Effective Article Marketing Techniques

Article marketing has long been used as a method to build backlinks and drive traffic to a website, but in the wake of the Google Panda update, the best practices for using article marketing to grow a site have changed.  Let’s look at how this marketing technique used to work, as well as what you need to do now to succeed with article marketing.

In the past, article marketing consisted of writing up 500-word, keyword-optimized articles for submission to article directories – mega content sites that consisted entirely of externally-created web articles with links pointing back to the authors’ sites.  In exchange for posting content to these sites, authors received a high quality backlink and traffic, while the directory profited from advertising revenue as new content was generated and posted.

Google Panda changed this system.  In fact, before it was released that the internal name for this major algorithm change was “Panda”, the update was referred to by SEO bloggers as the “Farmer’s Update”, given the extreme impact the change had on content farm sites.

To put it simply, Google decided that sites consisting of entirely user-generated content and offering little in terms of “authority” content weren’t as important as sites built by genuine authorities and de-ranked these sites for many of the keywords that they were already ranking for in the SERPs.  Some of the major content directories that saw hits to their ranked keywords included EzineArticles, HubPages and Associated Content.

So if simply submitting articles to directories is out, does that mean article marketing is dead?  Absolutely not!  There’s still a ton of potential with this marketing technique – we just need to approach it in a different way…

First, let’s take a look at the article content itself.  In the past, it was good enough to throw together 500 words or less, with your target keyword phrase included a few times to improve the keyword density of your content and a resource box with a compelling link or two back to your website.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you felt about the quality of existing web content) this isn’t going to cut it anymore!

Instead, content generated for the new article marketing should meet the following criteria:

• Content length of at least 800-1,200 words. Remember, Google is looking to reward content that provides exceptional value for its users, and it’s pretty difficult to put anything substantive together in only 500 words.  Longer article length is just one of the criteria that plays into determining whether or not a piece of content is high quality, but it’s a major factor in Google’s eyes.
• Proper attribution. These days, Google is looking for content that’s written by authority figures, and one key giveaway is that real authority authors tend to link out to other sources to properly attribute the facts and statistics cited in their writing.  To mirror this effect (and to be sure Google sees your content as “authority” writing), be sure to link out to high quality sites at least 2-3 times in each article you write.
• Natural writing style. Gone are the days of including your target keyword phrase 5-8 times in an article – no matter how hard you had to work to shove it in there!  Good content is natural and well-written, not focused on meeting arbitrary density requirements.

Of course, drafting good content is only half the battle.  The next important thing to consider is where you’ll submit your new content.

As mentioned previously, article marketing in the past revolved around directories.  And while there’s certainly still some merit in submitting articles to these sites (especially as Search Engine Roundtable notes that many of the sites hit by the initial Panda update have started to see a recovery in their traffic), they shouldn’t be the only tool in your article marketing arsenal.

Instead, one of the strongest article marketing techniques you can use right now is to submit your articles to other websites as guest posts.  In this case, you would identify a site in a similar or related niche as your own and contact the owner of the site to see if he or she would let you post an article to the site.  The owner gets your content for free (a huge bonus, as most website owners are pressed for time!), and you get a link or two back from the article to your site.

To get started with guest posting, you’ll need to first identify good candidates to receive your articles.  If you’ve been active in your niche for some time, you should have a good idea who the authority site owners in your industry are.  If not, you might need to spend some time Googling target keywords in your niche to see who the top sites in the SERPs are.  Ideally, your top guest posting candidate sites should have a high PageRank and a good Alexa score (depending on the niche you’re in).

Once you’ve identified a few possible candidates, search the website to see if there’s any information posted on how to submit a guest post.  Some authors will post quality guidelines on their sites, as well as offer information on whether to write the post or contact the author with a post suggestion first.  In either case, keep any communications you have with the site’s author professional and suggest guest post topics that fit with the site’s existing content and will appeal to readers.

If you get approved to write a guest post, it should go without saying that the content you submit should be of the highest possible quality.  In addition to improving your search engine optimization, guest posting can also significantly increase the amount of traffic to your site, as it’s like you’re getting a vote of approval from an authority site owner when your content is posted on his or her site.  Make it content that you would be proud to have your name attached to, and you should see a pretty big benefit from the added exposure.

Of course, guest posting on blogs isn’t the only way to generate traffic and backlinks through content written for other site owners.  Beyond blogs and static websites, there are plenty of web professionals who run email newsletters or ezines who need content regularly as well.  To target these business owners, follow the same steps as you did with guest posting – find authority newsletters, contact the owner for approval and then submit your best work for publication.

And finally, don’t give up on article directories, either – just don’t sit around and expect that posting a few articles on these sites will be enough effort to generate significant traffic or SEO benefit for your site.  Again, it’s important to write good content and choose only the highest quality articles to submit to the top directories, but you shouldn’t discount this promotional method entirely.

By varying your approach to article marketing and ensuring that the content you create meets the “authority” standards Google looks for in new content, you can position yourself to see not just a flood of new visitors to your site, but a boost in your SERP rankings as well.