I see that a lot of people are still looking for tips on article marketing. Certainly, article marketing SEO would be at the top of his list.
Article marketing in general kind of surprises me because the days of using article directories to market your business have pretty much died.
I know some of the larger article directories such as EzineArticles.com still have a loyal following of people who come to them for various reasons.
In some ways, you could actually use this as a strategy for promoting your business if you still wanted to. The biggest change is not using article directories for search engine optimisation and backlinks, as in the old days.
That really doesn’t work anymore!
Why not?
If you’re serious about building something that grows month after month instead of chasing quick wins, I recommend starting with proper training and building your own online asset.
If you’re just starting out, I recommend reading my full affiliate marketing beginner guide here
Article Marketing & Duplicate Content
About four years ago, Google came out and said they really didn’t see a lot of value in article directories.
They actually felt like they were cluttering up the web more than providing useful content.
After stepping back I could see their point.
What often happened was that somebody would publish an article in an article directory that was already online on their website or blog.
Google’s primary focus became eliminating duplicate content. They felt the easiest way to do that was just to stop ranking websites and blogs that had content on them that was already online somewhere else.
This worked, and it worked very quickly. There’s nothing that Internet marketers attempting to use SEO to rank for hate more than seeing their rankings disappear.
So what has become the alternative?
Article marketing SEO now focuses on three primary things in my opinion.
- 1. Keywords.
- 2. Unique content.
- 3. Blog marketing.
- Let’s analyse these three things more closely!
Keywords
Build a list of keyword phrases and start putting those in your content. Include both short keyword phrases as well as longtail keyword phrases.
Shorter keyword phrases would be one, two, and maybe even three keywords. Longtail keyword phrases would be 4 or more and could include 10, or even up to 15 more words.
The strategy with keywords is the shorter the phrase the more difficult it is to rank for, and the longer the phrase the easier it is to rank for.
On the flip side of that, longtail keyword phrases bring fewer searches which means less potential traffic. Short keyword phrases are searched in a greater number and could potentially lead to more traffic from them.
Unique Content
This does not mean every idea has to be unique. What it does mean is the way you present it in your articles must be unique.
If you have any doubts, set up a Copyscape account and run all of your articles through it before you publish them. This is good because it shows you where you might have a problem, and you can go in and make changes to that.
If you join my #1 recommendation below, their content platform does that for you automatically for all the content you produce on their platform, which uploads automatically to your WordPress sites.
Don’t publish the content anywhere else!
At one time, we used to think that if you got your content on your blog or website and got spidered by Google, you would be given credit for having that content first. You can then take the exact same article and publish it all over the Internet and your site would not be punished because it’s already been spidered for that content.
That doesn’t work anymore!
Today, you don’t want any of your content published anywhere else online. Keep it unique and only publish it on your blog or website.
Blog Marketing As A Pro
Article marketing today is more about blog marketing than anything else.
It’s about taking the concepts I have discussed already in terms of keywords and unique content and publishing them on your own blog.
You then promote your blog post all over the Internet in as many different ways as possible.
Your primary focus is going to be on social media marketing first.
This means getting links back to your blog on the top social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Do you need an account with every one of these?
The more places you’re marketing your content, the more chances you have to be found and generate traffic from them. Once you get going, bookmarking these different social networks doesn’t really take very long.
What can take a long is interacting with people as they reply to their comments on the bookmarks you’ve made. However, you’ve got to take this final step if you want to maximise your blog marketing.
One other thing to keep in mind. Put social icons on your blog and link to these social networks so people who are reading your blog articles can bookmark them directly into their own accounts.
This is how article marketing generates backlinks today. It’s not you going and posting an article in an article directory, having a link in either the body of the article or in your resource box at the bottom of it.
Now the social bookmarks generate the backlinks. So, here’s an important point to keep in mind regarding that.
You want to get your links on high-traffic websites and blogs whenever possible. This is where you can generate more traffic, as well as high-quality backlinks in the eyes of Google.
Guest Blogging For Content Exposure
One way you can do article marketing away from your own blog is by guest blogging.
Many blogs need content, and you can provide it to them.
Your reward?
You get your content in front of a new audience.
You also get to link back to your blog either in the content or in your resource box at the bottom of it.
This is not a new form of article marketing SEO. However, it certainly is one that is not utilised often by your competitors.
Final Thoughts
There are lots more you can learn for better results for your website. The best way is to join a community of people with whom you can interact on a daily basis to know what is new in SEO and how to take your business to another level.
If you’re serious about building something that grows month after month instead of chasing quick wins, I recommend starting with proper training and building your own online asset.
You can explore Wealthy Affiliate here and see if it fits your goals
Good post, David. You hit on some really important aspects, and very clearly. A lot of value here.
One of the things I particularly like about long-tail keywords is how they have shorter keywords within them, so you get a win-win with both! The shorter ones may not get as high a ranking, but they sure don’t hurt, do they?
Thank you, Annie, and yes, you get rank for the shorter keyword within your long-tail keywords and they sure don’t hurt. This is the reason for building your Website as an authority website, giving great value to your audience. Thank you for seeing the value in long-tail keywords. All the best.