Distributing articles for the purpose of building links to a site or for that site’s SEO can be a great way to link build and build your site’s authority status. But a good amount of SEO writers tend to take the easy way out of distributing their content, using only article distribution sites for doing so. These article warehouses will get your name out into the Internet, and you may end up with a few good links in the process (and maybe some traffic from EzineAricles.com because they get great Google longtail rankings).
The downside to mass article distribution is, however, the content on article distribution sites gets duplicated all over the net on sites you have no control over. This can lead to a lot of worthless links from trash sites and spam blogs that are just trying to increase their rankings or value in an undereducated manner. Likewise, policing that these trash sites are actually linking back to you, or not selling other links in your content, is nearly impossible and can really cut into your profit margin.
Instead of throwing your content out there for everyone and their family dog to duplicate, I suggest taking a smarter approach to marketing your articles for SEO purposes. While some of these tips may take longer to implement, they can be of great value. Here are some ways to market SEO articles without using article distribution sites. These will lead to good, solid links that will help improve your site’s rankings and draw in new customers.
Print on Your Own Site
Your own website can be a great way to promote your articles. Start a news section and post articles you write on your website so that readers can use, positioning your site or internal blog as a resource.
Remember, good SEO articles will be keyword rich, attracting your target market directly to your website. Better yet, the bookmarks (here’s a list of bookmarking services you should submit to) and links pointing to the article will build value to your site, not someone else’s (like if you gave them the article for free).
Blogs Attract Customers
Launch a separate blog to establish yourself as an expert in your niche (or buy someone else’s blog). Combine your articles into that blog that address problems that your target audience experiences. You can then offer them solutions to these problems in the form of products and services that you offer, or just link to your services or ‘sponsor’ the blog with your business.
Posting articles on your blog and updating them regularly will help you gain an audience. Search engines also love blogs because of their freshness, so your blog will show up higher when someone searches your keywords, and that traffic will ultimately find your site.
Print Your Work.
Even in this electronic age, the printed word holds value. For some readers, just being able to hold a piece of paper makes the information seem more valuable. Print up your best articles on nice paper, including a photo and contact information, and pass them out to your existing and potential clients or contribute them to a local newspaper or business association flyers. You’d be surprised how many business sections of the paper are looking for content and isn’t having niche expert advice on business much better than reading press releases or AP wires?
Remember, you can duplicate your content all over the place and not get in trouble with Google, if its not online :)
Create Link Bait
Nothing gets my goat more than sites which want to charge an arm and a leg for me to supply them with a well written article. But if you’re going to hand over your content to an authority site, make sure your link from them is worth 100 times more than what you pay. Make those articles as link worthy as possible.
As you develop your SEO articles, keep in mind what users are seeking. If you have the answers to an interesting or difficult question, then write an article utilizing those keywords. Both the title and content should be written with “link bait” considerations, meaning that they are relevant, fresh, and interesting enough that users will submit them to Digg and other sites, thus exposing you to other webmasters and readers.
Scribe an eBook
Looking at Aaron Wall as an example, eBooks can be a great way to publish your articles. Take your top ten or so articles and put them into an eBook. Add the appropriate features, like a cover page, a title page, and a resource section. Submit the book to eBook directories, establish a brand, offer free downloads or previews and even charge a fee if you will. Make sure that you have a link to your website in the eBook and add something of value to it, not only reprinted articles.
Guest Blog Posting
What better way to distribute your writing and build your reputation and the brand of your company than helping established bloggers with content and filler. Guest blog posting can lead to enormous leads, coverage and valuable links to your site. If I’m going to give away my content, I want something in return besides links and this is an excellent way of doing so. Consider searching for blogs in your field or a related niche, then contacting the blogger asking if you can contribute to their blog or make a guest post.
Chances are, if they’ve heard of you, they’ll say yes. This is generally free, and it can help generate traffic for both parties, as well as create exposure to new audiences.
Is this a proven technique?
hehehhe
Yeah Tyler, it is :)
“Guest Blog Posting” is the best one, I think. I saw valuable guest posts working magic in terms of building reputation and faithful readership (to me it is more important that just instant traffic and pr)
eBooks have been an excellent source of revenue for us. But they tend to be much larger than I would think an article would be. An article would likely be a really really small eBook. But an article could be expanded significantly into a larger eBook which can either be given away or sold.
Al Link – 4 Freedoms Tantra
Thanks for the good post. I used to send out my articles to various directories until duplicated content started to be a problem.
I just keep my content on my own blog now and gain backlinks via web 2.0 and social bookmarking sites.
Guest blogging definately helps my backlinks and traffic also.
Thanks
Thanks for suggesting good article posting, we are using all technique for article posting.
But now think about “Print Your Work” option. This is good idea and new for us.
thanks again
Brilliant tactic…
Not that you won’t hit some nice sites when trolling for links with the traditional paste and post article marketing viral marketing tactic. Ideally you should select targets for your articles that have the ability to rise to the top of the SERPs on their own, as well as hit your site with a nice link to boot.
Some good ones are goarticles, articleset, & ezinearticles for starters. Just add the [dot] com after them and post away.
Each has their own affinity with each search engine so you can test the waters for a keyword and see who clicks through. If the click conversion is satisfactory, then you can optimize it and reap the long term rewards.
I agree Loren, article marketing is the NEW SEO tactic to fall back on without negative implications.
Thanks again for your expert opinion to reinforce this under used link building strategy.
Good post, Loren. It just goes to show you that there is more to article marketing than just submitting to syndicated sites. Like any other type of marketing you need to keep an open mind to alternative distribution channels.
I have written some ezinearticles, but the only link that shows up when I do a link: mysite.com is my profile page on ezinearticles.com. The articles themselves don’t show up. Is that because the spider crawls the profiles more regularly? Will my links likely show up later?
Loren, don’t know if you’re out here at Pubcon or not but if you are hopefully I can meet ya.
Anyways, regarding article syndication. Is it wiser to A) host the articles on your site, let Google crawl/index/cache your article and THEN syndicate it out so you are seen as the content originator or B) don’t host it and submit it to places like ezinearticles.com and let them be the originators for a stronger backlink (because their pages wont go in supplemental if they originate)
Hi Loren — Thanks for the great ideas. Since I’ve been working to improve my online stats, I have completely overlooked the printed word (and I know better). If you layout good content and print in a quality way on good paper stock, that article can certainly have a powerful impact – if you can get it into the right hands. One of my articles on an article site has gotten way more views than another 7 articles combined. Humm? Might this be a clue as to the popularity of that article subject offline? I’ll give it a go as a printed article and see what kind of traction it can get. BTW, I’ve compiled 5 article subjects into a free report, “5 Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You about High Blood Pressure Treatment (and Why You should Know Them.)” It’s free at my site. So maybe a better initial strategy would be to compile an e-report of 10-18 pages rather than trying to stretch limited content into an e-book.
great post i’ve just submitted my first articles and i’m still new to the article marketing area. haven’t seen much from it yet though
I often noticed that a tweet with a link to my articles gets it indexed fast.
When the trash sites you refer to link back to you, you also lose link juice as well as possible money
When the trash sites you refer to link back to you, you also lose link juice as well as possible money.
sorry about the duplicate comment
I've had great success with guest blog hosting. Not only can you get some great backlinks doing this, it's also an excellent source of consistent (usually targeted) traffic. The key is building a relationship with other bloggers so that you can post on a variety of different blogs related to your niche.
The key is making friends with other bloggers and guest posting on other blogs, usually other bloggers are quite friendly.
I'm only new to link building and from what I see in different blogs the views are split dramatically, there are people who think that article marketing isn't going to help your SEO whilst others say that it does work. I like the information on this site as it goes along side with what I have come to beleive and that is that link building definitely helps. thanks for the tips.
Xavier
Thanks for this im writing articles about for distribution but now i think its a better idea just to market my articles by placing them on my own website and blog. Thanks for any help , let me know if you have any tips for my site please. Regards Martin
Thanks for this im writing articles about for distribution but now i think its a better idea just to market my articles by placing them on my own website and blog. Thanks for any help , let me know if you have any tips for my site please. Regards Martin