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Posts Tagged ‘article marketing’
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
If you’ve been paying attention to the Google Panda update, you’ve noticed that EzineArticles – the largest article directory online – was hit and suffered a huge traffic loss. That’s a doggone shame. But what is even more of a shame is the article directory’s response to the update.
Chris Knight says he agrees with Google’s update. So do I. But he boasts about EzineArticle’s quality guidelines post Panda. Here are the changes the article directory has made to its quality guidelines and what you’ll have to do to get your articles approved there.
- Match the author name in your resource box with the byline
- Limit your links to 4
- Deliver on the article title
- Limit reference material within the article
- Properly format your articles
- Keep the resource box short (15% of total article length)
- Maximum keyword density of 2%
In an age when most serious SEOs have given up on keyword density, that last point seems rather strange and out of place. I understand all the other guidelines and agree with them. Perhaps EzineArticles is saying it won’t publish articles that exceed a certain percentage of keyword density because it wants to control spam in its directory. But this guideline sends a signal that keyword density is important. I would not walk away with that impression. Google has more than 200 criteria for making ranking selections. No one, not even EzineArticles, knows all of them, but I’m reasonably sure that keyword density isn’t one of them.
Tags: article directory, article marketing, articles, EzineArticles, keyword density
Posted in Article Marketing | 2 Comments »
Sunday, March 27th, 2011
I don’t read Michael Martinez much, but I trust that he knows what he’s talking about. I believe this because every time I do read him, I walk away with new insight. Such was the case recently when I read his thoughts on how to get quality articles for your website.
The gist of the article, and sorry if I ruin the punch line for you, is that you should write them yourself. After all, if you can write an e-mail requesting 20 links, he says, then you can write a blog post for your blog. If you can write a guest blog post for someone else, then you can write 20 blog posts for yourself. I guess I never thought about it that way, but it’s true.
It’s become fashionable in SEO circles to talk about link building as if link building is the most important thing in the world. In fact, many SEOs believe that it is. But I don’t. And I’m pretty sure Michael Martinez doesn’t.
Here’s a litmus test for you: Try building links to a site with no content on it and see what happens. Build thousands of links. Go out of your way to get as many links as you can, especially high PR links from relevant websites. Next, write a blog post every day for a year and don’t spend any effort building links to it. Which site do you think will have better search engine rankings? If you said the site with content on it, then you win a new toaster over (just kidding, but you’re pretty smart). 
Here’s the point. There is nothing you can do to promote your website and your business that is as important as adding new, fresh, quality content to it. That’s the best article marketing you’ll ever get.
Tags: article marketing, articles, link building, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 4th, 2011
A couple of days ago I wrote about Google’s recent algorithm change and how it is beating down the article directories. However, I didn’t definitively answer the question about whether article marketing will die. Consider it safe to say that I don’t think it will ever die.
Article marketing has been around for a long time. Since before the Internet, in fact. In the old days, experts in their field would write articles for trade journals and daily newspapers. They would then see an influx in traffic to their physical store locations and phone calls.
In the past 15 years, if you had a website and you engaged in article marketing, if your marketing efforts were effective you’d see an influx of traffic to your website. It might happen gradually over time, but it would happen.
Today, that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the face of article marketing.
I’m not willing to say that article directories are dead. Not yet. I think there’s still a little life left them in, but successful article marketers today are not just relying on article directories. They are writing guest blog posts for related blogs and carefully targeting Web content for other websites within their niches.
Using articles for marketing is something that hasn’t changed, and it never will. But like a lot of things, methods and techniques change. Smart business owners change with them.
Tags: article directories, article marketing
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
I’ve already written about Google’s recent algorithm update that has resulted in many websites losing search rankings while benefiting WikiHow and eHow, both considered content farms by many SEOs and Internet marketers. Google’s algorithm was intended to address content farms and lower their rankings. I think the result, from a marketer’s perspective, is that Google’s attempt to kill content farms has failed.
Here’s the primary example that I’ll give (and I have refrained from talking about this, but I just can’t resist any longer):
EzineArticles experienced the second highest percentage change in search results.
Really? Article directories? Google, puh-lease!
Why is this upsetting? Because article marketing is one of the earliest and most time-honored Internet marketing strategies. Search engines have traditionally given them a nod of approval, pretty much across the board. Only recently have Google not approved of them. And for the record, EzineArticles was not the only article directory affected by this algorithm change. Here are others:
- HubPages
- Buzzle
- Associated Content
- Articles Base
- Find Articles
These are all sites that can be referred to as “article directories” under the traditional definition of article directory. Other sites like Business.com, Answerbag.com, and Examiner.com were also affected. But eHow gained. Huh?
I understand the low quality content debate. Some of the sites that took a hit clearly contain low quality content as does eHow, and I’m sure that there is content at EzineArticles and other article directories that can be considered low quality content, but it’s nothing short of ridiculous that EzineArticles was so high up on this list, particularly when you consider that their article approval guidelines are stricter than any other article directory on the planet. And why wasn’t Article Dashboard, the provider of the most popular article directory software, on that list?
But Google’s algorithm is also leading to more changes at EzineArticles (again, already with the strictest article approval guidelines of any article directory online). From the EzineArticles blog, here is a short list of some of the changes being considered (these are all in Chris Knight’s, CEO of EzineArticles, own words; my editorial comments are in parentheses):
- Our proprietary anti-derivative software has been modified to reject another 10+% of article submissions that are not unique enough. This will result in more false positive on legit content, but that’s a risk that we feel is necessary. (Another 10%? As if EzineArticles wasn’t strict enough already.)
- Our keyphrase and keyword density limits are already thought to be too intense by many, but it’s clear to us that spammers can be identified by statistically unusual keyphrase limits. Watch for the bar to be raised here. (I’m watching. Believe me, I’m watching.)
- Expect to see our current article rejection rate (40.6%) climb by another ~20%. (I knew EzineArticle’s rejection rate was high, but I didn’t know it was that high. So it’s going up another 20%, give or take? Will that take the rejection rate over 50%? My guess is, Yes.)
- We may change our position on this and begin rejecting content that is not unique to EzineArticles.com alone. (Currently, your articles do not need to be exclusive to EzineArticles, but your articles do need to be exclusive to your name. In other words, you can’t publish an article under your real name at EzineArticles and under an alias somewhere else. If this changes to ensure that your articles can only be published at EzineArticles and nowhere else, then that could effectively kill article marketing as it has been practiced in the past.)
I don’t blame Chris Knight or EzineArticles for any of this. EzineArticles is a business and as such is looking out for its own interests. I blame Google. But I love – I just LOVE – Chris Knight’s last paragraph:
The end goal is to rebuild the market trust lost on Thursday and to reiterate with action our commitment to delivering our tens of millions of monthly end-users with a positive experience every single time they surf EzineArticles.com.
Rebuild market trust? I think EzineArticles clearly has market trust. It is the most popular article directory online. I think what it has lost is Google trust, and that’s the problem. If the rest of us trust EzineArticles, shouldn’t Google?
I fully support Google’s attempt to fight search engine spam and to target low quality content farms, but article directories are not content farms. I thought Google had added a nofollow algorithm for article directories and that it wouldn’t count those links because the idea is to get your links from publishers who use your articles rather than to rely on links from the directories. Personally, I think that would be a better solution than adding directories to the “content farm” category. I can’t remember a time when a Google algorithm had this much negative impact on all the wrong sites. It makes me ask the question: Should we continue to trust Google?
Tags: article directories, article marketing, content, content farms, EzineArticles, google
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Article marketing has always been a good way of obtaining back links to a website. Well-written articles with great anchor text links can be a good source of traffic as well as links that boost SEO rankings. However, someone came up with the idea to “spin” articles and attempt to automate the process of article submissions. Unfortunately, websites that employ these techniques often are penalized for doing so.
Why is article spinning bad? Let’s look at what it does.
The first step to spinning an article is to take the original article you have written and copy/paste it into the article spinning software. Some of this software will automatically detect the keyword on which the article is based. For others, you have to manually input the keyword. You might even be allowed to re-optimize an old article by having your software search for the primary keyword then entering a new keyword for which you want that old keyword replaced. Any of these methods is bad.
The article spinning software will “rewrite” your old article according to the rules you have established. Often, the software just simply rearranges the words and sentences in the original article.
Rearranging words and sentences doesn’t work because it often makes the article read in a jumbled, haphazard way. A good article has a logical flow to it, from idea to idea. Article spinning software is not sophisticated enough to ensure that your sentences meet that logical flow after being rearranged. Secondly, those sentences are not rewritten in most cases; they are simply moved from one part of the article to another so they are copied verbatim from the original article.
After you have spun your article, you must then submit it to article directories. Most article spinners submit to the same directories over and over again. But the most reputable article directories have software that detects spun articles. They also have human editors who can spot spun articles. These two gate-keeping measures means that your article likely will never be published.
Even if you manage to get your spun article into an article directory, the search engines are adept at spotting them, therefore they will never likely be found through a Google search or receive any traffic and your links won’t count.
Article spinning is a useless activity that is a waste of time and money. If you want to engage in article marketing, and you should, then don’t use article spinning software.
Tags: article marketing, article spinning, link building, SEO
Posted in link building | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Search Marketing Standard, a recognized news platform for business owners who want to know more about search engine marketing, published an article with a list of article directories to target in 2011. There are 11 of them on the list. It wasn’t a bad article, but it left me wondering why certain article directories were not included on the list.
Let’s review which article directories were on the list:
- Suite 101
- Hub Pages
- Self Growth
- Article Dashboard
- iSnare
- Sooper Articles
- Info Barrel
- Article Trader
- Article City
- Snipsly
- Triond
It’s not a bad list. I agree with most of these, but I finished reading the article and it left me wondering why three other article directories were not on the list:
- Knol Pages (http://knol.google.com/k) – Owned by Google. Unlike most traditional article directories, you can put links in the middle of your articles, which makes it a unique service.
- EzineArticles (http://ezinearticles.com/) – This is probably the most popular article directory online. Perhaps that is why it was left off of Search Marketing Standard’s list.
- Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/) – The brainchild of veteran online marketer Seth Godin, Squidoo is a great source of links.
When you consider that it is difficult to get accepted into the Triond inner circle of article writers, I wonder why these article directories were left out. I’d consider them good places to publish in 2011 as well.
Tags: article directories, article marketing, search marketing
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Friday, November 12th, 2010
It’s hard to argue with logic or truth. Titus Hopkins has a healthy dose of both in this article at SiteProNews.
All this really means is that not much has changed in 15 years of Internet marketing. In 1995, we’d have been saying the top 5 traffic sources were
- Search engines
- Directories
- Article marketing
- Forums
- E-mail marketing and follow-up lists
Today, according to Titus Hopkins, the top 5 sources of traffic are:
- SEO and search engines
- Article marketing
- Pay per click advertising
- Social media
- E-mail marketing and follow-up lists
See any similarities?
Keep in mind that in 1995 there were no social media sites (as we know them today), no pay per click, and SEO wasn’t even thought of yet. So how did search engines end up on that list?
Well, search technology was rather primitive in 1995, but it did exist. And search engines were valuable sources of traffic. So were directories. Article marketing was perhaps the most important source of traffic in those days. And forums were the social media of the time. They still are social and I would include them in Titus’s category of social media websites. And e-mail marketing has always been a staple of Internet marketing.
I think this list just goes to show that not a lot changes when it comes to marketing online. I’d be willing to bet that in ten years from now we’ll be looking at a similar list. Thanks Titus.
Tags: article marketing, e-mail marketing, internet marketing, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 17th, 2010
SEO, like all things, changes. Link building is one aspect of SEO that has stayed relatively the same over the years, though the search engines have grown increasingly stricter in how they approve links and the criteria for doing so. It is safe to say that link building isn’t dead. But – and this is a big but – the ways that link builders go about gaining and attracting links have changed to some degree.
For instance, directories are not quite the hotbed of valuable links that they once were. Sure, there are a few directories that do pass on good link juice, but at one time almost any directory passed on some link juice. That’s just not true any more.
One way to judge directories is to look at who’s submitting there. If you see a lot of spammy links in a directory then stay away from it.
Articles are another traditional link building tool. They still work, but article marketing doesn’t work the way it used to. At one time, article marketers could expect a link from an article directory. However, the search engines have put a stop to those links. But article marketing was never about getting a link from the directory any way. Marketers who did it right sought the end result of hundreds of links from other websites that picked up the article from the directory. That’s how it still works today.
But there are other, newer, ways to get links today than there were a few years ago. One way is through a WordPress plugin like Zemanta.
Zemanta is a tool that allows you to embed related content into your blog posts. As a blogger, it’s a really useful tool that can flesh out your blog posts more fully and give your visitors more service value. But as a marketer, it can even be more powerful. You can submit your blog to be used as related content by other bloggers. The good thing about Zemanta is it gives content publishers a choice about which content they want to present to their readers. If you consistently push out great content then you will definitely see some back links as other publishers choose your content to present to their readers.
As far as I can tell, these are good links. Plus, Zemanta gets a glowing recommendation from SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin, which says a lot.
Link building hasn’t changed much over the years. It has changed some and if you want to find valuable links in today’s link marketplace then it helps to be creative in your approach to link building.
Tags: article marketing, link building, SEO
Posted in link building | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
The title of this blog post can be read two different ways.
If you thought I was asking
Should you blog OR engage in article marketing?
or
Should you do either of these – blog or engage in article marketing?
then you’d be right.
The real question before marketers today is not whether you should engage in one form of marketing over another, but whether either form of marketing is effective and which are the most effective for your type of business. It’s not an easy question to answer.
Both blogging and article marketing have their benefits. Some people claim that article marketing is dead, but I don’t think so. I think it is dead if you don’t how to do it. But if you can take an article and put that article on the right website with a solid author’s resource box and a link back to a powerful sales page, you make that article pay. Effective article marketing does three things:
- It establishes you as an expert in your field.
- It builds link popularity to your website.
- It drives traffic to your most important landing pages.
Blogging, too, has its benefits. A blog on your company website should do the following three things well:
- Establish you as an expert in your field.
- Add fresh and unique well optimized content to your website on a daily basis.
- Pre-sell your products and services
The goal of every marketer is to determine what your biggest needs are in terms of your marketing and then perform the tasks that will most likely deliver those benefits.
Tags: article marketing, authority, blogging, link building
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
The beauty of online marketing is that you don’t have to settle for one channel. Diversity is the key to success, both online and off line. In fact, we recommend diversifying your Web marketing strategies for more effectiveness.
Some of the methods of online marketing for small businesses that others have found successful in the past include:
- Pay per click advertising
- Article marketing
- Blog marketing
- Social media marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Link building
- Site sponsorship
- Video marketing
- Podcasting
- Content aggregation
And this is just to name a few.
The best way to diversify your Web marketing efforts is to start with one or two methods of marketing and work them until you meet with some level of success. Then, add another method of marketing but don’t stop what you’ve been doing. Every month (or three months), add a new marketing tactic to the methods you are currently working and if a marketing tactic isn’t producing results after three or four months of actively using it, drop it.
For instance, perhaps you start with blog marketing and pay per click advertising. Work them for three months and monitor your results. In the third month you might add article marketing. Let’s say you’ve been spending $100 month on PPC advertising and blogging every day. You can add article distribution with 5 new articles a day and see how that affects your marketing efforts.
After three months you should evaluate your marketing plan to see what is working. If pay per click marketing isn’t delivering a positive ROI, try to find out why and make a change. Remember, diversity is key if you want your Web marketing efforts to pay off.
Tags: article marketing, blog marketing, pay per click advertising, Web marketing
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | No Comments »
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