Should Articles Have Links In Them?

By allen on January 18th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing | No Comments »

One question that often comes up is, “Should I put links in my articles.” Well, you can. But there are some reasons why you shouldn’t. Some article directories have very strict policies that prohibit certain kinds of links within articles. But every article directory is different. They all have their own policies.

I have found that the article directories with the strictest policies regarding links within articles are the best ones. They concern is with quality. Many article directories will accept anything, so the quality of articles you’ll find in them are not that good. You’ll find a lot of spam or blatant advertising messages and those articles tend to have the lowest distribution. But not all links within articles are bad.

The most important consideration for any article you publish in article directories is quality. Will your potential readers benefit from the article? That should be your first priority in every article that you write. With that in mind, you should carefully consider whether to include links within your articles and what types of links to include if you do.

I’d say stay away from self-serving links. Any article directory that would allow you to include self-serving links within your articles is probably not a very good article directory. There may be exceptions, but that has been my experience. That’s not to say all links within articles are bad.

Self-serving links are better left for your author resource box. If you do include links within articles, you’d be better off including links to third-party sources, sources that you have no direct connection with. I have done this several times even at article directories with the strictest policies. Those links should provide some value to your readers just as the rest of your article does. Otherwise, if the link doesn’t provide added value to an article, I’d say don’t include it. The bottom line is, you want the people reading your article to get benefit from it.

Article Marketing Is Not Dead

By allen on January 17th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 1 Comment »

A few days ago the Article Marketing Blog praised Bill Platt. I do not make it a regular habit to pass out compliments like candy (maybe I should). But I do recognize brilliance when I see it. Bill Platt once again has shown that he understands article marketing.

This time, his knowledge is aglow on the pages of SEO News. I rarely reprint entire articles, but in this case I think the situation merits. I hope Bill doesn’t mind. If he does, I’ll be happy to take the article down, but judging by the article itself, I think he’d appreciate my vote. You can see what I mean when you read it:

What Does Your SEO
Linking Portfolio Look Like?
By Bill Platt (c) 2008 Links And Traffic

Commercial webmasters have been taught that link popularity has a great influence on whether a website will rank well in the search engines. There is a lot of truth in this teaching, but I have to tell you that the way that most people practice building links is wrong and may end up hurting their website in the search results.

Carpet Bombing Is Dead

Google understands that people are always looking to manipulate Google’s search results. Every time Google makes an enhancement to their systems, someone gets clever and figures out a new way to manipulate the system, so they can sell their SEO services to desperate webmasters.

It is a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse. Google understands as we do that a top ten listing in Google’s search results can make millionaires overnight.

When it first became clear that a massive number of links could contribute to link popularity and propel a website to the top of the search listings, deep pocket companies came out of the woodwork to carpet bomb the web with their links.

In April of 2007, Matt Cutts of Google-fame announced Google’s intention to take a bite out of the “paid links” trade. Everyone from webmasters who were selling links on high PageRank pages to people who were trying to buy top listings in Google were crying about Google’s interference in the “paid links” industry.

Cutts was not pulling any punches when he shared his news about Google’s intention of minimizing the effect of “paid links” in their search algorithms. He said it, and three months later, Google was implementing new algorithms to limit the effect of paid links.

Taking a bite out of paid links was only step one in the war against the carpet bombers.

Step two was implemented rather quietly a short time later, and it appears to me to have been the more successful of the two steps.

What Does Your Link Portfolio Look Like?

Most webmasters generate their links in one of several ways.

For free links, webmasters seek out reciprocal links, directory listings, forum postings with signatures, etc.

Those webmasters who have a little bit of a marketing budget undertake article marketing as an additional method for generating links.

People who have an even bigger marketing budget often consider press releases, paid blog reviews, etc.

Those with the really deep pockets had always used paid links to step above the crowds.

Those webmasters who are really clever build “link baits”. Link baiting is a concept where someone creates a page that other people will “want to link”. The most common link baits provide some kind of tool, such as a calculator, or a paint color-selector, or a java-based application that does one thing or another.

I knew a lady one time who developed a link bait to let her hairstyling readers pick their hair length and hair color and have different hair styles applied to the website’s models, so the reader could see what a particular hair style looked like on a real person. Since this java-based tool only appeared on her own website, people who were building websites and newsletters about hair care were knocking down doors to create new links to her web page.

A Link Portfolio is an analysis of the kinds of sites and web pages that link to your website and web pages. Where are your links? What kinds of links are they? Are your links all structured the same? Do they come in the same format (articles, press releases)? Here is the one important to our discussion. Do they all appear on the same kind(s) of website?

The Death of The Article Directory

Don’t be jumping to conclusions here. This is not the time for you to be scanning this article. It is the time you need to start paying closer attention to what I am telling you.

Some people have observed the change in the Google algorithms that I had noticed, and on their observation, they have declared the death of article directories. But, the answer is not that simple.

It all comes back to the evolution of article marketing in 2004.

Until early 2004, most people engaged in article marketing were only interested in writing excellent content. In mid-2004, a lot of gurus started telling their readers about article marketing.

These gurus were right when they said a lot of people are making a lot of money using reprint articles to promote their businesses.

But the gurus involved in the explosion of people using reprint articles to promote their websites had one thing wrong. They were telling their readers that the only reason for the reprint article was a link back to one’s website, and that link could influence a website’s link popularity and its ability to rank in the search engines.

Don’t get me wrong, those links can affect link popularity and the ability of a website to rank in the search engines. But, here is where they had it wrong:

The gurus said that the only purpose for article marketing was link building, so they advised that all articles should be between 300-400 words, and they advised that it really was not important whether the article was good or not, since the only purpose of the article was to provide some kind of content to get the link back to their website.

The Actual Role Of Article Directories Online

For those of you who do not realize it, the purpose of an article directory is to provide a warehouse where webmasters can go to gather articles that they can place on their websites for the benefit of their readers.

Some of the more well-known and heavily trafficked article directories include:

* EzineArticles.com
* GoArticles.com
* thePhantomWriters.com
* ArticleCity.com
* Isnare.com
* IdeaMarketers.com
* ArticleDashboard.com
* ArticleFriendly.com
* ArticleBeach.com

Now, Article Dashboard gives away their software to webmasters for free. Article Friendly was developed to be more “friendly” than Article Dashboard, for the site managers, but it costs a few dollars to acquire. The Article Beach software is also being sold in places, but it has zero support for webmasters.

With the birth of the Article Dashboard software, hundreds of new article directories popped up nearly overnight.

A couple of the article distribution companies positioned themselves to be low-cost providers of article distribution services for the new “link only” article marketers. To ensure a low-cost, big bang approach to article marketing, they programmed their services to send all of their articles to the hundreds of Article Dashboard websites.

These are the services that the carpet bombers turned to in order to get their links onto thousands of web pages across the Internet. And brilliantly, this is also the undoing of the carpet bombers.

The Line In The Sand

I am always impressed at the cleverness of the Google folks. They always develop methods to figure out who is spamming their systems and who is deserving of the links they have been given.

The Google engineers realized the problem with the article directories, and they figured out how to identify the article spammers. If you ask me, their solution was beautiful.

Think about social bookmarking for a minute. Social bookmarks can add value to a web page that is linked in the bookmark, because “a person” has voted on the referenced URL or article. That is a very powerful addition to Google’s algorithm arsenal. Human editors are the same reason that Google puts such high value on Yahoo’s directory listings and the listings in the Open Directory.

But, did you realize that there is a way to track articles through the concept of social bookmarking?

Here is the answer:

If an article was distributed six months ago, and no one else has chosen to publish it, except for the article directories, then it is probably safe to assume that the article is pure garbage and not worthy of the links it possesses.

When an article is of good quality, people will vote on that article, by putting it on their non-article directory website! If an article is on article directories AND it is on average niche websites, then it must be a good article and worthy of its links, including those in the article directories.

It Comes Down To Human-Validated Quality

So, what does your link portfolio look like? Are your articles only in the article directories? Or, are your links in article directories AND niche websites?

By my observation, an article can be placed in 100 article directories.

If three months down the road that article only exists on 100 article directories and no niche websites, then Google’s algorithms will consider the article to be a spam article, deserving of no link popularity value.

However, if an article is in 100 article directories and 25+ niche websites, then it shows that the article has been voted worthy by 25 niche webmasters, so the article is worthy of credit for all 125 links it provides back to the author’s website.

Of course, we all know that Google will never count all 125 links to a website from the various displays of an article, but it will count more of those article directory listings and niche website listings than it will if the article has received zero votes from the webmaster community.

About The Author
Bill Platt is the author of “Article Marketing for Traffic, Sales and Profit”, available for only $37, from his website at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html. Learn more about how-to diversify your link building at: http://linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/link-building.html

Toss Out Those Article Marketing Misconceptions
Now, I just have a few comments to make about this article. The two bold sections are my editorial, not Bill’s. I wanted to draw attention to those two sections because they have a lot to with the misconception that many new article marketers have about article marketing.

No. 1, article marketing is not about getting links from article directories. Bill has it right. The rest of you have it all wrong. The point to article marketing is to get your article to a central location so that website owners, webmasters, and Internet publishers have a place to go to for good article content for their publishing endeavors. It’s always been that way, but the carpet bombers came in and destroyed that.

Think of it like this: Stock markets and food markets exist to provide a central location for markets of a single type of product or commodity to meet up with the buyers of those commodities. Rather than everyone relying on their own wits to find what they need, which is hit or miss, central markets were developed to provide a meeting place, a networking event so that buyers and sellers could find each other more easily. That’s what an article directory is. It’s not the end of the road. It is the means to the end, the place where article marketers and publishers can meet to exchange contact information and products of value to each. That’s all. Nothing more.

Secondly, mass submission software has spoiled us. Too many people rely on the software and not on the process. Article marketing is not a splash in the pan. You can’t just send out crappy articles and expect all of cyberspace to bow down to you because you are “link building.” Sure, you might get a few good links today, but sooner or later good apples go bad. Pull them off of trees and hold them in a basket. See what happens. If you want those apples to be any good, you’ve make bake pies with them, mix them up with cream and spice and everything nice. Make a little fruit salad. It tastes a lot better.

In other words, don’t listen to the hype of the gurus. They’ll steer you in the wrong direction. When it comes to marketing your business, listen to the people who know what they’re talking about. Pay attention to the words of guys like Bill Platt, who knows that article marketing is more than chasing links around a picnic table. It’s more about building credibility and solid relationships with people who want to do business with you. Start treating it like that.

And one more thing:

Two more article directories worth noting are Article Content Provider and Articles.pn. Now have a good day, and happy marketing!

5 Ways To Re-Use Articles After Submitting Them To Directories

By allen on January 16th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | 2 Comments »

You ordered 20 articles last summer and submitted them as many directories. They’re just sitting there collecting dust. Yes, they’re out in the Web world and some of them are being picked up by website owners and e-zine publishers. They’re getting used. Now what?

Don’t just let them sit there. You can re-use them. Here are five ideas to help you re-use those old articles and get more mileage out of them:

1. Turn them into web content - All you have to do to turn those articles into original, unique web content is rewrite them. It doesn’t take long. You can rewrite the content and even focus them on altogether different keywords without changing the meaning behind the articles.
2. Break them up into two shorter articles and put them on your blog - Yes, you can split each article up into two separate, shorter articles and re-use them on your blog. Cut each one in half, rewrite the content and put it on your blog. It might actually be quicker than writing a blog post from scratch.
3. Turn them into an e-book - Make those old articles pay for themselves. Compile them into an e-book and sell it or offer it as a free download to your website visitors.
4. Publish them in your company newsletter or e-zine - Other people are publishing them in their newsletters so why shouldn’t you? After all, you sent them to article directories so that newsletter and e-zine publishers can find them easily. Publish them in your own newsletter and get even more mileage out of them.
5. Offer them to other webmasters in exchange for their original articles - Only do this if you plan to rewrite the articles. You can offer them as original content to other website owners in exchange for their original article content and get a very important link back from the other site owner.

Just because you ordered articles a year ago doesn’t mean you can’t use them now. Rewrite them and republish them. The ideas may still be valid. It’s the content you want to repurpose.

Article Marketing: Why We Ask For Keywords

By allen on January 15th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | No Comments »

Article marketing is one of the oldest forms of Internet marketing. The reasons for doing article marketing are different for every business, but the method of article marketing for those businesses that do it successfully are much the same.

One of the best benefits to article marketing is that it can make you an expert in your industry. By putting your name on articles that help potential clients and users of your service, you are telling them that you understand their needs and how to meet them. Some article marketers make the mistake of treating articles like advertisements. But that will kill your marketing efforts more than anything else.

You want your articles to be rich with helpful information. You don’t have to tell all of your secrets, but do provide your readers with information that will help them. But also fill those articles with keywords.

Keywords are the meat of Internet marketing. You are targeting the same terms that people searching for your business would search for. Every article you use to market your services should be focused on one or two keywords. That’s why you should make a list of keywords that are important to your business and a list of topics that you can address for each keyword.

But Your The Article Writer - Shouldn’t You
Choose The Keywords?

One of the biggest misconceptions our customers come to us with is that we can take a list of topics and write articles that will deliver loads of customers to their front doors. That’s not a realistic expectation. Here’s the reason why:

You are the expert in your business. We cannot be experts in every business and there are some businesses that we don’t understand at all until we research them. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn those businesses well enough to write about them, but we will never be the knowledgeable expert in your area of expertise that you are. We are writers, not mechanics or soufflé chefs.

Keep in mind that successful articles that you’ll use for article marketing are not topic-focused. They are keyword-focused. That may seem confusing until you realize that while topic and keyword are interlinked, they are not the same thing. To illustrate what I mean, below is a list of keywords and their associated topics:

As you can see, certain keywords can fit into more than one broad topic area and a single topic can include several keyword phrases. We have two primary ways of telling what keyword phrases are most appropriate for marketing your business: You tell us and we evaluate your website. The second method takes us time and we may not always get an accurate measure of specific keywords that are good for you. You may not be using every keyword that you could use on your website. That means you’d be missing out on some of the best marketing opportunities. By giving us a list of keywords that you want to focus on in your article marketing efforts, you tell us what is most important to you right now.

Here’s another example: Let’s say that you are planning a marketing campaign to promote your summer Caribbean cruise vacations. It is January but your sales for those vacations start ramping up in March, right after spring break. Without knowing your business, we might not know that March is the beginning of your sales cycle for summer cruise vacations. It is up to you to know how to market your business. If you give us the information we need to write your articles, we can write articles that will meet your marketing goals. But the planning starts with you.

Bill Platt Knows Article Marketing

By Chris McElroy aka NameCritic on January 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions | 2 Comments »

Bill Platt and I are competitors. We both write articles and do article marketing consultations for clients. But we are also good friends and we discuss ideas and help each other learn more about how to provide better quality for our clients.

In one of his articles he does a very good job of displaying the history of article marketing. it’s a very good read so I wanted to share it here once again.

Article Directory Owners Vs. Automated Article Submission Services
By Bill Platt

Article marketing has been considered a useful method of promotion on the Internet, since the very early days of the Internet. By writing an informative article, writers have been able to get their sales message read by millions of online consumers, through their resource box that follows their articles. Until 2005, the whole point of article marketing was for the purpose of attracting huge numbers of readers as a result of the articles being published in ezines that had a large reader base.

Why Are You Doing Article Marketing Anyway?

By Chris McElroy aka NameCritic on January 6th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 1 Comment »

Do you know? Are you sure you know all the reasons you are writing articles and submitting them to all of those article directories? In case you are not so sure, let me help you;

The Benefits of Article Marketing
by Chris McElroy, NameCritic

With information technology on the rise and gaining relevance in the world today, article marketing has become a very significant tool to promote businesses on the Internet. While it is well-known that articles make consumers understand a product better, a well-written article can be one of the main reasons why any product sells. These days, article marketing is so advanced that it has become the foremost advertising strategy for many online businesses.

Central to the effectiveness of article marketing is the implementation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The primary function of this form of article writing is to achieve prominent rankings on the search engines by utilizing keywords which are popular among Internet users. When a user enters a search term which is identical to your keyword, the web page of your article will be displayed as a search result. With effective SEO strategies, you can rank among the top search results and benefit from a steady flow of incoming traffic, which will ultimately lead to increased sales.

Article Marketing Consistantly Pays Off

By Chris McElroy aka NameCritic on January 6th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »

A lot of people do article marketing, but few do it on a consistant basis. If you want to build your brand, build your image, and build natural links to your website, then you need to do article marketing on a regular schedule.

Not everyone has the time to write their own articles consistantly. They write one when they are inspired or just whenever they have some time on their hands. This inconsistant method of article marketing will not get you consistant results.

At Article Content Provider we help our clients create a consistant article marketing plan that will fit almost anyone’s budget. Our article writers will write a specific number of articles each week or each month and we will even submit them to article directories for you.

Once you set up a consistant article marketing plan, you will get consistant results. Make sense? Click here to order articles or click here to contact us for a consultation.