Some time ago we added the Google Friend Connect comments gadget to allow people to comment on articles submitted to article-content-king.com.  Now we have added a Google Friend Connect community page with a few more gadgets to help you to get more traffic to your articles and websites… e.g. recommended articles and member links.

Recommended Articles

Each article on the site now has a “recommend this article” button. If clicked the article will appear in the recommended articles list on the Google Friend Connect Community Page (and perhaps in other places of the site  too), with the most highly recommended articles appearing at the top of the list.

Please “recommend” the articles that you enjoy reading on article content king to help the author get more exposure and traffic.

Member Links

This is a simple gadget that allows any member to add a link to their website on the community page. All you need to do is type in the URL that you want to link to and click update. Your link will then we published for all to see.

Of course, you need to join the Google Friend Connect Community first. Unfortunately you do not become a member of the community automatically when you join the site. You need to join the community area separately.

Click here to go to the Google Friend Connect Community Page

There are many more Google Friend Connect Gadgets. We may add a few more in the near future. If there are any gadgets that you would like us to add, please let us know by submitting a comment below.

Hello Everyone,

We have many great authors who submit articles to article content king. If you are someone who always has their articles approved, there is no need for you to watch this video.

If however, you keep getting your articles rejected, and you do not know why, because no reason is specified on the edit rejected article page, you need to watch this video.

Click here to open full screen

If your articles are rejected for any other reason, the reason why will be displayed on the edit rejected article page. Click here to read the submission rules.

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you enjoyed the holiday season. Now it’s time to get back to work and make plans for the new year.

One of the goals that we have set for 2011 is to get Article Content King ranked in the top 5000 most trafficked websites on the Internet. Right now, according to Alexa, we are somewhere around the 20,000 mark. The gap between 20,000 and 5000 is quite large, but I think it is an achievable and worthwhile goal. To get an Alexa rank of 5000 would put us in the top 10 article directories on the Internet.

The first thing that I have done to step towards this goal to to optimize the website. You may notice that the article directory loads a lot faster now, especially the article pages. As does this blog. I managed to cut the page load time down from 3.5 seconds to 1.8 seconds on a T1 connection and from 67 seconds to 16 seconds on a 14k modem. Faster loading sites rank better in the search engines. If we are going to achieve the goal of a 5000 Alexa rank, we need to make the search engines love us.

Making the pages load faster will help this… a lot!

I improved the sites Yslow grade from 47 to 83. There is nothing else I can do except remove all the Google ads, and without them, there is little point in me running this site.

Unfortunately, we had to lose some functionality on the article pages to achieve this score. Visitors can no longer vote on the articles that they read and we have removed the comments powered by Google Friend Connect. I may add the comments back later, but the functionality to vote on articles has been removed permanently. This function was making the site 300% bigger than it needed to be, removing it had a huge effect on page speed. (Want to know how to optimize your blog?)

We have had a Facebook fan page for a while, but to be honest, after setting it up some time ago. I have never been there. Right now it is just merrily posting away the latest articles that we publish.  We do have some “fans” and the facebook page is generating traffic, but I need to put a lot more effort into it… if we are going to achieve an Alexa rank for 5000.You’ll see this happening if you become a fan of the page now.

We have little chance of achieving this goal without you and without your articles. Please become a fan of the site and submit your best articles to article content king. The next time you log in, check out the new “check list” page to make sure that you are getting the most out of your membership. Over 80% of members aren’t. Are you one of them?

Click this link to sign up or log into the members area and submit your articles.

All the best for the next year

Dan Blackburn

Article Content King is a free article directory where you can submit your articles in exchange for more traffic and exposure. If we achieve this goal of a 5000 Alexa rank (and we will achieve it) you will receive a even more benefit from submitting your articles.

Great News for article publishers (and marketers)!

We have just made full article RSS feeds available to make it easier for you supplement your blog with articles from article-content-king. The feed(s) display the full article and resource box of the latest 5 articles in each category.

Benefits for Publishers

One of the main reasons why we run this article directory is to provide the Internet with content articles that they can use on their websites. The “article snippet” feed is there so that people can subscribe to our feeds in a reader, get a quick snap-shot of the new articles that are available to them, visit the site to read and get the code for the ones that they want to publish. (This is great for us, as it brings traffic to the site).

Now we have the full article RSS feed available, you can use a WordPress plugin like feedwordpress or Drupal plugin like Drupal Feeds to automatically publish our niche articles to your blog or Drupal site. (There are other tools available for other platforms).

Either set the articles to publish automatically or pending approval. This way you save the time it takes to check the feeds and grab the code for the articles that you want to publish. They can be delivered directly to the site that you (may) want to publish them at.

If you are not using articles to supplement your website with content yet, maybe now is the time to start doing so. Syndicating full articles will not hurt your website at all, it will probably greatly help it. The more pages you have more more traffic you can potentially receive. The more information you visitors have to read, the more likely they are to subscribe to your blog.

Check out the full article RSS feeds page, I am sure you will find a category suitable for your blog.

If you are into making “automatic Adsense income sites”  then I am sure that you will love this new full article RSS feed. Syndicating a “summary only” feed will make any blog look like a “splog”, providing the full article for your visitors to read is far better.

Benefits For Article Marketers

One of the biggest frustrations that you face as an article marketer is when people use your articles from article directories without giving you attribution! You spent the time to write an excellent article and was generous enough to allow other people to use it. They do, but they don’t thank you! (and they break the law by not giving you credit!)

The new full article rss feeds will help put a stop to this, because if someone syndicates your article from one of our feeds, all links and attribution is automatically included. — There is far more chance that the links will be left in tact because people can automatically publish with this feed (using required syndication tools).

And of course… because we are making it easier for people to publish your articles (automatically) they are likely to get published a lot more places! (Meaning more back links for you).

So it’s great news for everyone who read this far,  isn’t it?

Respectfully,

Dan Blackburn

P.S. One of the most important things to make sure of when you submit articles to article-content-king is that you select the most appropriate category for your articles.

Hi All,

You may have noticed that the header image has disappeared from the article directory?  Removing it has definitely had a deleterious effect on aesthetics, (i.e. the site does not look as good), but removing this image has made a massive improvement to something that is far more important than looks.

Page Load Time!

Removing this image knocked a whopping 20 seconds off page load time (on a 28k modem), more than halving the page load time!

According to Alexa, “slow” sites can be penalized by the search engines and they are (currently still) judging Article Content King as a slow site.  Removing this image should have already remedied this, but it will take a little time for Alexa stats to catch up.

I am hoping to see a marked improvement in search engine rankings for article pages over the coming months, as a direct result of me removing this large and heavy header image from the site.

Article directories are about getting traffic! I’d rather have top rankings to ugly looking pages than no rankings for pretty pages.

Wouldn’t you?

Next I am going to look into compression and cashing.

Article-Content-King.com  is 5 year old this week, if you want to join in the celebrations and get something of fantastic value for pennies on the dollar, log into the members area and check out the upgrade package that we have put together for you.

The offer is only available to free and basic members. If you are a Silver member and above, don’t worry… I have something even better for you in the pipe line. You’ll find out what it is later this week.

Those of you that aren’t a Silver member yet, you WILL want to check this offer out, believe me.

Log into your members area and you’ll see what to do. The offer expires on Friday at midnight GMT.

Respectfully

Dan Blackburn

P.S. If you are not a member of article content king yet, sign up and submit articles free.

P.P.S. You can earn up to 50% commission by telling your list about this very special birthday offer. Just grab your affiliate link from the members area.

Yesterday I added all the active article feeds to feedagg.com to help drive more traffic to your articles. If you have not checked out feedagg.com yet, you should. It’s a pretty cool site where people go to find information. By adding your website feed(s) there you can get more visitors to your website and subscribers to your RSS feed.

Now that I have added the category RSS feeds for article content to feedagg.com, whenever we publish one of your articles it will update on the relevant page at feedagg.com. We syndicate our feeds to several feed aggregation websites, but thus far I have only created a dedicated page on the site for feedagg feeds. You can check it out by clicking here.

The reason I have done this is to increase the “feedagg score” apparently they will increase the feed score by 5 points for adding a link back… but I have not seen it yet. (maybe all the feeds will show a score of at least 5 by the time you click?). Increasing the feedagg score makes the feed rank higher at feedagg.com, which means more exposure on the site and potentially  more visitors and  subscribers.

If you want to help your articles rank even better… visit the feedagg feeds page, visit the your category of interest and give the page a rating. It’s likely got one of your articles on it! Better still tweet the page and add it to your favorite social bookmarking sites. Spend 2 minutes doing that now and you will help every article that you submit here in future get more traffic.

If you know of any other good feed aggregation sites like feedagg.com, please let me know by posting a comment below.

Respectfully

Dan Blackburn

The winner of the King contest for July is Franto Hruz, even though he was not the author with the highest average article score. As I write this, there are 6 other authors who rank higher than Franto. So why has Franto won?

The reason is simple, he is the highest ranked author to have completed his profile page and included an image.  There is no cash prize for winning the contest anymore, the main benefit is recognition through the home page of the site… It seems silly recognizing someone who does not want to be recognized, so Franto wins!

You can learn more about Franto by visiting his profile page here

As well as being recognized on the home page of the site as our “top author” for the month of July, Franto will also receive 10,000 adverting credits to display his own ads across the site and some extra promotion of his articles submitted to article content king.

If you want to win the contest next month, submit your best articles to article-content-king… but do make sure that you complete your author profile page first and include an image!

I was chatting with R Michael Stone the other day about winning the King contest and his website marketing in general and we got on to traffic. I asked him what other forms of traffic he has used, other than Article Marketing. He told me that he had tried Pay Per Click with Google Adwords, but after failing to get any real traffic from keyword bids as high as $2 per click, Google actually suspended his Adwords account.

This is not uncommon, in fact it is more like the norm. Google obviously do not rate the quality of Michael’s landing page. It’s a “lead capture page” or “squeeze page” as they are sometimes called.  The page itself is backed up with links to some very high quality articles and there is some great information on the site, but Google it appears do not want Michael advertising this page through their Adwords service… even though Michael was willing to pay through the nose for traffic.

He would not have a problem with any other search engine, as all the others allow the highest bidder to take the most traffic, but Google are different. They want the most relevant ads to the best offers to get the most traffic and they don’t want pages that they feel do not meet the cut there at all. Google treat ad rankings more like search engine rankings. This is great news for you as an article marketer as it makes it possible for you to pay a LOT less for traffic that your competitors AND get more traffic than them… if you know what you are doing.

So what do you need to do?

Let me put it this way. Links to your squeeze pages fit perfectly in the resource box of your articles and your articles fit perfectly with Google’s “landing page quality score rules”.

• If you promote an article on an authority site rather than a sales page or a squeeze page in your Google Adwords PPC campaign, you will pay a lot less per click. FACT!
• If you promote your squeeze page in your article resource box, every reader of your article will be ready to subscribe when they click. (A lot more ready than they were after they read your Google ad).

If you run Adwords campaigns to your articles published on authority sites, instead of the sales pages of your own websites you may find that you make a lot more money a lot more easily. You’ll pay less per click, but get more targeted visitors through to your squeeze page, (fewer more targeted visitors of course).

There appears to be a  rather nice side effect to doing this too. You will find that the article that you are promoting begins to rank better in Google too. Thus you end up getting the traffic that you are paying for, for free! Google deny that this is the case, but test it for your self.

Tips for doing this effectively.

1. Keep it short and easy to read, you want everyone to get to the bottom of your article where the link to your squeeze page is. (no more than 600 words).
2. Provide real value in the article. You want people to feel like they owe you when they click to your site.
3. Don’t push! Be helpful and make people want to know more of your “secrets”.
4. Use bolded subheads containing the keyword phrases that you want to rank well for. (Be mindful of SEO but do not compromise the article for it).

The speed at which your visitors  read your article and how much they like what they read will determine how many people will click through to your site… ready to subscribe.

Try it and work out the cost per subscriber when you do. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Or win the King contest and we will do it for you . The prize for winning has changed to $50 cash and $50 PPC traffic to your best articles. (Starting next King).

Submit articles here

King For May

The top author of Article-Content-King for May is R Michael Stone, a well deserved “crown”. R Michael Stone writes truly excellent articles on the “Psychological Smoking Mechanism” and how to quit smoking for good. I particularly enjoyed reading this article about why Nicotine is NOT physically addictive.

Reading this article really surprised me and made me think that reaching for the Marmite instead of my cigarettes could be the answer. If you have any comments about this, leave them in the article above (not below this post).

You can read the rest of R Michael Stones articles by following the links from his author page from here you can also check out his websites http://www.unlearnsmoking.com and http://www.rmichaelstone.com

We will hopefully be catching up with R Michael Stone later in the month to chat about winning the contest.

Changes to the King Contest

R Michael Stone is the last author who will win the $100 cash prize. Future winners of the King contest will be recognized on the home page of the site, and this blog.