from PR).

We know that search engines are known to love content, especially content that many of their users will find useful, informative or just plain entertaining. So every now and then we sit down to write, and then a few hours later it slowly dawns on us that what we wrote is just plain incredible. By the next read we are convinced that the brilliant masterpiece we just wrote, is just what the world has been eagerly waiting for, so we create a new page for our website, or (if you are one of the smarter folks) a new blog entry. My blog entries rank far better than pages that I have personally optimized on my site http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/ and blog entries are surprisingly found by search engine spiders in matter of minutes most of the times (I wonder if there is a blog conspiracy behind this…maybe I can explore this in my next blog or article).

As a general rule, search engines hate duplicate content for obvious reasons. What that means for you is that once you have created one page of content for your website, or a new blog entry, that content is basically useless anywhere else on the web. In fact you could get penalized if the search engines figure you have the same content on different websites. Now if you are like me, and can’t get down to writing every single day, you would want to maximize the exposure of your content across various channels without pissing off the search engines. Welcome to my world of lazy seo practices. The secret is to write one article and get it published in hundreds of article sites that are waiting to give you exposure. Articles are not considered as duplicate content, and the search engines will love you for it. You can also use the article to create fresh content for your own website and get others to link to your website. Now that’s killing two birds with one stone.

The benefits of article writing:

1. Increased visibility with every article published
2. Increased online reputation as an expert in your domain
3. Boosting your link popularity and link reputation (link building)
4. Write once and get published in hundreds of article sites
5. Reaching a wider market otherwise inaccessible to your website
6. Appease the mighty search engines
7. Gain favor with article publishers and their readers
8. Start syndicating and leveraging your every article
9. Upload article on your website, and submit link of your article to various article sites
10. It’s for FREE, it can’t get any better!

Where to submit your articles:

1. Go to Google and type - "submit an article" "keyword phrase"
It will throw up a list of sites that are accepting articles based on your keyword phrase. What is to be kept in mind is, keep the category of your keyword phrase broad so it throws up related sites that have an audience that could be interested in your type of content.

2. Yahoo Groups, and Google Knoll are great places to publish articles on every imaginable subject under the sun. There are also various other directories that accept article submissions, and sites like ArticleAnnounce (http://www.web-source.net/article-announce.htm) to get you started.

3. Go to Creative Commons and complete the form to add a copyright notice on your articles and blogs on your Web site.
http://creativecommons.org/text/ (Sign up for Creative Commons Search here)

4. If an article publishing site wants copyright for your article, make sure they pay big bucks for it. You may have written the article over a nice cup of coffee…but still it’s yours, and you would like to share your knowledge with the world (unless ofcourse its made worth your while)

5. Make sure you submit your name, author bio, and a link to your website with every article you submit.

But how does that help my company?

If you are in a seo business like me, then writing articles gain credibility for both me as a seo expert, and also for my company’s website http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/. With every article I submit I am allowed to place my name, a little bio (in some sites) and a link to my website. So while I am building a following of readers from across various article sites who are interested in the learning about search engine optimization and search marketing, I am also giving them a link back to my website. This could mean business for my company. In addition a link to my website from a high page ranked article publishers site will do wonders for my websites’ rankings.

What if I can’t write?

Well you never know till you start! Otherwise get some good article writer to do the messy work while you enjoy the benefits.

I can write but don’t have the time to submit it to article sites?

You can use the services of a good seo expert who will submit your article to the hundreds of article publishers within your target group.

So what have I learnt from this article.

It pays to write, it pays to be lazy, and it pays to become an expert!

So START writing!

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