Article Marketing 101
The concept of article marketing has been around for awhile and there’s a good reason for that. I’ve never found it to be the best method around but it will give you some decent backlinks and possibly a bit of exposure for a very small investment. The real beauty comes in the simplicity of it. You just have to write an article about your niche and click a few buttons.
There is one tip I have for you. I really wouldn’t bother hiring an article submitter to send it off to a bunch of directories. The duplicate content penalty removes a lot of the link juice and at the end of the day you’re not much better off than if you had just done the directory submission. The only way it would be worth it is if you use a service like Isnare to get thousands of submissions for $2. It’s still basically directory submission but at least it’s cheap.
EzineArticles –
This is just one of many sites in the genre of top article directories. Google doesn’t tend to penalize their articles, it’s not too rare for them to rank favorably in a search, and they’ll usually hold a decent page rank. This makes for a decent long-term linkback with a good chance of relevant traffic.
How exactly do you use it? Well like I said its pretty simple overall. You just have to write an article in your niche. They usually just need to be about 450 words long. Sign up for an account with them and you’ll get 10 free article submissions. The form is pretty standard for the industry. You’ll pick the appropriate category, write a little summary, and then add the appropriate link to your resource box. You cannot use a direct affiliate link in the box. It needs to be a link to a personal website or blog. It’s okay if that page is full of affiliate links as long as you keep the actual box clean. They’ll “review” your first ten submissions and decide whether you’ll get pushed up to a platinum rank. The truth is that any readable article will get through, so don’t sweat it too much. Your articles will be reviewed and accepted within a few days. That’s it.
Associated Content –
This is another good choice for article submissions. My tip is to write one article for EzineArticles and then take five minutes and quickly rewrite the article enough to pass copyscape. Then you can submit this one to Associated Content. If you want you can repeat for the process for submission to a few other top directories, but let’s get these two under our belt first. It works in a similar fashion to EzineArticles. You sign up for an account and then submit your pieces. Submission occurs through a four page form, but you can skip most of the parts about adding pictures and citing sources.
The important part here is to keep the entire article clean. They will not accept blatant advertising and they will ban accounts if you put affiliate links in the article. You need to follow the rules and link to your own site via the related links section. The really great part about their system is that they will pay you for the articles. You can usually get about $3 for a standard 500 word SEO article. If they don’t want to buy it you can submit it for free and still earn a few cents for the pageviews. It may not be a king’s ransom but I consider it incredibly cost effective advertising.
One special note is that Google seems to really like AC articles for specific topics. I once wrote a test article in a few minutes explaining why I liked Trident Splash gum. I stumbled it and dugg it and then left it alone. I’ve received about 950 pageviews over the last few months and it ranks in the top ten for Trident Splash. If you know what you’re doing you can get some great links while making money.
This is really basic information to get you started with article marketing. Learn the basics first with these websites and you’ll be on your way to capturing a nice chunk of your market.
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