All Entries in the "Article Directories" Category
Article Marketing in Wikipedia Seriously Needs an Update
As a Wikipedia Editor, I will be updating the page on article marketing, but I’d love some suggestions from others about what to include in the update. Currently, this is what it says;
Image via CrunchBase
Traditional Article Marketing
Article marketing has been used by professionals for nearly as long as mass print has been available. A business provides content to a newspaper, possibly on a timely topic such as an article on tax audits during tax season, and the newspaper may use the article and include the business’s name and contact information. Newspapers and other traditional media have limited budgets for gathering content and these articles may be used in the business section of the newspaper.
Internet Article Marketing
Internet article marketing is used to promote products and services online via article directories. Article directories with good web page ranks receive a lot of site visitors and are may be considered authority sites by search engines,leading to high traffic. These directories then go on PageRank to the author’s website and in addition send traffic from readers.
Internet marketers attempt to maximize the results of an article advertising campaign by submitting their articles to a number of article directories. However, most of the major search engines filter duplicate content to stop the identical content material from being returned multiple times in searches. Some marketers attempt to circumvent this filter by creating a number of variations of an article, known as article spinning. By doing this, one article can theoretically acquire site visitors from a number of article directories.
Most forms of search engine optimization and internet marketing require a domain, internet hosting plan, and promoting budget. However, article advertising makes use of article directories as a free host and receives traffic by way of organic searches due to the listing’s search engine authority.
The primary goal behind article marketing is to get search engine traffic and authors generally incorporate relevant keywords or keyphrases in their articles.
This is seriously short for an article about article marketing. There are so many methods of article distribution other than mass submitting articles to article directories. Hub Pages, Squidoo Lenses, Forums, Social Media, etc.
What I would like is suggestions from others in the article marketing business as to how to update this article. I will give credit to the source of the information. So, please take the time to add anything you think needs to be added to this page at Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_marketing
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Article Submissions To Article Directories Is Not The Way To Go
Seriously, are you still getting a bunch of cheap articles written and distributing them to thousands of article directories? That method used to work. It was never that effective, but now it’s simply obsolete as a link-building method. The last Google update, Panda should have convinced you of that, but that method was dead before the update.
You don’t even have a way of knowing how many people actually read those articles let alone if they actually got published at the places you submitted them to. Plus, if it is garbage content, then no one who does read it will ever visit your website. Using article marketing just for link popularity is the wrong way to go.
1. Well-written articles will help you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
2. Well-written articles that are interesting to the reader will get them to click through to your website where you can actually make a sale.
Those are reasons to do article marketing. Links back to your website are the side-benefit of article marketing, not the purpose!
You need to promote good, original content, not spinning articles or hiring people to write them for the lowest price possible. It seems that poeople get the idea that something works and they will stay with that method even if it kills them. People hate change.
If you are still going with the cheap articles, thousands of directory submissions method, then you are missing the boat. Good article marketing is not cheap anymore. get over it. Hire some good content writers. Have them get those new articles onto knol pages, hub pages, squidoo lenses, large forums that allow articles to be published and other high-traffic websites.
These high-traffic websites that allow you to place good, original content on them is the method you should be using. You will know exactly where your article is published and know exactly how many people read it. Here are some details for you to look at;
Image via CrunchBase
1. Google Knol Pages – http://knol.google.com If you go there and do a search for your keywords, you will see several knol pages about that topic. You see next to each one how many people read those articles. Nice to know how many people actually read your articles. We can add images, embed video, use bold text, headers and other formatting to dress up the article and make it more appealing, more like a web page than an article. If you build the first one that is just all about your company, then build more knol pages, you add links to those knol pages from your first google knol page about your company. So you end up with a Central Knol about your conmpany that links to all of your other knol pages. That is exactly like having another website. 
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2. Hub Pages – (This is going to sound almost identical to a knol page) http://www.hubpages.com is another place you can search for one of your keywords to see what other people have done with their articles. Again, you get to know how many people read the article and get other useful analytics as well. We can add images, embed video, use bold text, headers and other formatting to dress up the article and make it more appealing, more like a web page than an article. If you build the first one that is just all about your company, then build more hub pages, you add links to those hub pages from your first hub page about your company. So you end up with a Central Hub about your conmpany that links to all of your other hub pages. That is exactly like having another website.
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3. Squidoo Lens – http://www.squidoo.com You can also search there for lenses about your topic to see what others have done. You’ll notice that these are much longer than knols or hubs. Knols and hubs are one article. A lens is 10 articles. As with the hubs and knols we can add images, embed video, use bold text, headers and other formatting to dress up the articles and make them more appealing. The difference here is that you have us write a series of articles that flow from article to article like chapters in a book. Again you get to see how many people read the lens and everything.
Using Google Analytics in your website means you will also know how many of those readers actually visited your website. It’s crucial to know what kind of return you get from the different methods you use to drive more traffic to your website. The same things do not work for everyone. Having the knowledge of what is and is not working allows you to make adjustments and improve the return on your investment in SEO and Marketing.
Now that is article marketing. You may need to review your own article marketing plan if you are not including these methods. We can help.
Pricing
Google Knol Pages run $80 including the content writing and everything.
Hub Pages run $60 including the article writing.
A Squidoo Lens runs $400, including the 10 articles.
I’ve been doing article marketing longer than almost anyone on the web. I own 2 article directories myself, one of them with more than 150,000 articles in it and I’m still advising my clients not to go that route. The options above are so much better and the sites are much higher quality and they have more traffic than the article directories. For instance; My article directory gets 35,000 unique visitors per month. Hubpages.com gets 1 million+. Combine that higher traffic with the tracking that analytics gives you and you have a real article marketing plan.
Contact us here or call 512.322.9566 for a free, no-obligation consultation.
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Keyword Rich Domains Have Been Slated For a Rough Google Ride
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In light of recent Google algorithm updates, website managers are running around trying to figure out how they can recover the major losses of website traffic and high-volume of Google rankings that have literally disappeared overnight.
In January of 2011, Google made a minor update to its algorithm that was intended to reduce the presence of scraper websites in the Google SERPs.
Then the big ball fell on February 24th, 2011, when Google rolled out the Panda-Farmer Update. That was when some of the largest sites on the Internet practically vanished from Google’s SERPs in one mighty swoop.
EzineArticles took a 90% hit in the value of its Google rankings.
ArticlesBase took a 94% hit against its Google rankings.
AllBusiness.com had 88% of its Google rankings drop by at least 30 places as well.
The article marketing world is in panic. With the delisting of so many article directories in Google, what in the world are we going to do now?
LOL
The reality is that many article directories have increased their traffic from Google since the Panda-Farmer Algorithm Update, including this one (Article Content Provider), Articles 4 Reprint and others, some by as much as 100%.
But wait, the sky was supposed to have fallen for article marketing, with the Panda-Farmer Update.
What is up with that?
Ah, so there is an anomaly in the data…
What is up with that?
The reality of the situation is that I currently have theories that could potentially explain how this algorithm change was actually implemented, but we are less than a month out from the actual update.
See, that is the thing when you are trying to deduce what happened in an algorithm change.
You have to look for the similarities and the anomalies, and you must understand them in context with each other, before you can make an honest assessment of what changed, why it changed, and how to take advantage of the new realities in search engine marketing.
I have been building my data set of similarities and anomalies to make a realistic assessment of the findings. But, I would still need to test out the theories to put it on the line.
In my original assessment, a few days after the algorithm update, I posted an initial theory here. I still believe that there is some truth in that post, but this initial analysis is only a part of the equation.
The bigger picture needs some more research.
Nevertheless, the Panda-Farmer update was just a teaser for the evolution of the Google algorithm.
The next big thing on the horizon will be the devaluing of Keyword Rich Domains, as described here.
Sites like Buy Here, Pay Here in Tampa at: http://www.buyherepayhereintampa.com may feel the pinch in the Keyword Rich Domain Algorithm Update.
Unless…
Unless the sites like that do some serious link building.
Why would that help, you ask?
Well right now, keyword rich domain names are the holy grail of SEO. Google has been giving sites of that nature an extra bump in its algorithms, but that is about to change.
According to recent announcements from Google and Matt Cutts, the announcement of an upcoming algorithm change is usually fairly quick.
The January announcement was followed by action one week after its announcement.
The Panda-Farmer update was rolled out one month after its “pending” announcement.
So I am anticipating a hit on Keyword Rich Domain Names any day now.
Previously, keyword domain names were given an extra boost by Google. But that boost will soon be eliminated.
As a result, Keyword Rich Domain Names are going to have to compete with other sites in the niche on equal footing.
And how do ordinary websites compete in Google?
Link Building — number of links and value of links.
So the time has come…
If you have a Keyword Rich Domain Name, it is time to quit relying on your domain name by itself to drive your rankings in Google. It is time to compete for rankings in Google, the same as everyone else does.
The writing is on the wall.
You know what to do.
Will you do it?
LOL
Bill Platt is the author of the 28-page article writing guide, “How To Write Articles Fast In 20 Minutes or Less Without Sacrificing Quality“. Get your copy here: http://thephantomwriters.com/article-writing-guide/
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Article Distribution – What do you use?
The days of writing an article and submitting it to thousands of article directories is gone. Now we have Squidoo Lenses, Google Knol Pages, HubPages and more. What are some of the ways you distribute the articles you write?
How Important Is Article Analytics?
Is analytics for articles a necessity? I think it can be important, but we don’t want to blow it out of proportion. It’s nice to know how many people read your article, how many clicked the link to visit your website from the article directory, and how many publishers have used your article in their e-zines and on their websites, but the real metric to keep a handle on is how much traffic an article is generating. And I don’t just mean from the article directory itself.
Some article directories provide stats on how many people read your article, clicked your links, etc. but that information is only marginally helpful. It’s much more important to know how many publishers have used your articles. If you can then identify which publishers they are, you can usually check your inbound links to find them, then you can analyze your referrer logs to see how much traffic you are getting from those sources. That’s the best kind of article analytics. Don’t be fooled by article directories that hype up their bells and whistles.
