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Greed is the biggest factor that works against people who do article marketing for links.

I know the other guru’s told you that the only purpose of your articles is to get those treasured links to your website, and if you can get one link from your content, then you should try to get as many links as you can get by with getting.

The guru’s offering this advice are assuming that the websites that will publish your content do not manually check the content sent to them. It assumes that people will put “anything” on their websites, so you can present “anything” to them and get by with it.

If this were actually true, then I would say go ahead and send articles that have a half dozen links in them. I would also say go ahead and send articles that you could not stomach sitting down to read. After all, the only point of article marketing is building your link popularity, right?

Wrong.

I am here to tell you that if you are only targeting your content to get a link to your website, then you are leaving money on the table.

First off, only ten people can ever be on page one of the Google search results at one time, and if more than ten of you are only “offering content for links”, without regard for the readers of your content, then you are missing the real potential of the article marketing principle.

And secondly, you will not get your article placed on as many websites as you might otherwise.

But, let’s assume for a moment that the guru’s are right, and that even if you wrote great articles, you would only get minimal traffic from those articles (They are wrong of course, but we are assuming they are right in this example). If the guru’s are right, then your article placement will not generate any substantial traffic to your website from the article placement itself. But it will enable you to gain link popularity which will help you tap into the Google Goldmine.

I am here to tell you that most websites (granted, not all of them) will manually verify the quality of your content, before they accept the placement of your article on their website.

Because most websites manually verify the content of your article, before accepting your article for publication, you will need to write your articles to meet the approval of those people who are reviewing the articles submitted to them.

Links In The Body Of An Article

When using an article submission company that aims to put your article into a lot of article directories, it should be noted upfront that most article directories prohibit links in the body of an article. So, if you put a bunch of links in the body of your article, it does not matter if those links are self-serving links or third-party links, the article directories will out-of-hand reject the article.

I know that I have put together articles before that presented links to helpful resources online, and those articles when submitted to other directories were rejected. One was an article that told people where to go to find technical support on their computer printers. Every single link in the body of the article pointed to printer manufacturer websites, AND YET, 80% of article directories rejected the placement of the article. Go figure.

But, here is the deal. Article marketers have been pushing the limits for years, by including links to their own websites in the body of the articles, several times, and then trying to squeeze even more links into the resource box. It has gotten to the point where article directory managers have been forced to prohibit links in the body of the articles, just to simplify their approval process. Think about it. If you were in their shoes and you had to check every single link in the body of an article, to see if those links were appropriately placed, or if they were placed in an attempt to squeeze more link juice from an article, then you would ban links in the body of the article too!

Funny thing comes up here. Some article submission services say, “We submit your article to 100 article directories,” or “500 article directories,” etc. Whoopie! But, let me ask this. You might be submitting my article to 500 article directories, but how many of those article directories are still functioning and still approving new content??

There are about 800 websites that have the Article Dashboard software installed on them, but how many of those directories are really active? I have a list of about 800 Article Dashboard websites that I have in my list as places to hand-submit my own articles. Of the 800 or so Dashboard sites in my list, only 128 of those article directories have approved articles in the last 30 days! Only about 165 of those article directories have approved articles in the last 90 days!

(We don’t offer this hand-submission of articles to Article Dashboard sites, because if we charged you to do manual submissions of articles to those sites, you would choke on the price. Especially when Isnare.com can get you into quite a few Article Dashboard sites for about $1.25 per article submission.) The Phantom Writers Article Distribution Service has other distribution channels than Isnare. We each have our own distribution channels. The Phantom Writers can get your articles into places where Isnare cannot reach, and vice versa. Isnare’s automated distribution to Article Dashboard sites is a good value, if you want to trust your distributions to an automated system. But, where automated article submission systems are concerned, Isnare most likely offers the best value. The Phantom Writers system is not a fully-automated distribution system. We put human hands on every article submission.

I digress.

If 80% of article directories will not accept an article with links in the body of the article, then perhaps one should avoid that practice.

However, if you have ever read any of my own articles, you may have noticed that most of my articles do have links in the body of the article. And you may have also noticed that most of those links in the body of the article, about 98%, are links to third-party websites. Only 2% of the links I put into the body of an article are self-serving links.

Some publishers accept links in the body of an article. Most article directories refuse links in the body of the article. So, if I choose to utilize links in the body of my articles, I do so with full knowledge that a lot of publishers will reject my article, based solely on those links in the body of the article. While they might like the article, the links in the article will be the impetus for the decision not to use my article.

It is a trade-off. Some of my articles have links in the body of the article. Some of my articles have no links in the body of the article. It all depends on who I would like to see publish my articles, as to whether I choose to include links in the body of the article or not.

The Reason For This Post

When I see an individual put 3-4 links in the body of the article, and 3-4 links in their Resource Box, and all of the links use different keywords, but point to the same URL, then I know that the author followed some bad SEO advice about link building.

When Google Bot lands on a web page, it looks at the content and all of the links. The first link in a page that points to a specific URL, is the only link which gets value for its anchor text, if other links also point to the same URL.

Examples:

Link A points to: YourDomainURL.com with the anchor text: “Random Keyword”

Link B points to: YourDomainURL.com with the anchor text: “Alternate Keyword”

Link C points to: YourDomainURL.com with the anchor text: “Primary Keyword”

Link D points to: YourDomainURL.com with the anchor: “Primary Keyword Phrase”

When Google Bot reads this page, it does not see a link to YourDomainURL.com with the anchor text “Random Keyword” and another link to YourDomainURL.com with the anchor text “Alternate Keyword”.

Instead, Google Bot sees Link A, Link B, Link C, and Link D all point to the same URL. Because all four links point to the same URL, then Google will only apply the anchor text of the first link to your URL. So, instead of your links connecting your “Primary Keyword” or “Primary Keyword Phrase” to your URL, they will only record “Random Keyword” to your URL, as far as the Google Algorithm is concerned.

Linking several times within the body of an article and in the articles’ Resource Box to one URL on your website, and keywording them differently throughout, is frivolous. Not only is it frivolous in your Link Building activities, it also pisses off the people who may have wanted to publish your articles. Oh yeah, those people.

The average webmaster who is in charge of approving articles to their website will also include a character count in the Resource Box area of the article. Amazingly, I have seen people write 250-word articles, and then try to tag a 1000-word Resource Box to that “article”. They should have just done a press release. After all, self-promotion is expected in a press release, if you can present the information in a newsworthy way that is.

The whole point of article marketing is to inform the reader about something the reader wants to know about. And then include a soft-sell in the Resource Box, designed to get the reader to your website. When you do this well, people will visit your website, and it is up to your website to sell your goods or services.

My wife says I talk too much.

Since most websites put a 500 character limit on your Resource Box, it will be a stretch getting three links into an article Resource Box. It can be done if you craft your words wisely, but it is tough.

We recommend aiming for 2-3 links in the Resource Box, in the format we specify below.

Most people make a huge mistake at this point. They are only focused on those embedded keywords in the anchor text of a link, and fail to realize that webmasters don’t always know how to code HTML.

Compare the following three Resource Boxes:

• Bill Platt has operated the Phantom Writers since 2001. He provides article submission services to his customers. He employs article ghost writers to help him serve his customers. He has even written an article marketing ebook to assist his customers in writing more productive articles.
• Bill Platt has operated http://thephantomwriters.com since 2001. He provides article submission services to help his customers promote their online businesses. He also has an article marketing ebook available to guide those who write their own articles.
• Bill Platt has operated The Phantom Writers since 2001. He provides article submission services to help his customers promote their online businesses. He also has an article marketing ebook available to guide those who write their own articles. Learn more at: http://thephantomwriters.com

(p.s. We know full well that most of these links in our examples will not pass link juice, because they all point to the similar URLs. We included this because the examples will help us teach a lesson.)

In the first Resource Box, we got our keywords into three links pointing to three URLs. That is good, but if you copy that resource box, and place it into Notepad (try it now), as if you were placing it into a new page on your website, then none of the link information will transfer when you paste the information into your page. When you place the information into your file manager on your website, the same thing happens as if you placed the information into Notepad. All link info is dropped, and when the paste and save process is completed, the only thing that will have been transferred to the new web page is the text words that appear in that Resource Box Example.

You got to understand that most webmasters are not even cognizant of how to copy-and-paste the information in true HTML format. As a result of their lack of knowledge in this medium, they will put your text Resource Box on their site, minus your links.

This is why we recommend up to two links with embedded anchor text, and one plain text version of your link as is done in the second and third Resource Box Examples.

We suggest pointing one link to a URL with the plain text version of your link, and then to keyword that same URL with an embedded anchor text at another location in the Resource Box. Then we suggest putting embedded anchor text onto another link pointing to a deep-link URL on your website (a web page on your website that is not your main page).

In the second Resource Box example, we have done this, but the first and second links point to the main page of our website. But, please remember the order of the links actually matters. Google Bot will only record the anchor text on the first reference to a URL. So, with the second Resource Box, they are going to tag my first link with the anchor text http://thephantomwriters.com and ignore the one with my keywords in it: article submission services. Fortunately, all is not lost in the SEO Link Building game. The third link in the Sample Resource Box points to a deep link on my website, and it has the embedded anchor text in it. Since it is referencing a fresh URL, Google Bot will record its information separate from the first two links.

Many webmasters will use the HTML coded version of the Resource Box, but not all of them. That is why we should jump through these extra hoops with our Resource Boxes.

The third Example Resource Box is actually the way we recommend.

The first link points to the main page of our domain, and it has the embedded keywords we hope to rank for in the search engines. The second link is a deep link to our website (an internal web page) and it has embedded keywords in the anchor text. With this version, the first two links will direct Google Bot to apply the embedded keywords in the anchor text to the URLs I referenced in the links.

The third link in the final resource box is only there to cover my butt, and to allow me a link that will stay with the article, in the event a webmaster fails to understand how to get the HTML source code of the Resource Box.

So, there you have it. Now, you know why I frown sometimes when some people send their articles to us for distribution. They know just enough about SEO linking practices to get some value for their links and just enough to tip off Google that they are trying to game the system.

Unless they have read this post, they have no idea of how to do SEO linking the right way in order to ensure the maximum bang for the buck.

Those people who have told you that SEO link building is an effective method of building your link popularity and your rankings in Google are correct. But chances are that they did not tell you the full story. That is why I have done so here.

One final note on this topic. Do not set all of your links to the same embedded keyword text in the anchor text. Google is actually running a percentage test against your embedded anchor text.

Google’s philosophy on link popularity has to do with their ideas of natural linking. Natural linking is a concept that says that all of your links to your website were created naturally. Meaning that individuals have chosen to link to your website, because they like what you have to offer.

But, people who want to link to your website because they like it, will not always use the same embedded anchor text to describe your website.

Take for example my website. People link to me in the following ways:

• ThePhantomWriters
• The Phantom Writers
• Phantom Writers
• thePhantomWriters.com
• http://thephantomwriters.com
• Article Marketing Service
• Article Submission
• Article Submissions
• Free Articles
• Free Reprint Articles
• Article Ghost Writers
• Article Ghost Writing
• Ghost Writing Services
• Ghost Writers
• etc.

When you count the various links pointing to my website, and count the uses of the variety of anchor text they use to describe my website, you will find a wide range of percentages in the mix.

About 40% will describe my website as either: The Phantom Writers or Phantom Writers. About 35% will put my URL in the anchor text: http://thephantomwriters.com The remaining 25% will use one of the many other combinations they use to describe my website.

That is the “natural” way of things in natural links.

If all of a sudden your website pops up with hundreds of new links and all of them say “Primary Keyword” in the embedded anchor text, or if a large percentage of them pop up with your “Primary Keyword Phrase” in the embedded anchor text, then Google knows that you are trying to game their system, through “unnatural” methods.

If Google’s algorithm red flags your website as a website that is trying to game their algorithms, then you have pretty much nailed the lid of your own coffin.

The way around getting tagged as someone trying to game Google’s system through an unnatural linking process is to use different keyword phrases in your anchor text, and to get your links from a wide variety of sources.

This is why The Phantom Writers actually provides a better article distribution service than most of its competitors. The Phantom Writers can get your article published in many websites around the world, over a wide-range of PR sites, covering a diverse range of subjects. Most of those full-automated article submission services submit to the exact same websites every time they submit an article.

In Conclusion… Finally…

If you want to make this article marketing thing work for you, we recommend:

1. Don’t get greedy.
2. Keep the search engines in mind as you write the articles, but write the articles for the human reader, who will approve your articles and read your articles.
3. Write articles that websites will not be ashamed to reprint. Cater to the needs and desires of publishers.
4. Use smart SEO link building practices.
5. Utilize a range of article submission services to get your articles onto a diverse range of websites.

If you want to learn more about the article distribution services from The Phantom Writers, click here.

If you want to learn more about the article ghost writing services available from The Phantom Writers, then click here.

My name is Bill Platt. Not only do I own The Phantom Writers, I also use The Phantom Writers submission services to promote my own articles online. I promote nearly a dozen websites using article marketing as my primary traffic building and SEO placement strategy. But I wanted to give you a peek at how effective article marketing has been for me in the promotion of The Phantom Writers.com. Click Here to see my Google Results. Click Here to see my Yahoo Results. Now that you have seen what article marketing has done for me, imagine what can article marketing do for you.