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View Full Version : What do you think of article writing?



seolman
04-26-2010, 02:43 PM
I must confess I am not into writing and submitting articles to article sites. I have visited many of these sites over the years and - while there are a few articles that are exceptionally good - the majority seem to be quick and dirty, poorly researched articles designed to get anyone to post it on a web site based on keywords alone so they can get some links.

I'm asking the SEO guys (including the painter who has a hearing issue) what they think of article sites. Are there any advantages to using them that would go over and above getting more naturally occurring links via publicizing a web site using say press releases, twitter and social bookmarking?

vangogh
04-26-2010, 03:57 PM
I think the idea of writing articles for other sites is a great one for marketing in general. I think the idea of taking articles and submitting them to article directories is mostly pointless.

The idea behind article sites was originally that your article would potentially get downloaded many times and each time it was published you got another link. Realistically you could write a quick article and get dozens of links back.

However now most of those articles are likely going to be seen as duplicate content and odds are most aren't passing any value in the links. If you submit to an article directory now consider your doing it for the single link from the directory. I don't know about you, but I've never visited an article directory site looking for content and I doubt many other people do either.

A better strategy is to write an article for another site on your topic. You should then be writing for the same audience likely to be interested in your own site and some of them should click through. If you go on to write several articles for the same site or a series of articles for different sites within your topic your name should start getting out there and the visibility of your brand will increase. Also the links you'd be getting are as close to the exact kind of links you want.

To prove I'm putting my money where my mouth is here's my second article for Smashing Magazine (a well known blog on web design and development). Shortly after my first article was published there, I noticed an increase of about 150 visits per day from search engines. Probably not confined to the one article, but several I've given away to other sites within the design community.

Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/26/designing-for-a-hierarchy-of-needs/)

Out of curiosity does anyone think it would have been better marketing for me to submit that article to Ezine or similar?

seolman
04-26-2010, 04:22 PM
THANKS STEVE (sorry, I yelled it in case you had any trouble hearing me). :D

If my blog posts were as good as your forum posts I think I would get more business. Thanks for confirming my feelings about the article sites. I have yet to find a use for them but I wanted to be sure I wasn't missing out of something.

vangogh
04-26-2010, 08:21 PM
What? What? I can't hear you. Only one ear you know.

With writing articles you just have to keep working at it and make each one better than the last. I always try new things and see how they go over. About a year or so ago I switched from writing about seo/marketing to writing about design. Most people wouldn't change like that, but it seemed to me the right thing to do. Traffic has doubled and lately every other design blog is asking me to write for them.

There really isn't any trick to it. You just have to keep working at creating better and better articles. Look for what's not being covered already. I know you write seo posts, but how well do they stand up to some of the top seo blogs. If you can't offer content on a similar quality as they do you have to ask yourself why someone should read you as opposed to them. Look for something you have to offer that they don't. That way you can create your niche within seo.

Harold Mansfield
04-27-2010, 01:52 PM
I have to agree with VG. Article marketing is pretty much dead to me. Like he said, it is based on an old principle of link building that no longer applies.
Better to be published on a website or blog, rather than amongst 1000's of spam articles, or just promote your own blog and encourage others to link to you.

seolman
04-27-2010, 07:52 PM
Good point about finding the niche Steve. It is a struggle to find a place in the webiverse...

I looked this up (http://www.hearingaidswholesale.com/) for you

Thanks to all for the feedback and advice.

cbscreative
04-28-2010, 10:48 AM
I looked this up (http://www.hearingaidswholesale.com/) for you

LOL. I just hope vg doesn't need reading glasses. How can you put on glasses if you only have one ear? A monicle perhaps?

vangogh
04-28-2010, 12:19 PM
I'll be out shopping for monocles this afternoon :)

saltimbango
05-01-2010, 01:03 PM
I am pretty new here but the one thing we have noticed from article writing is if somebody likes it and they start tweeting it to al their friends on twitter we get a lot of traffic during those buzzes

Lyrafire
07-19-2010, 03:42 PM
I think the idea of writing articles for other sites is a great one for marketing in general. I think the idea of taking articles and submitting them to article directories is mostly pointless.

The idea behind article sites was originally that your article would potentially get downloaded many times and each time it was published you got another link. Realistically you could write a quick article and get dozens of links back.

However now most of those articles are likely going to be seen as duplicate content and odds are most aren't passing any value in the links. If you submit to an article directory now consider your doing it for the single link from the directory. I don't know about you, but I've never visited an article directory site looking for content and I doubt many other people do either.

A better strategy is to write an article for another site on your topic. You should then be writing for the same audience likely to be interested in your own site and some of them should click through. If you go on to write several articles for the same site or a series of articles for different sites within your topic your name should start getting out there and the visibility of your brand will increase. Also the links you'd be getting are as close to the exact kind of links you want.

To prove I'm putting my money where my mouth is here's my second article for Smashing Magazine (a well known blog on web design and development). Shortly after my first article was published there, I noticed an increase of about 150 visits per day from search engines. Probably not confined to the one article, but several I've given away to other sites within the design community.

Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/26/designing-for-a-hierarchy-of-needs/)

Out of curiosity does anyone think it would have been better marketing for me to submit that article to Ezine or similar?

VanGogh--agree with you on all points. I took a look at your article--smart, literate and well-written. I'm impressed. For marketing purposes, Ezine might have been better, though I have not posted work there myself. I just read (somewhere, the other day) that Ezine has monumental traffic, so if only for exposure, it ought to be a good place to post.

Personally, I'm also just starting to look into guest blogging, which strikes me as a good, ethical way to build relevant traffic and a list of relevant back links.

vangogh
07-19-2010, 07:47 PM
Thanks Lyrafire. I don't think Ezine would have been better though. Smashing Magazine gets quite a bit of traffic too and even better, it's traffic that's likely interested in what I write about on my own site. It's not just about sheer traffic numbers. It's also about a match between who's the article and who ends up seeing it.

Guest blogging can be a great way to market your site in a way that makes you feel good. I would skip the directories, except as a last resort. I'd actually sooner post an article on my own blog that submit it to a directory, though I'm sure others will disagree. I don't think people spend much time reading the articles on directories. I think most of the traffic is people submitting articles. If the article on the directory ranks well in a search engine then it might get read, but it could probably rank as well by having it accepted on an authority site in your industry too.

By the way for anyone who thinks directories are better because other people might download your article and also post it, you might be interested in knowing that when I guest post on reasonably popular blogs those articles end up getting copied and republished more often and quicker than would happen had the article been submitted to a directory. And of course all those copies link back to my site. There about as low quality a link as you can get, but that's the same as any extra link you get if your article is downloaded and republished from a directory.

Lyrafire
07-20-2010, 09:01 AM
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, VanGogh. You make a good distinction between the traffic an article generates as opposed to the site. When I write for Demand Studios, I have to research every article. Though I never use an article on Ezine as a source (Ezine and all article directories are banned as references), it's definitely worth noting how often a long-tail query turns up an article on Ezine. That said, I agree that the backlink quality is less likely to be of quality. And there are plenty of directories on which I would be embarrassed to post my work.

vangogh
07-20-2010, 11:58 AM
Ezine definitely turns up in long tail searches. I know they have a lot of links and authority. I wonder though if those same articles could easily rank well elsewhere given the searches are long tail. They probably still rank in part because of unique content on the page. My thoughts against Ezine and article directories in general is that I think people still treat them the way they worked a few years ago. At the time the goal was to have your article downloaded as many times as possible and all those extra copies (with links back to you) would build links. I think now search engines don't count or at least don't give much weight to the links from the duplicate content. Now if you submit to a site like Ezine you get the link from Ezine, but not much beyond. I'm guessing a little here too, but given how easy it is to get that link that search engines (Google mainly) doesn't think as highly of them as they might have been.

greenoak
09-14-2010, 06:53 AM
what i dont get is how can our store rank #3 on google for ... antiques indiana....yesterday and today anyway.......out of hundreds, maybe more places? when i dont do articles and really dont have much focus if any on seo? something good happened but its not what we talk about and push as important on here....
i figure we are doing something right...lol....but what?

Spider
09-14-2010, 09:03 AM
You're clever and pretty and extremely intelligent --- and Google gives extra points for clever, pretty and extremely intelligent!

:-)

greenoak
09-14-2010, 09:07 AM
well yes!!!
but seriously i never seem to read about a situation like ours...........

Patrysha
09-14-2010, 09:13 AM
what i dont get is how can our store rank #3 on google for ... antiques indiana....yesterday and today anyway.......out of hundreds, maybe more places? when i dont do articles and really dont have much focus if any on seo? something good happened but its not what we talk about and push as important on here....
i figure we are doing something right...lol....but what?

Generally, the article advice is given to those who are selling and promoting online. When you are running a brick and mortar business, the tactics can be a bit different...especially when you have billboards, print, in-store and other offline tactics to work with. Not to mention the difference in keywords that you'd be targeting as opposed to an online business owner or one's who budget is limited to online tactics.

cbscreative
09-14-2010, 10:07 AM
Ann, most likely what you are doing right is just being online and staying visible. I will venture a guess that most antiques people "don't get this Internet thing" and you are just way ahead of the curve. Even if they start to figure it out, you still have the lead. Plus, those others aren't here on the SBF to benefit from our wisdom. :)

vangogh
09-14-2010, 12:02 PM
Ann you likely rank where you do for a couple of reasons.

1. antiques indiana is probably not the most competitive phrase. When wrap quotes around the phrase Google shows 150,000 results. Sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. By wrapping quotes around the phrase you can get a better feel for how many people are actively optimizing for the phrase.

2. You are an antiques store in Indiana. It only makes sense you should rank for that phrase. The word antiques is in your domain and also the page title of your home page. You also mention you're in Indiana on the home page as well as in the home page title. I assume you mention both on other pages too giving Google a clear indication your an antiques store in Indiana. Placing keywords in the page title is one of the best things you can do on the page itself.

When you combine the two above it means you rank well for the phrase. Good job.

greenoak
09-15-2010, 08:46 AM
thanks...
i dont know what actively optimizing or wrapping quotes around a phrase means.or what the 150,000 number means.....i just figured there are a lot of antique businesses in indiana, including big shows and all the malls and us coming up so high seems kind of odd...especially since our site is home made....we know our site brings us lots of business.. it helps out of state buyers....thats the big guys!!!, helps them find us....so this is really good ....we are regoinal or a destination shop..so mmost people use our site before making the drive.... its crucial...
..what might sound like a low number in the national realm might be pretty big in my local target niche....its so relative.........
anyway, if i knew more of the web habits that got our site up there i would do them more.... we link in and out among our blogs and facebook.and on the forums.....is that helpful?

like patrysha said a lot of info on here is more for national on line businesses than for me....but i have used lots of ideas from here too., so much in business is universal...imho..... ..but i do i wish more real world ...or whatever you call us, would come on here....our web needs are huge ...but different...

Business Attorney
09-15-2010, 09:21 AM
Ann you likely rank where you do for a couple of reasons...

3. The words "antiques" and "Indiana" appear in the text in your signature link here and presumably in other forums you participate in. A lot of people who are on the Internet tend to link the name of their store, which may not even contain any key words at all. "Caroline's Cupboard" might be a fine antique store but if that is how it is always linked to offsite, the search engines will not rank it highly for other terms. Another good example of how much this offsite linking counts is that even though Rochester, New York, is much bigger than your town, and Google chooses to list that city's antique stores in Google Places before its main search results listing, your store is #1 in the main listing for "Rochester antiques."

vangogh
09-15-2010, 10:44 AM
Good catch. I forgot about those. One reason why choosing a keyword rich name can be important for your business where search engine traffic is concerned.