Article Marketing; Quality over Quantity

I am certainly no writer. Actually to those whom know me I am more of a ranter than anything. I have been writing on and off for many years (started a book on a typewriter back in the 80s). Do I have a style? I have no bloody idea, you tell me. I sure hope I do or else theres pretty good chance you havent even made it this far. I have recently been working closely with an editor friend to refine my limited talents. Over the course of our chats I decided an article about Article Marketing while sounding redundant, would be worth writing.

Not another one of these? Yes, I know there are more than few article marketing pieces out there, I am taking a slightly different angle. We are going to look at what makes a successful article marketing campaign so you can get the most out of a competitive marketplace. Competitive? I thought it was about getting Back Links you say? Thats where it starts to go wrong. The number one most common use of Article Repositories, is usually to get Back Links NOT as the full powered Marketing tool that it can be. This is what I often find short-sighted.

Lets look at some of the benefits and usage for Article Marketing programs; Surf-in traffic; This is really the number one reason. Above and beyond all else a well written article and marketed article will bring you traffic in the short and long term. I get traffic to our sites that came from an article I had written and marketed over a year ago. If you write a well thought out article that has lasting value, it will live out on the internet for quite some time. Traffic is always my goal and this is a major value to Article Marketing.

Link Profile development; This while not a primary focus for me, is a great additional benefit. Search engines, to a certain extent, base rankings from the number of Back Links (or In-Bound Links) a web site has pointing to it. This gives Article Marketing its second value. Through use of proper Link Text and keyword/phrase usage, your Article Marketing campaign can have a positive effect on your rankings and search referrers. For full effectiveness be sure to learn about building your Link Profile ( methinks I should write a Building your Link Profile article FIRST and then link to it. Thoughts?)

Building brand; well written articles and building a body of work will also help build the Brand of your company or yourself as an authoritative figure on the subject matter. This is also invaluable to any enterprise or undertaking. The opposite is also true that poorly written, shoddy or lazy articles can harm your reputation. Do it right or dont do it at all.

Tracking the Articles extra sensory perception

An over-looked area that makes it a true Program is the tracking. Dont just write and article, publish it onto the Dub-Dub-Dub a leave her to float away. How cruel, cold and uncaring. Watch the progress of the article. See how many times it is downloaded and viewed on the publishing site. Search Google for the Article Title in quotation marks, ( eg; My Article Title) to see how many times it was syndicated by other sites. See if anyone has reviewd it or quoted it and send them a thank-you. Tracking will also allow you to see which articles do the best. Now look at the style you wrote it in, the topic and other common factors. Soon you can start to choose topics and styles that will get you the most coverage with each successive article. Fun stuff huh?

Quality over quantity

Certainly a catch phrase these days in SEO (links, content etc), but it does hold true. You see, throwing out a ton of simplistic, non-engaging articles will do little more than garner a few back links. A well written article does so much more and you can even expect MORE back links as the eventual distribution/syndication of the article should be wider due to the lack of quality competitors.

A quality article will also be better received and promoted by the managers of your distribution sources (article repositories, e-magazines, newsletter editors). My number one 'editor in chief' Mark, certainly laments the vast number of pure drivel that arrives on his virtual doorstep every day. If you can entertain the distribution mangers and editors, you have won half of the battle. To that end I would also consider getting professional help. You heard me seek help!. With my SEO Company I keep professional writers around. I let them so what they do best and then my SEO guys do what they do best, optimize the article. Sure it raises my over-all cost, but if you factor in the many benefits of crafting professional work, its always worth it.

The main point is to not look at article marketing as simply another Link Drop. It is far more than that. Make sure you leverage it for all its worth.

About the author; David Harry is an internet business development consultant and president of Reliable SEO providers of reliable SEO services.