Michael Gray has started an interesting discussion on the value of article marketing over at his blog. A number of SEO pro’s are weighing in to the discussion in the comments (including myself) and it’s well worth a read.
Most of you will be aware that for over a year I ran the largest article submission business on the Digital Point Forums. I used some software to automate the process and could submit an article to 250 sites in about an hour. The submission was exactly the same as manual submission and you could include 4 links in a signature with the anchor text of your choice.
Having submitted thousands of articles and seen first hand where they were syndicated and how they affected the rankings of the websites it became more and more apparent to me early this year that the process just wasn’t working anymore. Obviously my charges of $30 to submit 2 articles to 250 sites were not steep and nobody was expecting a miracle but if the process wasn’t working then I didn’t want to keep providing the service.
In the past article submission worked very well, especially with Yahoo, so anybody bulk submitting prior to 2007 is likely to have seen good results. As with most SEO tactics Google has just figured out a way to stop it working.
How to do article marketing in 2007
If you are really struggling for links then you might want to submit to the top few article sites on this list but otherwise I would really recommend steering clear of article sites. They are full of low quality duplicate content that never attracts natural links and are joining directories in the webs spam filled wasteland.
The key is to get your unique articles syndicated by as many real websites as possible. Most people write one article and try to syndicate it but with many webmasters becoming more and more aware of duplicate content you really need to start writing multiple versions of the articles.
My favourite methods
Create a webmasters area on your site and let people know that if they want content for their site you will write custom articles for them on subjects related to your site. Include a couple of links, some images & a signature and you both will get a lot of value.
If you want a slightly more scalable method sit down and write 10 or 20 brand new articles and upload them to your site in a zip file for people to download. Most will include links to your site and the articles will be published on real sites rather than spam filled directories.
Promoting off site content
When your content gets picked up on another site don’t simply sit back and hope. Start seeding the content at sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Del.icio.us to maximise the value of your link.
Whats your favourite article marketing method?
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
You talk about submitting to the social media book marking sites as a way to raise the profile of the articles you create. Are there any ways of improving the likelihood of click through from these to the article to increase the syndication of these articles?
Hey Patrick, I find that submitting my articles to StumbleUpon may seem so amateurish and uncreative but after 3 days and 2000+ referral views, I’d say it’s worth it.
Ken, submitting to StumbleUpon is a great way of promoting content both on your site and others. The submissions that don’t work are when you write an article and submit it to a few hundred article directories.
Michael, if you submit to somewhere like Stumbleupon and Digg you need to make sure the content is interesting to users of those sites. I suggest becoming a user of the sites yourself for a few months to see how they work and what content the users like.
On Digg it’s all about the title.
Thats a fake newpaper picture (top right) using this
http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp
very interesting article on articles
but can you please explain to me
“Start seeding the content at sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Del.icio.us to maximise the value of your link” do you mean to post the articles there or just a description and a link to the article?
thanks Kev
pleas i want help … i want to do one article about Olympic Games .. i don know how to do …. please if you have time helpe me
khamis
Article marketing can still bring huge profits but like you said the key point here is to do it right. I tend to agree with you on the whole wasteland thing but keep in mind, there still are quality article directories that have good staff that takes care of the article review process. They are smart enough to test those articles against copyscape and they are aware of the already approved articles on their directory.
People might be submitting duplicates in their attempt to make things easier for themselves. Yeah, I know, you only fool yourself if you do this. But my point is that the direction in which articles directories are going is not set in stone. It all comes down to the people in charge with reviewing the submissions.
Btw great ideas in terms of alternate article marketing ways.
I don’t know about anyone else but the traffic I get from StumbleUpon, although substantial at times, doesn’t seem to perform well at all. High bounce rate, short time on page, no desired actions. I’m not sure why.
I think article marketing still a good way for getting back links as long as we do that right. About the traffic from social network sites like StumbleUpon, IMHO traffic from that kind of sites is valuable enough as they are usually untargeted traffic. If we are looking for loyal reader or people who are willing to click ads in our site, then we must get targeted traffic instead, ie traffic from search engines.
More comments from Web Search Engine OptimizationMy personal opinion is that the Internet is so vast that we don’t have much choice but to market thru every means possible…ie Stumble Upon, Twitter, Digg, Articles and so on. The traffic from some of the social websites might not be targeted at first but all it takes is one visit from an interested reader and if you have presented properly hopefully they will come back again.
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