Article Marketing as an SEO Technique
Does article marketing really increase website traffic?
I thought you'd never ask. Every now and then, there are rumors and ramblings about how article marketing doesn't work. Nonsense. It works just fine. If you work it correctly.
There are, however, many people out there who are not using it correctly. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think it's largely due to the fact that there are very few good tutorials out there on the subject. There may be some paid materials that go into enough detail and I just haven't bought them yet. But I haven't run across, either free or paid, a course that teaches an exact process on the correct way to use articles.
Mostly what I hear are myths, and what I see are mistakes. Allow me to clear things up for you once and for all.
Once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to spot the weaknesses in someone else's campaign. More importantly, you'll be able to crush your competition. Below are the benefits of article marketing.
Benefits of Article Marketing
There are a number of benefits to article marketing, not the least of which is increased traffic. But, direct traffic is not the primary goal here. If you get it, fine, but don't expect it.
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Increased Traffic from the search engines.
Increasing website traffic is the whole point, of course. As I've said, however, direct traffic in large numbers is not to be expected.
- Increased Traffic from direct sources.
Even though direct traffic is not the primary goal, we want to create our article campaigns so that we encourage as much direct traffic as possible. We also want to make sure we encourage other webmasters to pick up our articles.
- Increased search engine positioning
Most of the traffic increase that your site will experience from article marketing will come from the increased search engine positioning for your chosen keywords.
- Increased number of backlinks
Distributing articles can significantly increase your backlinks. This, in turn, will increase your search engine positioning, and therefore, your traffic. You may also get some direct traffic from these backlinks.
- Increased number of keywords
The more keywords that bring people to your site, the more diverse and stable your traffic is. You can dramatically increase the number of keywords for which your site is found in the search engines. On one site, I was able to increase that number 6 times by submitting just 2 articles.
- Increased number of referrers
As your articles take hold, you'll see an increased number of referrering URLs sending traffic to your site. You can easily double or triple your referrers, creating more stable traffic.
- Increased exposure and branding
You can gain access to audiences that you normally would not. As top article sites publish your articles, you get great exposure. Those articles may rank high for your keywords, giving you more exposure on top search engines. As sites and ezines pick up your articles, you also get to present yourself as an expert and create a branding opportunity to a new audience.
- Control over minimum number of inpointing links
Often, you don't get to control who links to you. Here, you can control the minimum number of links you get back to your site, simply by choosing to submit to more article directories. As other sites republish your articles, you'll get even more links.
- Control over anchor text in links
You also often don't have much control over the anchor text used to link to your site. With article marketing, however, you are in complete control over the anchor text. I see so many people not taking advantage of this. If you're not using your resource box to create keyword rich links with anchor text, you are totally missin the point.
- Viral effect of sites and ezines picking up articles over time
Once you've submitted an article to the article directories, your tasks are completed. But, those articles continue to have the potential to be republished, and so there is a viral effect that continues. You'll feel bursts of direct traffic as new sources pick up your work, and you'll get a steady increase from the affect of additional backlinks on search engine placement.
You can combine article marketing and social media to gain first page Google rankings, sometimes literally within days. Visit my article marketing success series at the Free Website Traffic Tips blog to find out how.
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