One of most critical strategies to increase your article marketing for your own business, as well as your clients’ businesses is to expand your search engine visibility. Through trial and error, I have found the following techniques to be very beneficial.

Write articles

It’s not hard to write articles. You don’t have to be a certified writer or publisher. As long as you follow good down-to-earth grammar, punctuation, and spelling guidelines, you CAN write your own articles and not have to pay someone else to write them for you.

Have Your Articles Distributed Far and Wide

Choose a good content distribution service where you can submit your articles and let them do all the leg work for you in getting your articles out to the hungry publishers and content site owners. Once such site that I use is Content Crooner. They have over 2,000 sites that they distribute articles to.

Socialize

The advantages of belonging to social networking sites are multiple. Using social media can increase your visibility in search engines. Setting up profiles, commenting, adding friends - this can all contribute to raising your status as an expert in the search engines. By adding links to your comments and profile pages, you will eventually begin to see increased traffic to your website or blog. The increased traffic will, in turn, raise your page rank scores.

Contribute

Contribute what, you might ask. Contribute by commenting on other people’s blogs, commenting in forums, sharing articles on your website, and making helpful comments on other articles you read, if the site owner allows comments. By making positive, helpful comments, you are going to be recognized as an expert in your particular niche.  By doing so, people are going to want to learn more about you. They’re going to search you out in Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines.

Blog

You don’t have to have a blog that a developer creates for you that costs you a lot of money. You can create your own blog on websites such as wordpress.com or blogspot.com. When writing on your blog, you are using a journalistic mind frame - write from the heart while utilizing research material and/or personal experience to keep your reader’s interest up.

Promote

Here’s where a quality content distribution service like Content Crooner comes into play. You will want to take advantage of special features that the service might offer. For example, perhaps you can take advantage of special sharing options that a service might have or special partnerships in order to obtain prominent position on one or several top article marketing directories.

A virtual assistant needs to do multiple article marketing strategies in order to increase search engine visibility — not only for in order to become successful for your own company, but also for your clients. Now is the time to learn the techniques I’ve mentioned above and increase your value and your potential for success. Don’t wait; do it now!

About the author:

Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. Borlok Virtual Assistants is the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

Stop! Click Here! to read more about Content Crooner.

If you’ve recently been laid off from a position within a company, and you’ve been pounding the pavement with little or no success at landing an interview, let alone a new job, then listen up. There is hope.

If you have the drive and determination to succeed and work out of your own home, there is an alternative work arrangement that you might want to consider. Besides the flexibility of setting your own hours, there are many more benefits of becoming a virtual assistant, with the ultimate goal of being able to bring in extra money for the bills and to put food on the table, without paying out a lot in the way of equipment.

Now you may be wondering what kind of things a person could possibly do from home - especially if you are used to working in an office. And, just what is this freelancing that I mentioned in the title? You also might be wondering how to get into freelancing. Well, let’s take a look briefly at each question.

What is freelancing?

According to Wikipedia, “A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is a self-employed person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any particular employer. The term was first used by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) in Ivanhoe to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior” or “free-lance”. Some additional synonyms you might hear tossed around are contractor and independent contractor.

How can you get into freelancing?

The easiest way to get into freelancing is through one of the multiple freelance marketplaces that abound on the Internet. The one that I use, in particular, is Elance. Elance has been around since 1998 when it was founded. Privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, California, this company is insistent that it be the most widely used application for Services and Contractor Management. According to their website, more than 200,000 employees are using Elance in all facets of finding, buying, managing and paying external services and contractors from more than 2,000 suppliers across 50+ services categories. You will register with them in the specific niche that you want to pursue. When you are paid, Elance, of course, will take their cut; but they are the one site that I feel has the highest quality standards.

What kind of things can you freelance in?

Elance offers a wide variety of categories that a virtual assistant can mix and match in to complement their abilities and expertise. The two categories that I’m personally signed up for are Admin. Support and Writing & Translation; these will cover a wide array of services that you can specialize in. The December Elance Work Index just recently published substantiated that PHP, HTML, and Article Writing were among the top skills in demand for the month.
I’m not saying you will get rich at freelancing, but I do attest to the fact that you can make money by freelancing. If you work hard, bid reasonably, and maintain high quality standards, you just might enjoy it so much while bringing in an extra income that you’ll want to continue.

There are quite a few article distribution sites out there that will allow you to submit your articles, and they will send your articles out wide and far. What are some questions you should ask yourself prior to signing up and entrusting your valuable written content to them?

Who will your articles be sent to?

One of the first things you want to know is what type of a publisher list they have. Do they have many, many publishers that they will send your articles out to, or just a few? Do their publishers have good Alexa or Google pagerank? It would be wise to check out some of the sites to ensure your articles will be sent to reputable, well-known companies.

What type of membership plans do they have?

Prior to becoming a member of an article distribution company, do a little homework and see what type of memberships or subscription plans they have. Do they have free memberships? If so, what type of benefits does a free membership entail you? Be sure to read the terms of agreement to see how they will bill you if you have to pay for a subscription. Many of them will use a specific payment processor, and the billing will be on recurring billing. Be sure you understand the terms of agreement; then print it and keep it.

What kind of distribution plan do they have?

Are your articles going to be distributed for a long time, or short spurts? Does the company you decide on allow your articles to be sent to new publishers as they sign on, or are they going to be sent to a static, non-changing list? The ideal solution would be to have your content go out to new publishers and content site owners as they sign up.

Will your articles be reviewed prior to being sent out?

Should you be fortunate enough to find a website that has live human review of articles once you submit them, I highly recommend utilizing this valuable feature. A major disadvantage of trying to manually submit articles to a wide variety of article submission places is trying to keep all of their requirements and guidelines straight in your head. A company that has reviewers spot check your articles for you will know all the guidelines and be able to give you professional feedback on how to improve your articles so they speed through the review process.

Can you schedule your articles to be sent out at a specific time?

Wouldn’t it be a blessing if you could write and submit your articles ahead of time and then be able to schedule their distribution for a certain day? There are content distribution places out there that will allow you to do this. Check this option out; it’s well worth being able to advance schedule.

Whatever website you decide to go with, make sure you do your homework in checking out the company with BBB and other consumer sites that will rate companies based on their service level, integrity, and other measures prior to making that all important leap, especially if you are going to get a paid subscription.

Is there a content distribution marketing company that I use that I would recommend? Yes, I personally use Content Crooner, and am very happy with them. They have excellent customer service, economical paid subscriptions, an extensive distribution list of publishers, and a knowledgeable review staff. Don’t just take my word for it, however. Do your own research and feel comfortable with your decision.

It’s possible not all virtual assistants out there had an opportunity to get their hands on my previous post on why a virtual assistant should take up article marketing, so let me do a brief recap here:

* Article writing can establish an author as a subject matter expert.
* Writing articles is economical; you don’t have to dole out a lot of cash
* Article site directories are eager to get their sites loaded up with new, fresh content.
* You can include links that will direct your readers back to your own website.
* You have a wealth of information that you can use over and over again.
* You can actually win some new clients from their reading your content.

So now that we know what the benefits are for article marketing, what is a good way to have our articles be shown on the Internet? In other words, how do we vamp up our article marketing? Let’s take a look at some different methods you can use.

Methods for Getting Articles Distributed

Manual Submission

In my mind, there are three ways that you could vamp up your article marketing and increase your Internet exposure. The first way we’ll look at is by manual entering — that is taking your article and manually entering it into an article submission site like EzineArticles, or GoArticles, just to name a couple. These both rate high in Google pagerank and have free membership plans.

You can also submit your articles manually to online magazine publishers that give users the user-friendly ability to build interactive “wikizines”, or web magazines. One such site is Zimbio.

Article Marketing Software

Another method is to use article marketing software. Some people have a lot of success using article marketing software. There is even software out there that will combine article spinning with article submission. Personally, I’m not even interested in using article spinning software at all. When you use the software, you are just regurgitating the same content over and over and over in slightly different ways using a variety of synonyms that can drastically alter the meaning of the written word. So my advice is to stay away from article spinners.

Article Marketing Distribution Company

The third way that a virtual assistant can vamp up their article marketing is by using a company like Content Crooner, a first-rate article distribution company. Content Crooner has a comprehensive list of publishers and content site owners that they will distribute your articles to. What this means is that you have the ease of submitting your article to Content Crooner and they take care of all the legwork of distributing your content wide and far.

What are some benefits of using Content Crooner in addition to an expansive publisher list? Take a look at some of the features as to why I choose them for all my article marketing campaigns.

• Unlimited article distribution
• Distribution that takes place 24/7, 365 days a year
• Experienced reviewers that will check your article over for you to ensure your articles will be readily accepted by publishers
• The ability to schedule when you want your articles to go out
• Multiple pricing plans to fit your needs with a 30-day money-back guarantee

No matter which method you opt for, you should understand that as a virtual assistant, you really should take advantage of article marketing. Just by learning the ins and outs of article marketing for yourself, look at the increased opportunities you would have if a client came to you and asked if you offered article marketing as one of your services. Now is the time to get into this ever-growing field. Don’t hesitate; increase your Internet exposure now and get out there and start article marketing!

By now, you’re reading this post because you are ready to take the giant leap and begin writing your own articles. One of the most critical aspects of writing a good article is to have a good resource box. Before we get into how to write a super resource box, however, we need to spend a few moments learning just what a resource box is and why it is so important to write one.

Another acronym for a resource box is an About the Author box. This is where you include a short bio about you, the author. You have two opportunities to make your resource box shine.

There are two types of resource boxes:

The first type of resource box is your text version. No fancy formatting here — just straight text. You won’t have an opportunity in your text version to use extra frills of formatting like bold text, italics, underlining, etc.

The other type of resource box is the HTML version.

Since some article directories won’t allow HTML in the ATA box, you will want to write your plain text ATA first and then become familiar with your individual article directory site to see if they will allow HTML in your resource box. Each publisher that you submit your article to will have their own requirements as to which version they allow.

By far the one that I like to use the most if the publisher or site owner will allow it is the HTML version. Why? This is where you can hyperlink to anchor text or descriptive text that is hyperlinked. Just make sure, however, that the anchor text you use are your most powerful keywords.

Learn how to create an HTML Resource box

The first thing you want to make sure you do in order to write a super resource box is to include contact information so people can get a hold of you. This will almost always include your website address and sometimes even include a phone number, although I would not recommend the phone number, unless of course, you don’t mind getting spammed.

Now the next thing you want to do to ensure that you have an award-winning resource box is to have your sales pitch. Whether you are selling your services or your products, write about why your service or product fulfills a need for your client. What is it that makes it unique? Spell it out.

Lastly, you want to write in your call to action. What do you want your reader to do? Do you want them to buy from you? Maybe you want them to visit your website? Be clear and be innovative about how you tell them to “click here” or “go here”. See what I mean?

So, let’s just do a quick summary of what we have learned thus far. A resource box (also known as the About the Author box) is a critical part of a good article. The two versions that we have discussed are the text version (most all publishers will allow this type) and the HTML version. There are four essential parts to a resource box that include a quick bio of you or your company, your website address, your sales pitch, and your call to action. Your goal should be to include these elements in your resource box so that you are assured of having a resource box that is super!

A resource box will either improve your rankings or kill them. Taking a closer look into what a resource box is reveals the different types of resource boxes used, as well as what it takes to write a super resource box. Writing a super resource box will encourage people to flock to your site. Now is the time to get started!

A virtual assistant is frequently asked to write or rewrite all kinds of material - anything from a letter on up to a book. Using the right tools can ensure that your material is content rich; one of those tools is a thesaurus. Learn firsthand what a thesaurus is and what it’s used for.

If you are a virtual assistant, undoubtedly you will eventually have a client that wishes you to rewrite something he or she may have penned or typed. It’s not always an easy task to find just the right words to capture the essence of what is being said in an interesting and accurate manner. Now is the time to make your articles rich in content by using a thesaurus.

What is it you might ask? A thesaurus is just the tool you need; it’s a book that has a classified
list of synonyms. You remember what a synonym is from your days in English class at school, right? According to the Encarta English Dictionary (provided in Microsoft Word 2007), a synonym is a word that means the same, or almost the same, as another word in the same language, either in all of its uses or in a specific context. Examples of synonyms in this sense are “environment” and “surroundings” and the verbs “tear” and “rip.”

So why is a thesaurus useful in making your content rich when you write or rewrite articles? For one thing, if you replace words with synonyms, your content might just grab and keep the reader’s interest that much longer. You’ve all heard that you only have thirty seconds to stimulate a reader’s natural curiosity so they dive deeper into your article.

What are some good thesaurus’s out there that I can use online? I will discuss three here. Don’t take my word as gospel, however; do a search in your favorite search engine under “thesaurus.” I want you to have the freedom to make up your own mind as to which one will work the best for you.

Unless I’m working on a laptop, the very first thesaurus that I use all the time is WordWeb. WordWeb is a free English thesaurus and dictionary software download for Windows. Why do I like it? Just check out some of the things it can help you with:

* Definitions and synonyms
* Proper nouns
* Related words
* Pronunciations
* 150 000 root words
* 120 000 synonym sets
* Looks up words in almost any program

What makes Word Web so useful is that you have the ability to use a combination of the Ctrl + Alt + the W keys on your computer keyboard to have the program open on your desktop. This saves immeasurable time and is even faster than the next program I am going to talk about.

Remember I mentioned that I work on a laptop? One of the disadvantages of doing so is that a laptop will not have as much memory as a desktop so I do not tend to download a lot of software. What I have discovered is that Microsoft Office Word 2007 has a built-in thesaurus. How do you kick it into gear? To give you a simple explanation, say I want to change the word gear in my previous sentence to something else. I would right click on the word gear and scroll down to Look Up, left click with your mouse on the words Look Up and voilà! It will automatically default to All Reference Books, but that is easy to change. Just click on the down arrow next to All Reference Books and change it to Thesaurus: English (You can also choose French or Spanish).

A virtual assistant has to be thrifty in their use of time, as well as being the best of the best. Oftentimes, there will be resources available to us that we don’t even know that can save us an immense amount of work. One of those resources is a good thesaurus. A good thesaurus can not only save us time, it can provide us with synonyms that will help us write and rewrite articles, blogs, press releases, eBooks, etc., that are award-winning. Not only that, a thesaurus can help us make our material rich in content.

Just recently we received enough money that we could upgrade our office equipment. After doing some research, we packed up into the truck and were on our merry way to Best Buy to purchase a new laptop, a new hard drive, a modem, and a router. The salesman was very helpful - up to a point. We explained that we wanted to network our three computers together and did they know the cost?

You see, they have an in-house computer technology company located at Best Buy called Geek Squad.  The salesman quickly explained that Geek Squad would be able to network us, hook up all our computers, install virus protection and other software that we got and do it in our home at our convenience. HOWEVER, when it came to getting costs on what the final charges would be for their services, the salesman suddenly became not so helpful. When we were asking questions, he was writing everything down and kept saying he didn’t want to forget anything as he would need to check on his computer for the costs. He did say that there was a package that would be perfect for our needs. But, guess what? He indicated that we could have protection for the laptop in case we spilled drinks on it or dropped it, or what have you. We could have another service for the hard drive, and something else for the networking.

Okay. Now, of course, we were excited about this as he also said there was a special price on the package. Folks, somehow we ended up at the cash register still without getting a straight answer on what it would cost for all the things we needed for the Geek Squad. We thought he was ringing our charges up. Boy, oh, boy, was he. I swear we stood around for at least an hour, if not more, waiting, waiting, and waiting. When we asked him what was taking so long, we were told that their network computers were in the process of being upgraded and were slow.  Hmmm, that didn’t give us a warm, fuzzy feeling. Why didn’t the Geek Squad fix them??? Several times we almost walked out of the store and almost told them to forget it. They are VERY Slow! If it were not that we needed this equipment for our business, we probably would have.

Anyway, when they finally got the sleeping giant computer to give up its wealth of information (and that was wealth for the store), we discovered that each and every part of the warranties and hooking up the modem/router, networking, was all billed separately - there was no package. We wanted to make sure that we got appropriate warranties on our brand new equipment so we would be protected. Readers - imagine our surprise when we discovered that 1/3 of the total cost was for Geek Squad! We are a small business; that hurt.

So, after grinding our teeth and buying extra band-aids to cover our wounds of hurt feelings, we went home and waited for the scheduled day for the technician to arrive. Finally it arrived. I want to tell you that we had the best technician we could ever hope for. He was helpful and went above and beyond the call of duty. He answered all of our questions and treated us with respect and dignity, customer service that is long-gone these days. He did not treat us like we were idiots or imbeciles and he did not act as though we were bothering him. We are 100% pleased with the work that was performed by this technician.

After the excellent service we received, we were quite surprised to hear a report from KPHO 5 TV on a study they did for technician companies in the Valley that were gouging customers and performing work on computers unnecessarily just so they could get more money for their service and seeing Best Buy’s Geek Squad as being a strong offender.

So what is the bottom line of our experience? Did we learn anything? You bet we did. First, when shopping at Best Buy, we will always ensure we get a definite price on service work before we get to checkout. Be prepared to wait  as the cashiers are not speedy. Secondly, there are good technician companies; and there are some that are not so good. We highly recommend that anyone who needs a technician to do work on their computers research the different companies that are in your area. Good places to check are the Better Business Bureau (if you are in the U.S.) and other respectable rating agencies. Also, as always, listen to your gut instinct. Don’t be swayed by “I want it now,” unless you are prepared to pay extra costs that more than likely will arise.

It was 8:00 o’clock in the morning as I sat down to transcribe. It was a blistery, cold morning in Phoenix, Arizona (Hah! - More like 116 outside as I write this). With my cup of hot steaming coffee on my one side of my desk and my faithful live, white, feline desk ornament on my other, I prepared for the day.

Now, you have to understand that I was new at this game of transcribing; I’d only been doing it for a short time. My topic was Internet marketing, and it was very interesting. It was all about Pay per Click, and AdWords, and various other Internet-related things; and it was an interview between an interviewer and an Internet Guru.

This is going to be a piece of cake, right? I typed all about interesting Internet gurus, Napoleon Hill, and interesting subjects like Google AdWords, Overture, Google Pay Per Click, e-Books, ClickBank, Yahoo! Search, and a whole lot more. Now, be aware that I was fairly new at transcribing for clients regarding the Internet; so I had to do a lot of research. When I started out, I started with a well-known search engine; but you could choose Google, Yahoo, Ask, or a host of others that are out there. What I didn’t know is that even if you use a reputable search engine, it takes an astute transcriptionist to decipher what search results you should use.

For example, suppose you questioned the spelling of an author’s name. Correctly, you go to the Internet to Google, or Yahoo!, MSN, or whatever you use, and you type in the author’s last name Chialdiani because you were looking up Robert Cialdini because he wrote a well-known book that your client had included on the audio that your client provided you. Aha! You found as the first hit a result that one of the major online bookstores had posted. Now, I chose one that has a huge following on the Internet; they should know the correct spelling, right? Not so fast, Charlie or Jenny, or whoever you are. Take care to take it one step further.

You must actually take it one step further and GO to that bookstore online and find the book. How is the author’s name spelled? Oh, oh. It’s Cialdini. Folks, I’ve got to tell you. Internet clients can be absolutely ruthless when providing feedback to Elance, iFreelance, or Guru, or other freelance sites when a transcriptionist does not get spelling right. Do not be lackadaisical here; this is critical!

Let’s look at another example. Say you want to look up the spelling for the group of people that come from the Philippines. How would you spell Filipino? Be careful here. This could be a trick question. Okay, again, we start out on Google, Web Crawler, Ask, or any other search engine you might use. We type in Philippino because we think that because they are from the Philippines, they are probably called Philippinos, right? Hold on. Who are you going to use as a resource to verify that spelling? In many instances you have more than one spelling for a word, and clients can be very, very temperamental if you choose the wrong spelling. My recommendation is to use reputable references that are well-known and have been around for years.

So what have we learned thus far? Be very choosy when using resources to determine spelling of words. Make sure that sites you use are reputable resources. Your clients do not want to see errors when they receive their transcription. Go the extra mile, be diligent, and be accurate. If you have to use multiple resources to get a consensus, that’s great. That is what you clients want. If you do that, you will go far in establishing a sound transcription business that clients will come to you for services over and over again.

It’s 10:00 o’clock in the morning, and you get a phone call from a client that he needs a new transcription that is an hour long and he needs it tonight. Like any organized virtual assistant, I look at my calendar and see that I don’t have any projects due today. I say okay, sure. But…

There are some important things that need to be done before a transcriptionist agrees to take on a new transcription job for a new client. First of all, I recommend you ask your client if they have listened to all or part of the audio. They all believe they have a good quality tape. If the client says yes and then you listen to it and it’s not, then you have some options that you can follow regarding your price.

If you listen to the audio and the voices are too low, there is a lot of static, there are excessive echoes, etc., this will definitely take you longer to transcribe. Your goal, should you get the opportunity, is to listen to parts of the audio prior to giving a quote, especially since reality is that the audios are not usually as “good” as the client leads you to believe. Unfortunately, we found this out the hard way after losing money and time having to struggle to catch all the words. There were many times that we almost ended up working for free, and that is not what you should have to do.

After much trial and error, we implemented the process of providing a client that had a new transcription with terms of agreement that stipulate, “If the audios are poor quality due to heavy accents, voices too soft to be heard clearly, or slurring of words to the point that there are excessive inaudibles overall per tape, the Buyer will be contacted immediately and asked to try and enhance the quality. If the Buyer is unable to do so, the audio will be returned to the Buyer, and the fee to the Buyer will only be for the completed portion.”

If you are a freelancer and bidding for projects on some of the freelance sites, go ahead and accept the bid. In the acceptance I would recommend you always include terms of agreement along with your acceptance. They will let you know right away if it’s not acceptable. We have not had one client that found that to be unreasonable. If it’s a new client that someone referred to you, we recommend you provide the terms prior to accepting the project.

Now, you do not have to use this exact wording; however, something similar will at least lessen the possibility of your receiving a bad audio. Our goal is to make money. When accepting new transcriptions, set reasonable prices, plan for road blocks, and stop and listen.

You know what? Buyers are not always right. What?! I can’t believe you’re saying this. Well, it’s true. Buyers have a tendency to believe that their virtual assistant is just sitting on his or her laurels with baited breath waiting for that one call indicating that something has to be done right now.

You see, buyers tend to forget that virtual assistants have more than one client to take care of. Depending on the client, they have needs that need to be prioritized too.

So Buyer, beware! You may not get your project done right away. Give your virtual assistant some advance notice or be prepared for a letdown. Work with them by giving clear details about your project.

You mean the world to us; however, we are not afraid to tell you no, I can’t do that right now. I can have it for you in 2-3 days, though. Will that work all right?

Virtual assistants get hungry too, and one client just doesn’t put food on the table.