Is Article Marketing a Good SEO Strategy?

Since the year 2000 I’ve been using article marketing for traffic generation by getting lots of backlinks and gaining high search engine rankings. Since the Google Farmer Update article marketing has evolved but not died.

The old way of article marketing

In the early days of article marketing you could simply submit your article to a number of article directories and many website owners and ezine publishers would republish your article. This would generate lots of traffic and backlinks back to your site because the search engines would reward you with high rankings. After the Google Farmer Update sites containing duplicate or low quality content got downgraded. For instance Ezinearticles (one of the top article directories on the Web) lost a lot of its traffic because many of their articles contained thin content.

The new way of article marketing

1. Write original high quality articles

Google and other search engines are always on the look out for original, unique content. This means you should provide your own unique opinion on a subject and write it in your own style. You will attract readers that prefer your style of writing over others. You also build natural backlinks when readers naturally link to and bookmark your content.

2. Submit content to your own website or blog first

Submitting content to your own website or blog first makes sure that the search engines will rank your content ahead of others republishing the same content. For example if I post an article to my blog first then someone republishes it on their blog, my content will appear and rank ahead of theirs in the search engines.

3. Rewrite your content before submitting to article directories

Rewrite at least 20% of your original article before submitting it to article directories. I often find it easier to simple rewrite the whole article than trying to rewrite a paragraph or 2. This ensures you have another unique article attracting its own traffic and backlinks from search engines, websites and and social media sites.

4. Vary your anchor text

After you’ve rewritten your content make sure you vary the anchor text in the resource box at the end of the article. Search engines give credit to content that has backlinks pointing to it from a variety of other web properties.

5. Publish your content to niche websites and ezine publishers

Find blogs and ezine publishers in your niche and offer them the opportunity to publish your article. For instance you could be a guest blogger for a popular blog in your niche or write a specific article for an ezine publisher. This enables you to attract a more targeted audience which leads to more sales and/or subscribers.

6. Repurpose your content

These days people like to consume content in various ways. Textual content is no longer the only way to disseminate information on the Web. Some people prefer to watch and listen rather than read so convert your article to a video and submit it to video sharing sites. Other ways to repurpose content may include:

  • Webinars
  • Ecourses
  • Podcasts
  • Document sharing websites (PDFs)
  • Blog Talk Radio
  • Reports
  • Ebooks

7. Build a community

Instead of relying on the search engines to index your content build a community of loyal readers. This can be accomplished by announcing it to all your web properties every time you write a new article. For example send an email to your newsletter subscribers, send a Tweet to your Twitter account, update your Facebook status and post it on your blog.

Conclusion
Many website owners are still holding on to old methods of article marketing because they haven’t kept up with the industry and how it has evolved. Also they have not tested the new strategies to find out if they are successful. My tests on implementing the new article marketing strategies outlined above prove it is still a highly effective method for generating traffic, backlinks and gaining high rankings.

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Comments

  1. Hi There Drostdesigns,
    Very interesting, I was curious about what are some of the ultimate review directories to submit to as aspect of an document marketing technique for Seo reasons? Which kinds stay applicable submit “Panda” and “Farmer” updates and which ones have swift turnarounds and approval processes?

    Thank you and exploring ahead to everyone’s responses.
    All the Best

    • Perry…not sure what you mean by “ultimate review directories” however if you insert keyword+directory in the Google search box you’ll get a list of directories related to that keyword.

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