Optimizing your Articles

To submit your article to an article directory you must have following parameters about your article: title, category, summary, keywords, resource, body. Let's talk about these parameters.


Title

The dictionary definition says that title is an identifying name given to the article. But the title has some other functions, to intrigue the visitor to actually read you article, and to intrigue web search engine (like Google) to put it high on the search lists. How a title can attract a visitor to read your article? Title should say that there is something of value for him in the article. Basic human needs is related to personal physical and mental needs. Physical needs are food, sleep, water, clothing, sex. Mental needs are need of security and safety, need of health, need of respect for oneself, need of excitement and variation, need of significance (making a difference), need of connecting with others. One way to prioritize them is Need Hierarchy Theory of Abraham Maslow. To sum it up the title should relate to one or more of human needs. For example if your article is about yoga you could address the benefit on health and self respect.

Category

This parameter is not necessary to specify, because usually you choose one from the list of categories. Categories among directories are often similar or even the same, but sometimes they can differ. Therefore you could note a category or two where you want to put your article. That will speed up the process of submission.

Summary

This is mandatory parameter and it quite self explanatory. Usually two to three sentences are enough. You could write summary after you finish writing the article, but sometimes you could start writing article with writing summary. If you start with summary, that could be a good starting point for writing an article. What should you write in summary? Summary should elaborate the title you wrote. Also it should intrigue the visitor to click on link leading to the body of article. The summary should also be formulated in a way to put a page with summary high in search result. You can achieve that by mentioning a hot search words. If you are in doubt if you should mention stock or share, then consulting Google trends you could find out that the stock is more frequent than share in Google searches. Therefore you should use stock.

Keyword

You should mention keywords separated by comma. That is usual way of writing keywords. What keywords you should use? Write as many keywords as you can remember. If you have to many of them, then using Google trends you can eliminate the ones with lower ranks. For example if you are in doubt between shareholder and stockholder you will eliminate stockholder.

Resource

Basically resource should say: I am an authority in my subject and click here and visit my site. First of all you should write your name. Also, the reader should be intrigued to click on the link to your site. To achieve that you should write what is unique about your site and why the reader should visit it. There should be a call for action like "To see more of my articles visit my site". Depending on the article directory resource box can contain html code, so you could write two kinds of resource box, the one with html code and the one without. Resource box is not tied to a certain article. It is usually the same for all of your articles, and you will usually use the one with html code. Some authors say that you should not put all possible links to all of your sites. The reason for that is that you should build your credibility and the person with sites about hiking, sport and insurance could lose some credibility in insurance. Therefore you could have different resources for different areas of your expertise.

Body

This parameter is actually your article. You should put keywords in it, but I think that you should not be obsessed with search engine optimization. Be obsessed with the quality of your article. Visitors will like good articles and dislike the bad ones. No keyword will change that.

Having all this in mind you can create some template for article that looks like this:

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Title:
Summary:
Keywords:
Resource: I am John John and I am a great hiker and you should visit my site in order to see the pictures from the Himalaya.

I am John John and I am a great hiker and you should visit my site hike.hike.com in order to see the pictures from the Himalaya.

I am John John and I am MBA. I am an expert in Insurance. If you have troubles with insurance go and read more of my articles on my site.

Body:
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