In the previous lesson we discussed Off Page SEO, and covered many ways of obtaining links to your website.
Today we’re going to learn about a link-building strategy that involves other benefits too.
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
– It’s white hat (unless you do it the grey-hat way).
– It’s easy and low cost to get started.
– Even if you fail from an SEO standpoint, you’ll still have something to show for it.
– It’s cool, but NOT what I’m talking about.
– Fails to reap all the benefits of article marketing.
1) Off Page SEO from the back links
2) Direct click-through traffic from the links
3) Builds your authority/credibility as an expert in your niche
1) Write an article (or outsource it).
– Needs to be original. No PLR or public domain. Re-written or spun content works in some cases, but not recommended for EzineArticles.
– Needs to be 500 words. Between 400-1000 is OK, but shoot for 500.
– Don’t promote anything in it!
– Editorial guidelines: http://ezinearticles.com/editorial-guidelines.html
– Write about the things that your market wants to read about. (NOT about your product)
– Use your keyword research from Lesson #77. DO go broad, and use the long tail.
– Use your keyword at the beginning of article title. Write catchy titles to entice clicks.
– Use one of your keywords as the anchor text for a link to your site IN the article.
– Write an author bio, with a call to action to entice clicks to your website.
– Alternate anchor text between the URL, site name, and keywords.
– If your #1 goal is SEO, link to your home page or strategic page that you’re trying to boost. Otherwise, consider linking to a squeeze page. Remember I spent 12 lessons talking about list building.
2) Submit your article.
– Most important directory is EzineArticles.com
– Some article marketers do very well exclusively with EzineArticles.
– Others like to distribute to as many article directories as possible.
Strategy to consider:
– Submit at least half of your articles exclusively to EzineArticles.
-Take your remaining articles, and submit them to several other article directories, such as…
articledashboard.com
goarticles.com
articlesbase.com (uses no-follow attribute)
articlesnatch.com (uses no-follow attribute)
articlealley.com (uses no-follow attribute)
knol.google.com (uses no-follow attribute sometimes)
ezinemark.com
articlecity.com
articleclick.com
ideamarketers.com
isnare.com (Article distribution service)
Article networks (Gray hat IMO):
MyArticleNetwork from Matt Callen
SEOLinkVine from Brad and Matt Callen
3) Promote your articles to give yourself an edge
– Do some off-page SEO
– Bookmark it on social bookmarking sites like delicious.com
– Digg it on Digg.com
– Tweet it on twitter.com
– Use it in the URL of blog comments
– If you’re going to use any automated/spammy tools, this is the place to do it.
– Or hire some cheap oursourcers to do the work, and multiply the effect.
4) “Rinse and repeat”
Freelancer sites:
vWorker
Odesk
Classifieds:
craigslist
Article specialty sites:
Need-an-article.com
articlez.com
Hire your own team (probably the best long-term solution):
Replace Myself
Remember to…
-Ask for samples first.
-Check for plagiarism. (www.google.com, www.copyscape.com, www.scanmyessay.com)
Action steps:
1) Decide if you want to pursue article marketing.
2) If yes, commit to doing it diligently for 6 months+.
3) Write, submit, and promote your articles. (Or outsource it).
We’ll be looking at Video Marketing in the next lesson.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
Great Blog. Article play very important role in SEO work. It is the best way to get maximum back links in Short time. If the content of an article is high quality and Unique then it gives best back links. We must promote over article in High page rank and dofollow article submission sites for best result. Thanks for suggesting best blog on Article’s importance.
A few days ago, I got contact with a person from google and he told me about duplicate content penalty. I was thinking of submitting each article to every article directory but now I am sceptical. Which one of these do you think is the best? :
1) To submit 50 different articles to 1 high PR directory
2) To submit 1 article to 50 high PR directories (which triggers duplicate content penalty)
Which one do you think is better from these?
Hello Gokhan,
If your strategy is to just get organic traffic from Google over time, you might want to avoid the penalty, especially if the articles are linking back to your main site.
However, if you are looking for a lot of traffic in the here and now, it would be better to submit to more directories. Remember that people will be searching for articles directly at those sites, and your content will also appear on the sidebar, or related articles area, etc.
Thanks for the answer. I want higher positions on the search engines so I think I will submit all of my articles to only one high PR related article directory. I hope this works.
I am ready to hear any recommends. Thanks again.
Man you are just a well of info. I like the sound of that article marketing. I am going to jump on that. Thanks for the tips as usual. God bless!
Mark
thanks man, great tips on article marketing, really dig the site and all the useful information.
Hey Eric Does this still apply with the new penguin update??
Warmest Regards
Matt
Hello Matt,
Yes, but Google has been giving more preference to actual documents in their search results as of late.
ok, would this be more so Blogging on your domain instead of Articles on external sites
My older son is on daycare M-F 8am to 4:45pm. He loves it though.
It’s like school, but more fun. lol His little brother starts in a couple months (he’s 1 1/2 now).
But 7 days a week is a LOT of time to be there.
Great article – I’ve had good luck w articles. You recommend including a link to your site in the article, but many sites ban this.
On the list of article submissions – ideamarketers no longer accepts articles as they did before. Not sure about isnare. Evancarmichael has become a factor.
Hello Cathy,
You would need to check the rules of the site you are making submissions to!
Hi Eric, What a great opportunity you are giving to us free. Your info is so well presented and well written. I am a golf instructor and I teach using three methods. In my instructions I verbally, visually, and hands on teach. I learn hands on myself the best. People that learn verbally and visually can learn watching a video such as you offer on IM. My question is how do I get targeted traffic to my site? My market is the state my school is in which is Texas. The state of Texas is my market for student for several reasons. The main reasons are short distance to travel,2 day stay, quick getaway. I could make this very long but I want take up too much of your time. If you have a low or free cost solution to my traffic situation I would very much appreciate your help.
Thanks
Don
Hello Don,
Here is the link to Eric’s lesson called, Introduction to Web Traffic:
Hi
once again thanks Eric for the great tips.
Would this also work for an article about, say property, but with the links back to my personal website.
Also does this help the ranking of the search term for my name for example?
cheers and thank you once again.
Kenyon
Hello Kenyon,
Yes, this can help your desired domains to rank better in the search engines. But, you’ll want to be sure that the anchor text used in any links is relevant to your site.
Have you seen this site https://zeef.com/ http://zeef.org/? Would this site be considered a article marketing or link building tool?…They seem to do things a little different then the average article marketing site. I think it will work great for affiliate marketing maybe. I am just wonder if you have any opinions about this ZEEF site i came across. They let you create your own pages and put as many links as you want on your page and bookmark sites that you might want to share. I was considering using this site. I just not sure if creating a page here would benefit me or not. this may be considered low quality linking not sure? what do I know. I am still learning.
Hello Liz,
I’m not familiar with that one yet. But, Eric has a number of traffic sources listed just a few lessons ahead!
Here is the link to Eric’s lesson called, Over 400 Free Web Traffic Sources:
I know this is probably old but I had to chime in
Google doesn’t really penalize duplicate content on the web they penalize dupes on a site you can’t have a hundred post about blue widgets etc.