I received an email from a publisher telling me that he had included one of my articles in his ezine.

The power of article writing is not only that it can brand you as an expert and get your name out there, but also that your articles become a viral marketing strategy. This can spread your articles across the internet and get you more traffic and sales.

Here’s the link to my article: 3 Essential Tools for Email Marketers.

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Search engines don’t buy products and services. People do.

To sell your products and services online, you need targeted traffic. Search engines will send you targeted traffic, and a lot of it, if you take certain steps.

The first step in your search engine marketing campaign isn’t search engine optimization. Your first step is to understand the internet and how to effectively use it to promote your products and services.
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Although submitting your blog to the search engines is very similar to submitting your website, there are several differences that you should be aware of. Knowing these differences can help you get your blog indexed more quickly because you have submitted your blog correctly.

Regardless of whether you are submitting a blog or a website, if you are submitting to Google, you should create a sitemap. Although you should check your sitemap periodically to make sure Google isn’t encountering any errors with your sitemap, once you submit it, you don’t have to submit to Google again. All you have to do is keep your sitemap up to date.

If you use a blog like WordPress, you can install the sitemap plugin. This plugin updates your sitemap automatically and notifies Google that your site has changed.

If you don’t use a blogging software that generates sitemaps, you can create your own. Google offers plenty of free tools for creating sitemaps.

Even if you don’t have a sitemap, you can still add your site to Google. You just won’t get detailed statistics.

You can submit to Google here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Since Google doesn’t allow direct submission to its blog search, you will need to make sure that you submit your site to blog directories Google pulls results from for its blog search, and then make sure you ping these sites when you update your blog.

You can use sites like Feed Shot, to submit your site to some of the major blog directories. Then you only need to ping your blog to update it at these directories.

When submitting to Yahoo, you need to submit your site feed instead of a sitemap. You can submit your blog to Yahoo here: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites. Instead of submitting your site, you will use the first block and submit your feed.

You should also add your blog feed to your My Yahoo page. This can get your blog added faster and will get your blog included in Yahoo’s version of blog search.

You will need an account to submit to both Yahoo and Google. It’s free.

MSN, the third of the big three search engines is completely different in the way that you need to submit to get your blog included.

You can submit directly to MSN to be included. You don’t need an account, but you will need to submit manually because you will need to enter the characters on the page to make sure your submission request goes through.

You can submit here: https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

(Please Note: Since I wrote this article, MSN has changed its main search engine to Bing. I have updated the link above.)

Once you’ve submitted your blog to the top three search engines, forget about it. Your next step should be to ping your blog each time that you post to it.

Before you ping your blog for the first time though, make sure that you glance through the list of blog directories. You want to make sure you have submitted your blog to each of the directories listed. Also, some of the ping sites listed may not relate to your blog. Make sure you uncheck these before you ping.

Ping Services
http://www.pingomatic.com
http://www.pingtheempire.com
http://www.pingoat.com

Ping your blog each time you update.

These techniques will help you get about 80 percent coverage in the search engines. Once you’ve taken this step in your promotion, move on. Write press releases and articles and submit them to press release and article directories. Build links.

Successfully promoting your blog or website depends on consistent promotion. Promote regularly, and you will see results.

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There are plenty of resources on the internet to help you write press releases, as well as use press releases to promote your business.

However, you can quickly get lost in all of the resources that are available.

Below are some of the best resources I have found for writing press releases:
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A press release is news about your site, your business, your book. It is not about advertising or blatantly advertising your products and services.

You can use press releases to generate “buzz” about your business.

Although writing a press release isn’t easy, it is a skill that can be learned. Learn how to write effective press releases and then promote using your press releases, and you can quickly and easily generate a lot of traffic and sales for your products and services.
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