Over the
past few years, online article marketing has become one of the quickest and
most affordable ways to build one way backlinks to your website.
The concept
of article marketing is simple; you write an original article and then submit
it to free article directories. You
include a “resource box” in the article that briefly touches on your services
and that includes a link back to your website.
These
articles don’t have to be long at all, in fact, the recommended length is
450-700 words per article. You will want
to make sure that the article is genuinely informative and that it is not a
self promotion piece. Your chance to
promote your services or website is at the end of the article in the resource
box.
I wrote my
first article back in December of 2004.
As a result of that article, I have received more than 450 requests for
more information and I continue to receive between 2-5 new contacts per
week. Additionally, the linking power of
that article has helped me maintain a top 10 ranking in Google for a keyword
related to a very popular mortgage program.
I hand submitted my site to about
50 directory websites (probably one of the most boring things I’ve ever done) and
wrote and distributed two articles to perhaps a total of 30 or 40 sites between
the two.
Additionally,
completely separate from the real estate / mortgage industry, I wrote four
articles for a friend of mine who has a company that provides a specific type
of legal service. As a result of those
articles, we moved him from deep in the search results (and in the case of
Google, not ranked at all for his top keyword) to the top page of the three big
search engines for not one, not two but three of his targeted keyword
phrases.
While the submissions for the mortgage related website example I used were done just over two years ago, the non real estate example was done August and September of last year. I only mention that to demonstrate that article marketing can begin to produce noticeable results in a relatively short period of time as well as provide your website with long term exposure.
If you’ve
read anything about online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), you
will have no doubt come across the term “duplicate content”. What this refers to is the existence of the
same piece of content in two separate places.
Google in particular is known for picking only version of an article to
return in its results. This really makes
sense as otherwise you’d be seeing the same article hundreds of times. While each and every website that your
article is published at may not rank for your article’s keywords, you will
still be receiving benefit from the backlinks associated with those articles.
I won’t get into the raging debate over duplicate content here, but if you want to be sure that your site steers completely clear of any duplicate content issues, you can take two simple steps to bullet proof your article submission strategy along with your web site when it comes to duplicate content.
- Write two versions of the article, one for your own website and one for distribution. Just rearrange the paragraphs, change the phrasing and give the introduction and conclusion a good once-over.
- Try to avoid posting the same content in more than one place on your own websites. This really won’t hurt your rankings, but in all likelihood, the search engines will only return one of the pages that the article is featured on thus hiding the other content on the “duplicate” page.
While not
necessary, try and accomplish two things when it comes to keyword selection and
your resource box.
First, try to vary
your keywords from article to article. Over time, it would seem funny if every
single link that pointed to your website said the same thing.
Second, give the reader a reason to click on
your links and move past the article and to your websites. You need a call to action to entice them to
point that arrow and push that mouse button where you want them to. Many writers use free reports or newsletters
to draw visitors. If you can’t
think of anything creative at the moment to use as a call to action, don’t let
that stop you from writing and submitting your articles.
Ok, now that you have an article all written and ready to put out there to start building your links and, as bonus, hopefully drive some very qualified traffic to your website, the next step is submission.
(Check out this list of free article directories.)
Submitting
articles by hand is really out of the questions as it would take hours and
hours if not days to submit your article to even a fraction of the directories
out there. This being the case, there are a number of services that have popped
up and that will distribute your articles for you to hundreds of free
directories for a fee.
Two of the
more popular ones that I use are:
- Article Marketer (Starting at $ $79.99/quarter)
- iSnare (Starting at $2 per article)
There are
also a number of software programs out there that you can use to submit your
articles. It’s been a while since I have
used any of these so I won’t go into any detail or make any
recommendations. If I do have the time
to try some of these out, I’ll be sure to post the results.
At this
point, I need to share something with you.
I started writing this post about 7 hours ago. Just when I finished the paragraph above, I
had one of those “AH HAH!” moments that can really knock you off of your
feet. Or in my case, send me wandering
in circles around my house and “forcing” me to consume what I’m sure what would
be considered by many as a near lethal amount of Diet Coke. This thousand or so word article grew to
over 4000 words and some how included a recap of the last eight years or so of
my life.
What it
boils down to is that I’m now looking for some fellow real estate professionals
who are looking grow their business on-line to join me in what for the moment I
am calling “The Cause”. In the short run, you’ll get free article
distribution, in the long run….well, we’ll see!
If you want to know more, click here .
But, if you just want to know more about the benefits and technical “how tos” behind article distribution, take a look at some of the other posts on this topic made by fellow AR members:
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