Article marketing is among the very best ways  to promote a website.  Whether your website is about automobiles, health and wellness or online degrees, an aggressive, well-conceived article marketing campaign can  markedly boost  your search engine rankings in  Yahoo, Bing, Google  and the so-called minor search engines.   Don’t forget , the links to your website that come as the result of  article marketing  will not in themselves  send hundreds of visitors  to you ; the value of article marketing is that it will improve your search engine rankings for the keywords you select .  And, as you are probably aware , visitors who reach your site after doing a search are  much  more likely to be interested in it than are visitors who reach your site as a result of advertising.

To be most effective , article marketing must be  sustained .  If you submit a couple of articles a week for a month or two and then stop, any gains you make in ranking will probably be  erased soon by your more persistent competitors  .

And, you must choose your anchor text…the  words or phrases  from which you link to your website… with care .  Your anchor text should rotate between the keywords people are most likely to use when trying to find a website like yours.   Notice that I used the word “rotate”.

That’s because one of the greatest  errors  article marketers make is to use the same  keyword or phrase as the anchor text in all of the links in  the articles they write for publication .  For  example , if you have a website which lists and describes online educational programs , you may be tempted to write articles only about online education and include two links in each article using “online education” as your anchor text.  That seems perfectly logical, right?

But, if you did that, you’d be making two critical mistakes…the same mistakes made by  many  article marketers.   One would be using the same keywords all the time.  Rotating anchor text to include terms like online universities, online degree programs, online  undergraduate programs , and similar terms will look much more natural to Google and  Yahoo , and may therefore result in your links being more highly valued in calculating your ranking.  

Your second mistake in the example above would be  submitting articles  only about the subject of your website.  Sure, it seems logical that the owner of an education website could best promote his or her site by writing and submitting articles and blog posts on education-related subjects, and to some extent that is true.  However, by writing about education-related subjects  exclusively , he or she would be  severely limiting  the number of websites and blogs which would consider publishing his or her articles and posts.

A  better conceived  strategy would be to write some number of articles, perhaps one of four or one of five, on a wide variety of  subjects.  Articles on automobile safety, health, and home and family have the potential to be published in blogs and on websites which would not  consider articles on an educational topic like online colleges, for instance.  Thus, rotating article topics will result in greater  exposure and more links than limiting yourself to one or two topics .

Too many marketers have shown that an article that gets it right can return excellent traffic for years. Given below are some easy to apply article writing tips to help you create better articles. Everywhere you look these days, marketers are turning to techniques such as can be seen on this Google Video Sitemap web site
If you have any desire to improve your article writing… stop writing right now. Sound confusing? It’s definitely possible to become a better writer if you simply read articles written by other people, ideally you want to read articles written by successful article writers. No doubt that you’ll have to practice writing too, but many writers forget the significant part of successful article writing and that is to read as much as possible to grasp the whole concept. It’s so easy to research your niche and find good writers in it, and then just see how they do it and learn from them. New jargon, niche terminology, and other important factors are just a few important items you can learn from other writers. This will give you a better understanding of writing good articles, which will obvious lead to more writing practice. You know what’s best for you in terms of time, so try to strike some kind of balance with your reading, learning, and writing.
There is not just one type of article format for writing, so you should learn about them and use them. Just as a couple of format examples, you can write in an expository format that just informs about a subject, or you can write an article that discusses tips and helpful hints about something. So it does not matter if the topic is the same because it just depends on the point of your article. First of all, your readers will each time get a taste of a new writing style. Furthermore, your readers will learn more about the topic if they read about it from different approaches. This will also give you an opportunity to test and find out what kind of articles give you the best response, so that you can put in your efforts into the ones that are working the best for you. Doing this will also make you a better writer, and your future articles will be stronger for it. There’s no need to mix it up too much, and it’s always good to have some consistency in your articles. One effect of writing in different styles and formats is that you’ll be a more well-rounded writer. Breakthrough: New way to healthier looking skin in just a few easy steps! For more info visit Organic Cosmetics site
You have to focus on making your reader feel comfortable reading your article. Just remember the principle of keeping everything simple and easy to follow. Don’t include a lot of unnecessary jargon and write like you speak. You’re writing an article here that any layman could read and understand. Never write in an academic style unless you know for a fact that is your target audience. In conclusion, the only way to become a good article writer is to read and practice writing. It takes time to develop into a good writer, but if you can enter your own zone, be focused, and acquire discipline, then you will improve. Discover the latest in organic skincare by visiting this Organic Cosmetics website

There are many kinds of Internet business nowadays, and many have a great success because of the actual match they make with the article marketing. The element that many online businesses share is the fact that they all want to make sales. In this path, they promote one or more products/services that they advertise both by online and offline means, trying to increase market exposure every single day. And also the platform for all the online transactions will be the WEBSITE.
Each and every Internet business begins with web design. This can be the reason why web masters make so a lot cash from their design and optimization projects. It is more common to have internet marketing strategies knowledge than to be able to set a website up and running in optimal conditions. The web master follows the principles provided by the company owner and incorporates video, audio and text elements into an interface that needs to be as user-friendly as feasible. This is the skeletal of your future Internet business.
Then follows search engine optimization. An Web business depends upon traffic, and the page visitors need to be as relevant as feasible to convert into prospects or customers. As a result, Search engine optimization and article marketing becomes the key process to get a high conversion rate. It starts with the selection of the most relevant key phrases that define a particular product, service or domain. These are the words which are probably to be typed in the internet search engine box for individual queries.
If your website is well indexed and optimized, the internet search engine will display the link to your pages among the first results. It is regarded as that for an Internet business to be effective here, it has to get a top ranking in the first two internet search engine result pages. Then you will find other aspects of Internet business marketing that you have to keep in mind in relation with Seo and advertising. It is not easy to accomplish good page rankings, and this job takes a lot of time and constant monitoring of web efficiency.
There are many advertising solutions for an Web business, and the perfect would be to discover those which are both efficient and little costly. Write-up marketing, blogging, forum posts and social network posts are considered amongst the most efficient methods of attracting relevant traffic to your business website. Web developers have began to pay more attention to these components in order to come up with alternate options or parallel solutions to pricey pay-per-click advertising patterns like Google Adwords.

5 Most Effective Methods to Generate Tons of Money by using a Personal Online Blog.
Making Money online is easy if you have the right internet marketing strategies. When you look at the end of this page you will notice a website link which gives you access to download 100% free Money Blog ebooks so remember to get yours today! Although before you go and get your free ebooks, you should know that if you really want to make money on the internet with a blog, at first you have to find a topic that you are an expert at. Now, when I say expert I do not really mean that you need to have studied something, you simply need to understand a bit more around a particular area than the standard person to manage a leading money blog.
So what is the simplest technique to start a money blog?
1. A properly researched blog heading: Your blog title is what makes the difference between an usual blog and a money blog. It is the distinction between victory and disappointment. Proper keyword investigation has to be done to ensure you grow the most free blog traffic by making use of a blog name that is significant to your exclusive niche market.
2. Well set-up meta tags: Meta tags take the part of a very important task in your blog’s search engine optimization, which is vital for ranking high in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing!
3. Great content and inter-linking: First and foremost your contents needs to grab your website visitors’ interest within the first 2 lines as the majority internet users are short of time and would not think twice before trying another site. This also has a really bad effect on your blog’s search engine optimization and will collapse your blog money generating hopes, which is a huge basis as to why more than 98% of newbie marketers call it quits and go back to work and beg for their jobs back.
4. A thriving Internet Marketing Strategy: Having a good plan is key in for any and all success you will enjoy online, and if you truly aspire to make money with a blog you need to have the fit internet marketing strategies, which could be obtained plainly by following a known Guru’s blog to find out what they do and how they do it. Investing a few dollars in a money blog ebook or 2  is by no means a bad idea and always well worth it.
5. Trade advertising space and apply PPC ads: In order to market advertising space you first of all want to have a money blog that receives a hefty amount of website traffic. To view your traffic facts it’s suggested to install a toolbar which can be obtained from Alexa, a reasonably new, very popular search engine which shows you complete traffic rankings globally, nationally and locally. Setting up PPC ads on your money blog is also a profitable idea to make money online with minimum effort, on the other hand you ought to be on familiar terms with where and how to arrange these PPC adverts to have greatest results.
Every one of these steps are crucial in any accomplishments you will have as an online professional, although of course you will not earn a single penny if you do not know where to get free traffic to your blog page. SEO plays a major role in your global website traffic, however, there are several ways to breed traffic to a money blog.

Article marketing could be a maze where the inexperienced internet marketer gets lost. The abundance of supplies, solutions and strategies contribute towards the pressure and also the confusion. If we were to put things into simple terms Internet marketing aims at making websites perform well to ensure that sales result from the traffic they attract. And here we come towards the very bottom of all strategies: the option of keywords that establish a domain, item or service, based on which all queries are made on-line.
Use the right terminology!
You have to think really well and come up with the most likely keywords to be typed in the search box by people who may need one of one’s services or products. You will find even software program tools that now allow the internet marketer to spot the most relevant key phrases. Nevertheless, there are more steps to go before you can call your web site well optimized.
Consumers’ behavior and visitors’ intent online
For an successful use of the best internet marketing strategies, market research is important. The research or the market study needs to be performed way in advance in order to identify the target market, figure out the consumer’s necessities and anticipate possible trends or evolutions in these very needs. As soon as you get the full picture, you can then move on to elaborate the methods that will make a click using the target audience, convincing individuals into transactions.
The testing phase!
You will not find too many materials to emphasize the importance of testing or experimenting. I recommend you try and find out how this works in a very useful context for business Web advertising on-line. Just take two or three new keywords and see how they influence the conversion rate. How many internet surfers using these keywords get to subscribe to your newsletter? Answer that question and everything will get clear.
Tracking internet overall performance!
Keep in mind that work is never finish with a web site. Even once you complete with style and the creation of the article marketing campaigns beginning from Seo, your efforts are far from being over. This really is the time to continue to track performance and find out how well the web site works. There are all sorts of applications to be utilized at this stage, with the mention that each of them renders you a different type of report. The possibility to identify poor performance is also a opportunity to make things right. Don’t lose it!

As an online marketer, you always have to be on the lookout for ways to find quality website traffic. There are not many ways to get quality traffic that keep working, year after year but there are one or two. One tactic that fits into this category is article marketing. If you are looking for ways to get the most out of article marketing, the suggestions in this article will help you. Also, you should definitely take a look at the Article Demon software, it’s extremely effective.
Your marketing articles must target a certain niche or product. Don’t lose sight of your niche or product. Many article marketers create articles that are just too general and don’t evoke any interest from the reader. Your job is to create only those articles that get the reader interested. A great way to accomplish this would be to talk about a problem and then suggest your product as an example that can solve the problem. For instance, if you are selling a weight loss eBook, talk about how bad obesity has become and give them lesser alternatives to try. Your other suggestions should be simple, but what you really want to do is show prospective customers that what you are providing has much more value than the other suggestions. Your aim is to identify a problem, reiterate the negative aspects of this problem and then show your reader how your product can solve their problem. This action plan will have positive results if you execute it in the right way. Also, if you can focus on your reader’s problem and provide a great solution in your article, you will receive a lot of sales.
Article marketing involves finding a balance between quality and quantity. Many online marketers know that they have to provide quality, but they forget about the importance of quantity. In order to get consistent results from your article marketing efforts, you should be willing to create more and more articles on various keywords. The more articles you choose to write, the more conversions you will get. But again, don’t sacrifice the quality in the quest of producing high number of articles. You should already have a clue about quality articles. When you finally learn how to balance quality and quantity, you will get ten times as much traffic as before. It’s not a one day process but again, it’s worth the effort.
The format you use when you write your articles is very important. Use short paragraphs, sub-headings and bullet points so readers can scan for information. People surfing the Internet often won’t read everything, so make it as easy as possible for them to scan through your article. This kind of formatting can make your article look far more professional. Nobody wants to see lots of text with no spacing. In conclusion, article marketing can offer so many benefits and advantages to your promotional efforts, so take action and get started today. Before you go, check out these Article Demon reviews.

A simple search on the Internet will show you that you will find hundreds if not thousands of possibilities to generate money at your home, and one of them is article marketing and who would not prefer to earn a living with a adaptable program? Stay-home moms, retired individuals or students are just a couple of of instances of those considering making some additional money on-line. The inherent issue about the wonder ways to generate cash at home is the large number of scams that have come to threaten numerous on-line workers. Here are a couple of issues you should think about since you will find no fast ways to the internet riches no matter what one assures.
First of all, in order to earn cash at home on the Web one has to offer some form of service in return for the pay. So, what can you do? What skills can you develop to generate an income? Like in real-life positions, one needs an educational and professional background before obtaining hired, and the rule stays valid for Internet jobs too. Let’s consider freelancing, writers, graphic designers, pc programmers, engineers, business specialists or management assistants can find jobs on-line even if they don’t have the exact same work security as they’d benefit from in a contract-based career.
As a freelance worker, jobs may be sporadic and you’d require to try other ways to generate money at home by using the proper internet marketing strategies. Virtual assistant is another frequently encountered on-line job, as all one needs to do is deal with numerous inquiries and tasks. Based on the organization that employs you, the job can differ from appointments scheduling to locating various plans and handling the e-mail. Then, an additional answer to generate money at home is by writing transcriptions. For people having a great command of English who have a great typing speed of around 75 words per minute, this could be a lucrative chance.
Direct sales and article marketing make other possibilities to generate money online, you have to know where to begin the search and how you can get in the business. Maybe at first you’d make around ten dollars per hour, but in time a lot more may come. Patience and determination are the two qualities absolutely essential to a person who would like to earn cash at home and enjoy the flexibleness of a personally controlled plan. Other possibilities do exist, and here we ought to mention surveys taking and assist for the disabled too as other Internet advertising solutions, but numerous of the services need qualification and prove very selective in their choice of collaborators.

Many thousands of online marketing realize the power of article marketing for producing seriously targeted traffic, do you? So that’s why we want to review some excellent article marketing tips that can add some power to your online business.
A simple article marketing tip would be to compile all your written articles into an e-book or PDF report that you can give away for free. This strategy can be used as a way to leverage your current list into an ever expanding number of visitors or subscribers. If you plan this right, you can use this to promote your website or product for free. If your niche is dog training and you have 25 articles related to that topic, you could create a 25 page report on “tips on training your dog” and give it away. The best thing about giving away e-books or reports is that you can start to get traffic from many different places as the report goes viral and spreads. Make sure you give your readers “give away” or “distribution” rights, so that they can give away the report to their visitors or subscribers. You can get a large amount of free traffic if your report circulates around the internet widely enough. Word of mouth publicity can be the best kind, and if you are providing people with quality free content, you can make use of this. You may as well take advantage of this content that’s there for you to use. This is a marketing tactic that is easy to do and can bring you great results. Think about it, with article marketing you’ll be creating very highly targeted traffic, plus that traffic will have been through your preselling process. You’ll soon find out, if you don’t know, that article directories are the most often submitted to places for articles on the net. There are literally hundreds of directories if not more, but most people only submit to the major ones. Ezinearticles, Goarticles, and even Articlesbase.com are probably the top three places for article submitting. It’s possible to rank on the first page with your article, using the directories, but a lot depends on how competitive the market is. As far as ranking in the engines, you can do it but a lot depends on your market and keyword competitiveness. It can be done, but it is no longer a walk in the park to rank well using articles in the directories. If you’ve done everything right, you can get excellent traffic from your articles, but just make sure you know what you’re doing.
You can also use your articles with your autoresponder service to deliver them through email. It’s important to have a list, and if you do then that’s just other way to use them. You can turn your articles into an e-course, a PDF report, etc. and deliver it to your new subscribers. This will help you derive more value out of your articles and also get repeat traffic. But do make sure you’re only sending out high quality information to your marketing list. You don’t want to send out just any kind of article on any topic. You’ll be rewarded if you only offer high quality content.
In summary, the above tips that we discussed about article marketing are not very unique but they can make a huge difference to your article marketing campaign when you put them to use. This marketing method is almost alone in its power to provide such high returns for the little effort invested.

Making money online doesn’t need to entail scams, or even starting a new business. If you can put a few sentences together about something other people might like to learn about, that’s a good start. Writing articles is no longer about getting the latest stories into the latest editions of the local newspapers, all written by well paid reporters. Things have really changed now with the internet. You don’t need to be a big name pro to get your writings accepted and recognized. Writing is a now a marketing tool. Learning about external links and article marketing can help grow your business.
The internet provides a wide range of outlets for any level of writing talent. An “article” can mean anything from a blog, home pages for websites, entire website content, sales letters, and even real stories and articles for online publishers.
Essentially there are two ways to get noticed online writing articles. You can get paid, or you can do it for free. Each has pros and cons.
Check out some sites where you can submit content for free. These frequently offer more benefits, too. At the end of your article you should place a link to your own website for the readers to either get more information or turn into paying customers. You will be looked on as an expert on the subject. That is, after all, a main benefit of article marketing.
Pretend you make gift baskets. You could write articles on how to make your own gift baskets and give readers ideas on how to decorate them and sell them. Of course, each article would have your bio talking about your company and it would have an external link to your website.
Some sites will pay you for your article. You may or may not be given a byline. Each paying site has different rules.
Not many people get rich writing. Even Edgar Allen Poe died a bitter penniless man. With article writing, it’s all about marketing yourself and your business. Even if it’s not your own business! With the invention of internet based email came the idea of viral marketing. Hotmail was the first to put ads on the bottom of every email sent using their service. The idea caught on. Now, everyone who has anything to sell or promote should add links to every email he sends.
Anyone can do this. Car salesmen to hairdressers should all have links to weekly promotions or other info where readers will turn into customers.

Article marketing is definitely the most cost effective way to market your product/service online. In this article we will be discussing a few article marketing tips that will help you get the most out of your efforts. Never underestimate the power of saving money at this Waterless Urinal website
One way to use article marketing that many people don’t think of is to combine a group of articles on one topic into a report or e-book that can be given away. This can prove to be a great addition to your other marketing techniques, particularly because it uses existing resources to get new traffic. You don’t have to spend a dime to make this work for you, but only a bit of creativity. For example, if you have 50 articles written on “learning piano”, you can easily create a 50 page report on “how to learn piano in 30 days” and divide it into sections. Giving away reports is a form of viral marketing that can bring you lots of free and targeted traffic for a long time. The idea, of course, is to have your report circulate, so include a passage that gives everyone full distribution rights, which means they can pass it along to others. Your goal is to have as many people read and re-circulate your report, so that it generates a lot of free traffic for you. When you create a quality report, people will want to share it with others, which is nothing but harnessing the power of word of mouth. So don’t let all those articles just sit around and go to waste. Put them to good use and you’ll be surprised to see the kind of response you’ll receive.
Another way articles can work for you is if you’ve created a product that affiliates are selling on your behalf. You can write promotional articles, give them to your affiliates and they can submit them with their own affiliate urls. If you want your affiliates to sell for you, it’s wise to give them tools to help them promote. This is a way to help both you and your affiliates, as when they make more sales you also make money. Your affiliates will be grateful to have a free and simple way to promote your product and make more commissions for themselves. solar inverter page
The use of bullet points can enhance the quality and effectiveness of your articles. They just help people to be able to read them easier and faster. They also let you create more white space in your articles which is easier on the eyes. An article that has more organization will help with better click throughs. You want to make your readers happy, and a professional looking article will help you do this. Hardly anything can beat article marketing for creating traffic that is highly targeted, and it’s also pretty cost effective, too. It’s not a get rich quick method, but it is very solid and does work.

Building and maintaining an article directory does take some work, but if you do it, you’ll find that there’s a lot to be gained from it. You can find article directories of all descriptions, and you can mold them to your own purposes. Don’t think that huge directories like Ezinearticles make it impossible to start one of your own. The fact is, you won’t be competing with them, so they don’t affect you. Instead, think of your directory as you would your primary website, especially if it can be considered an authority site. Then do the simple math of 1 + 1 equals massive expansion and streams of profit using article directories. With tons of articles, imagine how many keywords you could be on page one with in the search engines. That is massive potential, but you have to start at the beginning. Let’s go over some methods to get you started. Also, in case you’re interested, you should really think about buying the Article Demon program, it is very good.
When you are laying the groundwork for your article directory, you really do want to make your article categories keyword-wealthy; not rich, filthy rich. Hopefully you are good at doing keyword research because that will determine a lot with seo purposes.
You want your articles to come up in the search results, so be sure to get that step down right. Blogs have a silo structure, and that is one thing that helps them to rank well; you want your directory to have the same kind of structure. However, an article directory has more to it than a regular site. Just think of this as putting in the proper effort that will reward you later. When you create an article directory, you also have the issue of monetizing it one way or another. Of course you want to be profitable, and there are many ways you can do that. If you have ever been to Ezinearticles, then you know that it is basically a huge Adsense farm – of a different variety. As might be expected, some article marketers who publish on Ezinearticles have complained about the widespread presence of Adsense around the site. But, that is a viable choice for your article directory, as well. Another possible monetization method is to have banners on your site. It might be even more profitable for you to use banners to promote offers of your own. Those are just two quick and obvious ideas about monetizing your article directory.
Outsourcing the creating of your article directory is an option if you’re able to spend a little money, though it doesn’t have to be that expensive. You could actually outsource everything, including the day to day management of it. That’s your decision, of course. Outsourcing is something you have to do some research about if you’re not knowledgeable about it. While you can get amazing benefits from outsourcing, you can also get burned if you’re not careful about the company or individuals you’re hiring. Outsourcing can be very helpful to online businesses, just be careful. If you’re seeking good information on outsourcing, check online and take your time.
Creating and managing an article directory will give you a lot of flexibility that you would not have. If you are using other sites with it, then be sure to put them on different hosting accounts. You may know about how some will have a blog and a site on the same domain; we are talking about cross marketing from different domains.

Submitting articles to directories can be a great way to send very targeted traffic to your website and your offers. Article distribution can really enable you to make a reputation for yourself as an expert in the niche you have chosen for your business. Give it some thought: won’t you be more likely to believe in somebody who has shared lots of articles on the subject that you want to learn most about? Aren’t people far more likely to buy something from a individual who has lots of results when you look for his name in Google? When you generate and then submit articles, you can help this happen on your own.
If you have been reading up onmedical assistant program, then you could have a good grasp of what is out there on the net. Perhaps you could have worked out that not all you have discovered will apply to you. There are many trusted resources about it, plus other associated aspects that you have to consider, as well. The maddening part about it is you could find out you have to perform even additional research. To be sure, even the best online experts sometimes get stumped when searching for special kinds of information. We have discovered the following about this specific subject, and we want to improve on it and give some added understanding.
It is vital to be sure that your articles are well crafted before start posting articles left and right. Anybody can slap together a few paragraphs and hit distribute. Just have a look at blogs if you need proof of this. When your intention is to make yourself an expert, though, you’ll want to make absolutely sure that the articles you create are good. Write a few drafts and ask another person to check them out before you hit submit. More respect is acquired when you have created good articles. Nobody will finish reading a write-up that isn’t engaging as well as factual. If it is riddled with errors people will certainly click away quickly.
There is a lot more to article marketing than simply creating a bunch of back links to your site. This is the reason why it is a bad idea to allow yourself submit just a single article to dozens and dozens of directories. While this will build back links, it won’t build your reputation. People who do research or even just read for fun will notice instantly if your article ends up in front of them a lot. If they see that you just have an article or two in rotation, they won’t be as likely to trust you. Instead of uploading the exact same article, create a few versions of each article that you can submit with a clear conscience.
Only the very best internet sites should have your articles. E-zine Article Directory is very well respected and has very tight submission rules. Buzzle is one more good one as is Article Dashboard. It is essential to remember, though, that HubPages and Squidoo aren’t really article directories. Those are earnings sharing websites. Check Google to discover which article directories turn up again and again and then be sure those directories get your articles. You really want your name to turn up a bunch when people look up your chosen topic or specific niche market. This is the way to drive traffic and boost your profit margin. We consider the above thoughts and suggestions must be taken into account in any discussion on salaries of medical assistants. There is a remarkable amount you really should take the time to know about. However, you will discover them to be of great utility in your search for information. Getting a high altitude snapshot will be of immense value to you. So we will give you a few more important ideas to think about.
There are several ways that you can create your business by writing articles. This is especially true if those content articles are well written and indexed favorably by the major search engines. There are many things that can be done to make this materialize. It’s fully feasible to whip out an article and submit it to every directory you see. Of course, if you actually want to get the attention you desire (and the money you want to make) you can write a few well written articles and then send them to a couple of the most highly respected article directories online. Make a good choice here and your business could improve!
Something you may find quite a surprise is the depth and breadth of all there is regarding medical assistants. All we desired to do is show you what is available but still valuable at the same time. There actually is a tremndous amount of extremely valuable content available. There is much more that can really produce the kind of results anyone would want. Plus you can gain a significant advantage if you follow the proven steps and methods in the following discussion.