Owning and controlling large amounts of virtual real estate — sites, blogs and other web properties that you command –can go a long way toward helping you realize your aspirations with your web business. These properties can be very useful in many ways, some of which you may not have imagined. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of VRE, and how they can best be utilized for good.

The most obvious, and perhaps also most useful of these, can be blogs. Blogs are very good at directing traffic and conversation toward almost anything they (or you) desire. Having a popular blog that not only points links but also visitors to your main business site or salespages in which you have a stake, is a very valuable asset. Many people set up networks of blogs to help with PageRank and link building, and while this can tend to lean to a darker colored hat, it can bring great results. It needs to be managed well and carefully, lest your efforts go to waste.

Others make use of the many Web 2.0 sites available to publish content on today. These include sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Mulitply, LiveJournal, and many, many others. Every day some new platform comes online that encourages users to create content on their site, and of course as marketers, we would be remiss to not take advantage of that! These types of sites have advantages that blogs sometimes do not: and that is that they often have established authority of their own and will rank well right away, and are usually very easy to create content and drop links on.

Virtual real estate, you may now have considered, can include video sharing sites like YouTube, podcasts, document repositories such as Scrib and DocStoc, as well as web directories, article directories, wikis, and more. The list is quite long.

Your challenge lies not only in creating the plan with which you hope to maximize this strategy, but also in coming up with enough content to feed the beast! Remember, the more sites you own, the bigger and potentially more potent your VRE empire can become! With so much competition these days in almost any market, relying on one voice in the wilderness may not cut it.

Everyone wants to see their pages or sites rank high in the search engines, particularly on the top of the heap in Google, which can translate to an enormous amount of traffic and corresponding success. While this can seem an impossible task, it can be done, but only with some time and a concise plan of attack.

Everything starts with solid keyword research, which will uncover for you the keyword phrases you have the best shot at ranking in both the short and long term views. Armed with this information, you can go about creating your content marketing strategy around these keywords and shape everything to your plan.

One of the most important aspects of planning your campaign is to do some competitive research. It is vital to know who you are competing against and how much it will take to dislodge them from their spot. To do this manually would take many hours of painstaking research and may not be done in a resonable time frame. Thankfully, there are many tools that can help in this regard. Some of the more popular ones are Market Samurai, SEO Spyglass, and Traffic Travis. They all can return invaluable information about your competitors keywords, ads, site, age, and most importantly, backlinks.

Incoming backlinks are the key to getting your site to the pinnacle  of the search engines. Most experts agree that off-page SEO (backlinks) is responsible for 60-80% of your ranking. If the site ranking #1 for your keyword phrase is 5 years old, with a Pagerank of 5, and 17,000 backlinks showing, you have a very clear picture of what you have to do! (Take on a long term view on that keyword!) If, on the other hand, the #1 site for your chosen keyword is 1 year old, PR 1, and has 335 backlinks, start preparing for battle – that one can be had!

The problem is that most webmasters want the ranking without the work. It just doesn’t work that way. You can “trick” your way to the top for a time, but these “black hat” methods usually leave you having to do it all over again, and again, and again.

The path to #1 in the search engines isn’t all that hard to decipher, but it is strewn with the rotting corpses of sites that failed to do the necessary work to conquer the hill! Do your homework, make a plan and then execute it. It may take time, but then what doesn’t?

Ouch – that question may sting a bit! But the reality is, if we want to say we actually have an article marketing strategy then we need to pump up the volume a bit.  An article or two a month is nice for your ego, but not so great for marketing purposes. There are millions of pages being indexed on the Web every day; there needs to be an amount that helps your site rise both in authority and rank, and you need to make sure that happens sooner, rather than later.

Two immediate questions arise: one, how much is enough? And two, how can I possibly get this done? To answer the first, it’s never enough! (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) But there is some truth to that. You need a constant influx of content to your site to not only keep it fresh and relevant in Google’s eyes, but also to engage your audience, who is also looking for fresh and relevant data. If they don’t find it at your place, well… you get the idea. If you have a blog (and you should), try to make sure it’s posted to several times a week. If it’s a static website, that’s harder unless you’re handy with code.

For marketing purposes, determine how many links you need to unseat those above you in the search engine rankings and make a plan for creating the content necessary to facilitate that. Then start writing and submitting articles, Web 2.0 sites, videos and just general link building to get that done.

As to how to get it done, you should write some of it yourself, especially if your blog is your face on the Web. Your voice needs to be heard there. Let me ask you: how many blogs do you follow whose content consists of entirely informational articles and inspirational quotes? Not that these are bad,  just be sure to weigh in on your site often.

You can write the content yourself, or outsource it as needed. Of course we here at Content Divas are big fans of outsourcing! Once you find someone who you feel writes in a manner you like, hang onto them if at all possible. Outsourcing your writing needs is a terrific way to scale your business, and can do so far more quickly than you can imagine. Yes, at first it is an expense, but the content you create now will be around for years, unlike those clicks from Google Adwords, which you’ll need to buy again tomorrow!

Also, be careful with PLR content. You want this stuff, (if you use it at all)  to be a few layers from your site. Never use it as “original” content on your site. Others will have gone before you, making it far less than unique. Yes we sell it here, but we are of the belief that it is best used as feeder site fodder, and as a part of research on an original piece of content, not the entire basis! (What if they got it wrong?)

However you get it done, you need to start developing an article marketing strategy today!  Time’s a wastin!

One of the best ways to reach a wider audience with your articles is to syndicate it. You are perhaps familar with that term from the way it used to be used: a la newspaper syndication. (Okay, I guess it still is!) A popular writer has his or her column picked up and run by a syndicate of newspapers across the land. A similar apparatus exists on the Web. High-quality, SEO optimized articles are written and placed strategically for effect. That effect is to not only garner backlinks, but also to drive direct traffic, build brand awareness, create rankings for additional keywords and more.

You may already be unwittingly doing a bit of this if some of your articles are on popular article directories. Many times these articles are used by webmasters hungry for more content. This results in links and traffic back to your site. Our goal is to put this kind of article syndication into hyperdrive! Let’s look at some of the ways you can do this.

*  First write some great content! The better this is, the more chance you stand of being able to place it on some high-profile sites.

*  Target popular blogs in your market for guest posts. Many of them require a lot of content to keep generating the amount of traffic they get, and you could tap in to some of that. To find blogs that accept guest posts, do a Google Blog search with search phrases like “Submit Guest Post,” “Become a Guest Blogger,” “Guest Post,” “Submit a Guest Article,” or if you’re looking for a specific market, use something like “Submit Guest Post” + fitness, or whatever your market is.

*  Make sure your content is available via an RSS feed. Sometimes it’s wise to excerpt it, so the resulting placement won’t outrank your own page. This is difficult to do sometimes with the authority site, but the traffic you get from them should outweigh that unfortunate occurrence.

*  Be sure to promote the content placements  with social media and social bookmarks. Promote your promoters!

*  Think outside the box. Some of the best places to place content may not leap to mind. Sites like About.com, Gather.com, Scribd.com, good-tutorials.com, and others are excellent places to submit your articles. (Scribd in particular!)

Getting your content featured on sites like these can result in not only solid, authoritative links back to your site, but just may be an avalanche of direct traffic. Make it your purpose in life to see to it that your articles have a wide presence on the Web, and are not merely buried in one article directory.

One way to energize your content marketing strategy is to make use of what you’ve already got on hand! Many people ask what they are allowed to do with their articles once they’ve either written them or had content created for them. The answer is; a lot! The idea of using your articles to perform more than one function is key when you are trying to scale your marketing efforts, and get more eyeballs to your site. Here’s some of the more efficient ways of repurposing your articles for extra duty.

* Use Them On Your Blog or Site – You always have the right to publish your own articles anywhere you wish. A few article directories, (EzineArticles and Buzzle come to mind)  like to have first shot at the article, but other than those, put it up there! You don’t have to change it in the least, however, sometimes when using the same article several places, I will take the opportunity to change up the titles and perhaps the first sentence or two. This gives you a chance to target additional keywords as well! And don’t be concerned about the so-called “duplicate content” penalty from Google. This only applies if you were to put up multiple copies of the same content on the same site.

* Post To Multiple Article Directories – You can always take advantage of the other top-level article directories out there besides Ezine and Buzzle. Some of the top tier include GoArticles, ArticlesBase, Amazines, ArticleDashboard, IdeaMarketers, and  perhaps 15 more. Here’s a great list of the top article directories, with Alexa rankings, PR, and follow/nofollow information. (Note that while ArticlesBase is now no-follow, they are still worth it because they rank so well, and you can get a lot of direct traffic.)

* Create Some Web 2.0 Sites – There are a number of terrific Web 2.0 properties you can build out blogs and personal pages on and where you can post anything you like. Some of these include sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Weebly, Multiply, Wetpaint, LiveJournal, Xanga, and many more. Remember to use anchor text links with your keywords in them to link back to your site!

* Bundle Them Into A Free Report or Ebook - Using your content as a free ebooks and reports is a terrific way to incentivize your opt-in box! Give people something of value, and you will see your subscribers and opt-ins rise. Try to keep the topic as tight as you can and tie it together nicely. Don’t go overboard with affiliate links within the document, but a few are okay.

* Make Your Articles Into Videos! – Take your content, fire up your PowerPoint, make a few slides with your main points on them, and then narrate the article over them. This is a drop dead easy way to get into video, and leverage the power of video marketing! Lastly, submit to YouTube and the other major video sharing sites.

* Make A Podcast - Do the same with a podcast. You can sometimes use the same audio track you used for the video! Then submit it to the podcast directories.

There you have it! One article can reach many more places and people than you may have imagined! Make sure that repurposing your articles is a major component of your content marketing strategy!