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Every now and then, I receive emails from new article marketers asking me how to build links with article marketing. The emails come through from my article distribution service, which I’m still running. For more experienced marketers, writing and submitting articles is just like walking or running. But for new marketers, it’s like walking through a thick jungle - i.e., it’s easy to get lost.
So here is a simple guide for all new article marketers. Use this as a blue print to guide you. Article marketing can be very effective in boosting your search engine rankings. You just need to know what to do.
Link Building Guide for New Article Marketers
1) Prepare a list of article directories.
Don’t worry about writing articles just yet. The first thing you need is a list of high quality article directories. There are several such lists loitering around on the Internet. Just make a quick search for “list of article directories.” Many directories may be defunct now. So you need to scrape those sites from your list.
If you are hiring someone else to do the job for you, make sure that the list is well maintained. You don’t want to hire a service that promises to submit your articles to 1000+ directories but only 300 directories are online. We’ll discuss more about outsourcing later on.
2) Prepare your articles.
If you are starting a new website, you need a lot of momentum to get things going. That means writing and submitting AT LEAST a couple of hundred articles. Don’t shoot for 5 or 10 articles. Each article normally averages around 10 - 20 unique visitors per month. If you only have 10 articles published, that’s not going to amount to a lot of traffic. You probably make 1 sale a month - nothing to get excited about. And that’s not going to replace your full time income either.
Very soon, you are more likely to give up on your online venture. Have enough faith and confidence to forge ahead. Article marketing is a time tested method that has been proven to work for many marketers. There is no reason why it will not work for you. Instead of just writing and submitting a handful of articles, prepare to write two hundred articles.
If you are doing this on your own, split up the work load. Write just 10 articles a day for one whole month. You will have 200 articles by the end of the month. That will give you a substantial amount of traffic to work with.
Your articles should not be less than 450 words. You should be writing with the goal of driving traffic to your websites. That means you shouldn’t give away all your content. Talk about the problems that your prospects are likely to face, then drive them to your blog or sales page. Encourage them to click on your links.
Usually, you are allowed to include 2 links to your website. Use a proper URL, and link to a website that you have control over. Don’t use affiliate links in your author box. If you are promoting an affiliate product, drive the traffic to your own sites, then redirect the traffic to the affiliate offer. Remember, your author resource box is where you advertise your products and services. Think of it as a classified ad. You can promote a free ebook, a free download, or whatever. Do whatever you can to encourage the click through.
From my experience, if you do this right, you will see an average click through rate of between 15% to 20%. One more thing about including links in your resource box: when you are submitting articles, you are actually engaged in the process of link building. And link building is important in any SEO campaign. You are already engaged in SEO, whether you know it or not, so use proper anchor texts in your links. You can use URLs as your links if you are not concerned with SEO. You will still get a fair amount of traffic.
But since you are already putting in all that hard work, why not get more traffic from the search engines along the way? Do your keyword research and choose some keywords with search traffic to target. Then make sure you include those keywords as your anchor texts.
3) Submitting your articles.
Start with Ezinearticles.com. EZA is the top article directory on the Internet. In Jan. 09, they announced that they drove 5.1 million clicks to member websites. That’s a lot of clicks. Those clicks must be going somewhere. Can you imagine how much you would be spending if you are to buy those clicks? You don’t have to spend a single dime to get traffic to your sites when you submit articles to EZA.
The reason why you should start with EZA is because they have very strict rules about original content. Original content means that your article must not be published elsewhere. Don’t go post the articles in your blogs before they get approved by EZA. Just be patient and wait for them to approve your articles. EZA accept articles from 250 words onwards, so writing and submitting 10 articles per day is definitely doable. You can always combine the articles to lengthen them for other article directories later on.
Once EZA has approved your articles, you can start to distribute your articles to other article directories. Most of the directories won’t mind having quality articles on their sites, even when those articles have already been published by EZA. As long as you own the rights to those articles, they will be approved. Also, make sure you lengthen the articles to at least 450 words. Most article directories won’t accept articles that are shorter than that. Submit to as many directories as you can. The more sites you submit to, the more inbound links you get. If you are promoting a brand new site, wait 4 to 6 weeks for the search engines to index your articles. You will see your rankings improve dramatically in the search results. I have personally seen this happen for many new sites.
4) Rinse and repeat.
To grow the traffic levels of your website, simply rinse and repeat the above process. Keep writing and submitting to EZA. Once approved, submit to the other article directories. Make link building a habit. Always remind yourself that if you are not building links, you are making it easy for your competitor to overtake you.
Many article marketers tend to kick back and relax when they see their rankings rise in the search results. But after a few weeks, they lost their rankings. Why? Because while they are sitting back doing nothing, their competitors have been busy building links. Ever seen sites with 10k backlinks or more? How did that happen? Obviously, it didn’t happen overnight. Whoever own those sites have been working on acquiring backlinks on a consistent basis. As they continue to work hard to get more links, they are enjoying the cumulative effect. That’s how they build monster sites with tens of thousands of back links. But when you are new, you are like a little fish swimming in the ocean. So don’t rest on your laurels even when you see your sites starting to rank well. Continue to be an aggressive link builder.
5) Outsourcing.
Let’s be brutally honest. Writing doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Some people, after writing just 1 article, start to feel vexed and frustrated. It’s almost impossible for them to write 10 articles on a daily basis. After just one or two days, the individual burns out. For these people, writing is too painful to be carried out on a daily basis.
Then there is the lengthy submission process. The submission process can be very time consuming. If you are trying to submit your articles manually, it will take you a couple of hours just to submit 1 article to a hundred article directories. Even if you use software to help you submit articles, you still have to leave your computer on for the software to function. The most painless and convenient option would be to outsource everything, including article writing and submission. When you outsource, all you do is place an order, submit some information for article writing, and then you go do your own stuff. You don’t even have to be in front of the computer.
You will then be allowed to view and approve the articles. Once approved, the service provider will commence distribution. Contrary to popular belief, outsourcing these days is quite affordable. Article marketing is more reasonably priced than most SEO packages. Have you seen how much SEO packages cost these days? The price can be sky high. It seems only those with deep pockets can afford SEO services these days.
If you are looking for a cheaper option, perhaps article marketing may just be the solution for you. I own and run an article distribution service, so I’m obviously biased. But you don’t have to take my word for you. Take the information in this guide, use it, and see the results for yourself. You can always consider reinvesting some of those profits that you will be making when you see some good results.
Hopefully you will remember this post when that happens, and come back to share with everyone what you have managed to accomplish.
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- Link Building with Article Marketing - What to Do, and What NOT to Do
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- How To Overcome Article Distribution Problems
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