Article marketing on the Internet harnesses the power of the Web and the hunger for written content. Article marketing allows writers to promote themselves, their websites, products or literally anything, by writing about them and making the content freely available for reproduction on other Internet sites and electronic mediums.
To use it as a marketing tool you first need to create the article on the topic you want to promote. Once created, the article can be uploaded to any of hundreds of article directories allowing others to ‘reprint’ your article, usually for free, in exchange for posting your article bio, or resource box, a small section of text, usually at the end of the article, where links can be included.
These links are used to drive traffic to your website or blog to capture and entice prospects to consider your offerings. If your article is of interest to a broad audience, it’s likely to be picked up and reproduced in a number of ways relating to the subject matter.
The fact that one link has now turned into several links without you having to do anything, will have a positive impact on your search engine page rankings. The more backlinks you can get to your site across the Web, the greater the perceived importance of your website, in general terms. The reproduced backlink is the valuable item in this case. The more your article is picked up by others, the more times your backlink will be reproduced.
Carrying your name across the Internet can also give you some excellent reputational benefits. To build your reputation, focus the resource box more on you and less on a target website that you want people to visit. Writing quality articles will help you build your own reputation as someone who knows their subject and through time, helps you establish yourself as an authority on the subject.
When writing your articles be sure to provide information and resources, not an ad for you or your website. No one will be interested in using this type of article. Many unsuccessful article marketers make the mistake of using sub-standard articles and expecting good results.
Your article should always be of good quality. If it isn’t, then you are telling prospective visitors, or customers, that quality is not important to you and that they can expect poor quality information on the target website. Equally, because others will not wish to reprint your article, the reproduction of backlinks that you so badly want, will not happen.
Don’t get carried away with website promotion and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Remember that your article needs to be of interest to people, not for search engines to browse. You’re looking to have your article picked up and reprinted by real readers so that you can promote yourself, your subject or whatever you’ve included in your resource box.
In short, to make article marketing work for you, you must:
- Make sure your article is related to your target website/market and is relevant.
- Use good quality, well written original articles.
- Make it readable and interesting.
- Be patient. Traffic and backlinks won’t appear overnight.
Jeannine Clontz, IVAA CVA, MVA, EthicsChecked™, provides marketing and social media support, training and consulting to busy entrepreneurs. For information about finding a VA, download her FREE 10-Step Guide to Finding the Right VA, or to learn why Social Media should be an important part of your marketing plan with her FREE Report, Social Media Marketing Benefits, visit: http://www.internetmarketingvirtualassistant.net, or contact her at info@internetmarketingvirtualassistant.net
I wrote an article once on Ezine articles. No one read it. LOL!!! However it will be something I will be returning to and will be taking on board your comments as they seem to be very sensible advice.
However, do you have any tips on which are the better directories? How can you tell?
Thanks
Ian
Hi, Ian – Thanks so much for your comments. eZineArticles.com is one of the top sites, as are A1articles, Amazines, Article Alley, Article Base,
Article Feeder, Biznik, Go Articles, Idea Marketers, Search Warp, Self Growth, Sooper Articles, and ArticleDashboard.com. But that’s my opinion, of course.
There are thousands of great and well-respected free article sites. You need to take the time to look at what their focus is, who is going there to look for articles, and whether or not that particular platform is the right one for the type of articles you write, including expertise and topic.
Don’t give up – give a few different places a try and see how things go – be sure to have a kick-butt profile, because that’s where people start, that really speaks to your target market and you’re sure to find article marketing success!
Wishing you all the best.
Jeannine
Thanks Jeannine for your response. I will investigate these sites in due course, at the moment I am in an free Ebook phase although I plan to take some parts of these for articles in the future and expand/adjust them accordingly. Thanks again. Ian
You’re quite welcome!
Hi Jeannine!
Thanks for sharing this great post. I really enjoyed reading your article because it will really help me gain more insights on the advantages of article marketing for my business. I couldn’t agree more in any of your given tips because they are all sure boosters! I have been using Ezine to help me market my articles for a while now. I find Ezine a great tool to connect with my readers by getting them to try my products. It’s also a great way of finding good people to invest in my business. Your tips will definitely come in handy. Thanks for sharing and keep your posts coming.
Hi, Kent – I agree, an eZine is a great Internet marketing tool. Definitely needs to be used in conjunction with an article marketing campaign that expands your reach/network to captue new prospects.
An eZine is distributed to a database of people you already have a connection to, or who have shown interest in your products/services.
Article submissions to free sites with a well-crafted resource box and bio will not only increase traffic to your webiste, but opens prospects to your entire site. As long as your article keywords speak directly to your prospect’s challenges/pain, you’ll reap the benefits of capturing those prospects most interested in what you have to offer.
Both are great tools for your marketing toolbelt – enjoy!
The information you have included in this article completely ignores the impact that publishing duplicate content can have on your search engine rankings.
In January of 2011, Google published its first Panda update. This update effectively removed many sites — including ezinearticles.com — from search results pages due to the high amount of duplicate content (meaning content published multiple times on the net) they contained.
These sites still “existed” online, but to find them people had to either type their address in a browser bar or follow a link elsewhere on the web. These sites saw their Google-driven traffic disappear overnight. Ezinearticles survived; many, many other businesses did not.
Since that first update, Google has fine-tuned its algorithm and ezinearticles.com will now appear in some searches — but only for “ezine directory” or “ezine articles” or the like — and not for any of the topics that you might write about (which would help to explain why @ianrod2000′s article attracted no readers).
Google is out to remove ALL duplicate content from its search results and will not stop until it succeeds so the only way to do article marketing as described in this article AND protect your search engine rankings is to NEVER EVER publish any article that has been published elsewhere (including ezine directories) on your own website; that goes for your own work as well as republishing the work of others. If you only publish original work on your own website, you will not have to be constantly looking over your shoulder at Google, wondering when you’ll be “google slapped” and see all of your Google traffic disappear overnight.
Hi, Lesa – Thanks so much for your passionate response!
Yes, I’m fully aware of information indicating Google’s attempts to remove duplicate content, as well as many other things.
I have been using this system as one of many marketing options to promote myself and my business and have not received any negative impacts or rankings as a result.
My traffic and statistics continue to show good results and growth month after month. As with any marketing strategy, tracking results is one of the most important factors in determining the success of any Internet marketing option.
If I were to find that in tracking my return on investment (ROI), article marketing was having any sort of a negative impact, I would certainly rethink my position, as anyone should.
I am simply sharing my opinion of the advantages and success this particular marketing effort has allowed me in my business. It is up to the reader to decide whether or not this is the right option for them.
I’m pretty sure that for just about any such option there would be negative connotations as well as positives. If you feel the negatives outweigh the positives, then this may not be the right option for you.
Wishing you all the best.