When it comes to building links to a website, webmasters have tried a variety of methods over the years. Some of those have been very powerful and some of them have been banned, or penalized, by the search engines. But one method of link building that has remained as effective, and as acceptable, as it was on the very first day of the Internet is article marketing. for 2018.
But what does article marketing entail?
Well, first, it means you will write articles on a consistent basis and submit them through article directories online. However, a newer method of article marketing involves submitting articles directly to publishers who are seeking exclusive original content. Both methods are great ways to build inbound links.
If you’ve decided that article marketing is the way you want to go to drive traffic to your website, the place you need to start is with keywords. You must conduct keyword research and figure out what your most important keywords are. Secondly, you need to build a website. You can’t build links to something that doesn’t exist. And you can use the same keywords for your articles that you use for your website; in fact, I highly recommend that you do.
Effective article marketing requires a unique mindset. You must be diligent and patient. To do it correctly, here’s what you need to think about:
- Quality – Don’t just spurn out cheap content and expect people will visit your website. Make your article a high quality article with original content.
- Original Content – Original content is always better than rewritten fluff and PLR. Private Label Rights articles, if they are going to be any good to you must be rewritten extensively. But the time it takes to rewrite an article and make it look new and original is about the same amount of time to write an article from scratch. You might as well just write original content.
- Keep It Short – Make your articles easy to read in one sitting. 400-700 words is best.
- Be Informative – Give you reader something meaty. No fluff. Provide useful, relevant, and high quality information that can’t be found anywhere else. That’s how you build credibility and trust.
- Don’t Use Too Many Links – Too many links makes your article look spammy. You are trying to build a good reputation. Just provide one or two links in your author resource box and promote the same website.
- Be Focused – If you maintain your focus and write aritcles consistently over time then you can build some good, solid links back to your website.
Link building through articles is hard work and takes a lot of time. That’s why only the truly dedicated commit to it. Are you that dedicated?
Premium WordPress Themes – Link Building Efforts
It’s all about spam. While some sites, like Twitter, nofollow all their links in an attempt to discourage spam (because it works so well on Twitter, huhn?), Yahoo! Answers has decided to go another route in controlling spam. They’re just not going to activate your links.
That’s right, according to the Yahoo! Answers Blog, URLs posted by Level 1 users, new users, will not be activated. In order to see your URLs activated, you’ll have to become a Level 2 user. In other words, you must first be initiated and accepted by the community leaders.
I’ve seen this type of thing happening more and more in the last couple of years and I think it will happen even more going forward. Web communities are becoming extremely sensitive to search engine spam. And if a website – like Yahoo! Answers, for instance – is a popular destination for people trying to game a quick, cheap link then it will be a haven for spammers. The reason sites become spam havens is because they have so much value to contribute to legitimate marketing efforts. It’s a classic take of you take the bad with the good.
Only now, the bad isn’t so good if you’re on the bad team. I say Yay Yahoo! Answers! Make them earn the right to be a linker.
Premium WordPress Themes – Building Links
A reader asked me a question in a recent blog comment, so I decided to write a blog post about this topic. The question was: When it comes to link building, which is better: Articles or directory submissions?
Before we answer that question, let’s answer a more fundamental question: Why do you need links in the first place?
Links are important for a couple of reasons. First, they are a method of driving traffic to your website and to build and increase your online trust factor. In fact, place enough links in all the right places and you can drive targeted traffic to your most important web pages. Secondly, links are good for offsite search engine optimization purposes. All the major search engines base their ranking algorithms in part on link analysis. The most sophisticated of the link analysis algorithms is Google’s. The largest search engine on the Web judge link quality on factors such as anchor text relevance, PageRank of the linking page, link age, page relevance, diversity of link sources, and several other factors. Get the right mix of links and you can watch your page rankings go from mediocre to good or good to great in a short time.
So what is better for building links? Directory submissions or articles?
One way to think about this is to ask yourself which of these is better equipped to deliver you links that meet one or more of the above-mentioned criteria. Directory submissions, if done correctly, can deliver great link juice based on domain age, page age, and link age, relevance factors, and several other factors important to link analysis. But it’s only one link. One article, however, has the potential to do all of the above more than once. In fact, one article has the potential to build more solid links over time than 100 directory submissions. And if you multiply the potential by 100 articles at 100 directories, well, you can see the potential multiply exponentially. Either way, I normally recommend submitting your website to the top online directories and even industry/association specific directories. For article submission, eZine is great and also writing for industry specific websites/blogs is another great way to place your articles, increase visitors and highly relevant link popularity.
Directory submissions is a one-time thing. You submit and your done. The only real numbers aspect of it to think about it how many directory submissions you want to make. The more you do the better your chances of building solid links. Articles, on the other hand, are more effective is you maintain a consistent submission pace over a period of time. But because one article has more potential long-term in building the right links in the right places than a hundred, or a thousand, directory submissions, I’m going to have to fall down on the article side on this one.