“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” — Mark Twain
It seems nearly every internet marketing-related forum shows threads relating to the death of article marketing. And “Yes”, Google’s latest update called ‘Panda’ resulted in much lower traffic to many article directories, so it may seem that article marketing has received a tough blow.
Should you consider this as a sign that you might just as well give up writing articles and spend your time doing something else?
No, on the contrary! Article marketing will prove to be more important now than ever before. Be aware of the rules, though. You can no longer spit out low-quality articles and hope to gain back-links galore.
Before we discuss regarding how to write your article, let me give you some real world examples of why you shouldn’t rely solely on search engines.
Google Updates
Do these seem scary to you? Probably not. If you create a large amount of unique, quality content, no search engine will ever harm you. The targeted sites mostly contain crappy content, whilst the quality sites are immune to any blows.
However, many things outside your control can happen to upset the apple cart.
My Site was Hacked
What every online marketer fears happened to me: my site was hacked!
Something scary happened – I couldn’t see the harmful content the hackers planted on my site. The work was of such a clever nature that the human eye couldn’t spot the spam that was put online. But Google could! And they removed my site containing more than 1,400 articles from their index – just like a farmer digs up weeds from his field.
This could easily happen to anyone – even you! One outdated script on your server, and smart hackers can use this hole to creep in and spread their deadly poison.
They Won Over Google and Were Punished
Newspapers from Belgium didn’t appreciate the fact that Google took their content and, without their permission, added it to their server. If anybody else did a thing like that, it would be called theft and violation of copyright. However, the newspapers took Google to court and won their case.
As a ‘reward’, they found their sites completely removed from Google’s index.
This might be something that is unlikely to happen to you, but you should be concerned about falling into disgrace for other reasons.
What can Article Marketing do for You?
Article marketing, done the correct way, actually means syndication.
Many people write and submit articles to obtain back-links. Forget about using this this strategy. These back-links may count a little, but what help will that be to you, if your site has disappeared from the search engines anyway?
The sole aim of your article should be to get it syndicated. This means writing high quality articles containing useful content.
The more value you give away, the more likely someone would want to publish your article. This is a win-win situation. Whoever who uses your article saves their time having to write their own, and you obtain exposure to maybe thousands of people.
Remember to write a compelling resource box at the end of your article, which will invite your readers to click through to your offer. This will be your ultimate reward for writing a great article.
Now, I will reveal for you that I’m a diamond level author at Ezine Articles and author of the eBook “How To Write 8 Articles in 2 Hours Or Less” http://seferim.com/8articles/ and I’m offering a free report about how I went from zero to more than $1,000 per month with a few hours work: http://getmoneymakingideas.com/free.html
Hmm, so Article Marketing can still be very effective? What is it that you need to do to make it work for you, though? Quality Articles with optimum keyword density and LSI keywords?
I mean, I can write quality content just fine, but if I don’t do any SEO, no one will even find my articles, so what’s the point anyway?
What makes article marketing work for me might not be the same that makes article marketing work for you or somebody else.
For one ting, I’m usually guilty of not using the keyword phrases enough in terms of optimum keyword density.
I use my keywords in the title, in the beginning, and I try to add it to a sub-heading in the middle, and in the last paragraph. I rarely use LSI keywords, although I should, but I more go after the content I think belongs naturally to the article, and by doing that I guess I hit some of those LSI keywords by chance.
So what’s the secret for me?
Passion, I think. The articles that have brought me the highest number of clicks and views and money have been about topics that held my interest to a really high degree.
When I try to write about things I consider “boring stuff”, I only get a few views and maybe no clicks at all.
I’ve rarely written just to get back-links. My goal is to make people, not just search engines, find my articles, read them, and take action.
But what if you didn’t do any SEO at all? What’s the point then, you ask?
There are several other, and maybe better in the long run, ways to make people go to your article. One of my best secret weapons is my list. If I’ve written an article, I really think people ought to read, I don’t wait around for the search engines to pick it up. I send a message to my list. I tweet about it. I write about it on Facebook. Some of those articles have had much higher view-counts than others that were only found through Google.
Thanks for the detailed answer, Britt. I agree with you fully, and I wish more people thought like you. Spammers spamming stupid spun articles just for the sake of building links set my blood on fire. The web would be so much better if webmasters changed their focus to genuine quality driven by passion.
But OK, we’re living in a real world full of competition. Since I’m starting out with absolutely no list or following, I guess I’ll need to work a bit harder and do perform some SEO in the starting, at least, even though it literally makes me wanna pull my hair sometimes, lol.