Article Marketing Is More Than Just Search Engine Marketing
Twitter Tips And Questions
On Twitter, I post a lot of tips about various aspects of online marketing under my profile @contentmanager.
Because my Twitter account is very active, that should not be construed as I am playing on Twitter instead of working. The truth be known, my Twitter profile is mostly-automated using a couple of Twitter Tools.
If you would care to learn how I have my Twitter profile and Twitter Follower Growth on Autopilot, you need to read my FREE Twitter Marketing Ebook at http://twitusers.com/autopilot/index.php More than an ebook about how to grow your Twitter Followers list, it is a Twitter Marketing Strategy that is designed to help you build an audience of interested Twitter Followers – people who actually pay attention to your Tweets and click your links.
Now, on my Twitter profile, one of my Tweets generated a question today, from @KarenLKay of Mississippi. I could not answer the question in 140 characters, so I decided to answer it here in my blog instead.
Karen Tweeted, “Interesting…so you’re saying article marketing is more powerful than search engines? I am confused. Doesn’t article marketing rely on search?” (Yes, I expanded the original Tweet to make the question more easily understood.)
My answer: That is correct. Article marketing IS MORE POWERFUL than Search Engine Marketing, because search marketing is only one of the potential benefits of article marketing.
I know that many people suggest that the ONLY role of Article Marketing is to build link popularity and rankings in the search engines, but that is such a shortsighted and ill-informed view of article marketing.
I admit that I did not catch the article marketing bug until 1999, but I know from my own experience that article marketing has been in use on the Internet since 1995, when I first got online.
I know that I saw article marketing in use in 1995, but I did not understand what it was until about 1998. Then I started using it for myself in 1999-2000. One of my long-time customers says that he has actually been doing article marketing since 1995.
How I Got Started In Article Marketing
I had launched my first domain in March of 1999. In its first year of operation, my domain had received about 600 visitors in total. I had spent endless hours every day promoting that domain, using a variety of free advertising methods. I was able to attract subscribers to my newsletter, but traffic on the website was very slim indeed.
In 1999, I noticed in the sidebar of a now defunct newsletter called “Internet Day” that I could submit an article to them for consideration of publication. I read that newsletter everyday and sucked up all of the information I read in it, because it was geared to my interests – how to operate a profitable online business. At that time, Internet Day had about 100,000 readers.
After seeing that note about their interest to take articles from the public, I was prompted to write an article, especially for that newsletter. My article was based on my own limited experience in online marketing (specifically, how to grow a newsletter). I had been published before in offline channels, so I knew I could actually write an article. So I spent a couple hours writing my first online article and submitted it to Internet Day.
I waited anxiously for about one week, expecting to hear back from the editor of the publication. There was nothing but silence. I soon forgot all about it. Several months later, in early 2000, I received a note from the editor that said my article was scheduled for publication the next morning.
At first, my ego was gratified, but I did not expect much to come from it, other than seeing my name in print.
The response from my article in Internet Day was astonishing! In the five days following the publication of my article in Internet Day, my site received 9,000 visitors! Contrast that to the 600 visitors that the site had gotten in its first year, and you will begin to understand why I got excited about article marketing!
After the initial response from Internet Day, I sat down and wrote six articles in six weeks, then I distributed those articles to Internet publishers. At that time, distribution channels for articles were slim at best. I could literally count the available distribution channels for my articles on one hand.
After writing six articles in the spring of 2000, I promptly got sidetracked and did not think about articles for a while.
My oldest boy was born in February of 2000, so I was otherwise occupied with our new baby and making a living. I still promoted my website, but I really did not have a product or service at that time. My whole reason for existence online at that point was the promotion of my newsletter about computer troubleshooting.
I was always working on my site, but I never really took the time to check my site statistics, so I did not know what was happening on my website. I knew that I was picking up new subscribers to my newsletter on a regular basis, but I did not know the reason for those new subscribers. I was absolutely clueless!
Then suddenly in September of 2000, I noticed that my subscribers doubled in one week! I was baffled and confused. I wanted to know how that had happened! So I opened my site statistics and started looking for clues, but there was nothing really there to answer the question of how I doubled my subscribers practically overnight. (Most newsletters are distributed by email, and clicks from POP email accounts do not show up in your site statistics.)
My site received more than 10,000 visitors in one day! Another 3,000 came the second day and about 1500 visitors the third day. I wanted to know why!
So, I contacted everyone who had registered for my newsletter during those three days of activity. Few responded, but the ones who did respond said unanimously, “I read your article in the ArcaMax newsletter.”
I started researching and found that my article had been published in ArcaMax’s computer tips newsletter, which had 100,000 subscribers!
Then I got curious. If no one contacted me about the publication of my article in ArcaMax, how many others published my articles and did not tell me?
So I started searching for my articles on the Internet. I found that my articles had been published primarily in newsletters, and of those newsletters that had their archives online and had their subscriber numbers published in the newsletter, I was able to do a count of how many readers had been exposed to my articles.
What I found was that my six articles had been published in dozens of newsletters, with a combined subscriber base of 2 million readers!
This is the point where I started getting involved seriously in article marketing.
I helped develop an article marketing business, specifically a ghost writing business, in March of 2001. In September of 2001, I had a falling out with my original partner, so I started my own ghost writing business at that time.
I cannot say that I had the first article marketing service, but I can say with confidence that my article marketing service is the oldest, continuously operating article marketing service on the Internet. In September of 2001, I had a few competitors, including my previous partner. But the competitors I had in 2001 have been out-of-business for a number of years now. My previous partner went out of business in the spring of 2003.
Article Marketing IS MORE POWERFUL Than Just A Tool For Search Engine Marketing
In the early days of the article marketing business, the #1 goal of the online marketer was to be published in a newsletter. After all, a newsletter is home to an audience of 5,000 to 750,000 captive readers who will be exposed to your article and your marketing message (in your author’s resource box) in a single day!
If you can write an article that gets selected for publication by a newsletter publisher, then your article has the ability to be read by thousands or hundreds of thousands of potential customers in a single day!
Well actually, not everyone will read the issue on the date of publication. When published in a newsletter, the audience will read read your article and stream into your site over a period of about five days, with the bulk of that traffic coming in on the day of publication.
For me and my customers, GOAL #1 is to be published in a newsletter. We are hoping to be exposed to thousands or hundreds of thousands of readers in ONE DAY!
For me and my customers, GOAL #2 is to be published on a variety of websites and blogs. Publication on websites and blogs really does not send that much traffic – the actual amount of traffic will always depend on the site itself and the loyalty of its visitors. Publication in websites and blogs is what will help your search engine marketing. It is those live links from third-party websites that will influence your site’s link popularity and your search rankings.
I know that many guru’s are happy to tell you that the ONLY REASON for article marketing is those links from websites and blogs to help your link popularity and your search engine rankings. (If you are at all concerned about the so-called Duplicate Content Penalty, you should read Article Marketing and the Duplicate Content Penalty Myth, an article I wrote last week on the topic.)
But consider this. If an article is published in a newsletter with half a million readers, there is a strong possibility that many of the article’s readers will republish your article on their website too! So to increase the reprint rates of your articles, it is in your best interest to be published in newsletters, as well as websites and blogs.
Another thing to consider is TIMING. If newsletter publishers choose to give your article to their loyal readers, chances are good that those publishers will get your article into their rotation within just a few days or few weeks.
I have been published in major newsletters in as little as 24 hours after distributing the article. In other cases, major newsletters have published my article weeks after I distributed the article. In fewer cases, major newsletters have waited months before publishing my article.
My articles also start turning up in the search engine results within 24 hours after the distribution of the article. The site to which the article points in the resource box has started getting good rankings for desired keywords in as little as 8 days and as many as a few years.
I have had successes and failures with article marketing, but the failures can be measured more in terms of how stiff the competition is for a desired keyword or keyword phrase.
With keywords such as “travel”, it is hard to compete with the multi-million dollar bank accounts of corporations such as Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and many others. But on more long-tail keywords and less-competitive keywords, I have been able to use articles to reach #1 for the website in the resource box in as little as 8 days.
Take for example keyword phrases such as “performance seo” and “pay for performance seo“. I was able to rank both of these keywords for my Pay For Performance SEO company in under 30 days, using article marketing as my primary SEO driver. Of course, I did utilize a couple of other techniques that I use within my SEO service, but article marketing is the primary driver of my SEO processes. For “performance seo”, my competitors are paying $3.37 per click for that traffic – and I pay nothing for my traffic, as related to my #1 ranked keyword phrase.
For “performance seo”, I still retain a #1 ranking in Google against 27.8 million search results, and I have held that position for more than one year.
For “pay for performance seo”, I still retain a #4 ranking in Google against 448,000 search listings – topped only by High Performance dot net and 2 listings on Search Engine Guide.
The other thing to consider that few article marketers actually do consider is this. Just like with the publication on a ordinary website, placement in the search engines will drive a minuscule amount of traffic to your website, when compared to what publication in a newsletter can do for you.
If you could get on page one of Google for the keyword “travel”, you would surely benefit from a ton of traffic. But getting page one results on Google for such a keyword phrase is nearly impossible, unless you have a multi-million dollar marketing budget.
But to tackle a keyword phrase such as, “rattlesnake festival oklahoma” is much easier. One site I manage is ranked for that term as well as a range of “rattlesnake” related information in one post about rattlesnake roundups on this travel blog. That particular post is rated at #3 in Google for the phrase, “rattlesnake festival oklahoma”. As you may well guess, that term is not that popular, but people do search for it. Over the last nine months, that particular post has drawn just over 250 visitors to the site it is on.
Another example is the search term “oklahoma owner finance”. As you can imagine, it is not going to be a heavily searched keyword, but using a few articles, I have managed to push this website to #7 in Google against 700,000 other search listings for that keyword phrase. A better keyword phrase for this website would be “oklahoma owner financed homes“, which has 28 million search results. It is a better keyword phrase, but with much stiffer competition. We have managed to get that site up to #38 in Google for that particular keyword phrase, even against 28 million results, and all advertising for this site has been done with article marketing. On the #7 “oklahoma owner finance”, the site has received 25 visitors in the last nine months. On the #38 “oklahoma owner financed homes”, the site has received 18 visitors in nine months.
The point that I am trying to make is that some keywords cannot be easily put on page one of Google with article marketing, due to heavy competition for those keyword phrases. Additionally, I want you to know that there are some really profitable keyword phrases that when on page one of Google will send you traffic, but it may not be as much traffic as you would expect from Google.
Now, I am not going to tell you my money keywords – those keywords that I rank for in Google, that enable me to earn a living online. I will describe them for you, but I won’t tell you what they are. (If this seems wrong for me to do, I am sorry, but I need to protect my income.)
I have one keyword that I rank for in Google at the #2 spot. That particular keyword puts a lot of money in my pocket every year. I have held this top ranking in Google for years. This particular keyword phrase is #2 of 58 million search results. And while that is awesome, it has only generated 681 clicks from Google in the last nine months. For this keyword, my competitors are paying $1.63 per click.
Another top money keyword is #6 in Google against 75 million search results. My competitors are paying $1 per click in Google Adwords for this traffic. I have had 620 visitors from Google on this keyword in the last 9 months.
While it is nice to hold top Google rankings for specific keywords, you should understand a couple of important points:
- On The Phantom Writers website, I receive about 22,000 unique visitors per month. Only 45% of that traffic comes from the search engines, 80% of it is from Google and 20% is from another 52 search engines. The other 55% (non-search traffic) of all of my visitors comes from six sources: 1) links in my articles in newsletters; 2) links in my articles on various third-party websites; 3) Twitter; 4) Forum signatures; 5) Referrals; 6) People who visit my site via a bookmark or by typing the name of my website into their browser.
- As the result of the publication of my articles in newsletters, I have had many weeks where I generated in excess of $10,000 in sales, as a result of the traffic gained from the publication of my articles in newsletters.
Leaving Money On The Table
Heading into the final stretch, if you think that the only reason for article marketing is to get great rankings in Google, then you are missing the big picture of article marketing.
Publication of an article in a newsletter is what I refer to as “today money“. Publication on a website or blog is what I refer to as “tomorrow money“.
The reason is that when you are published in a newsletter, you have the potential of generating a ton of sales NOW!
Whereas, the publication of your article on websites and blogs MAY AFFECT your search engine rankings in a positive and profitable way – down the road and not necessarily right away. Additionally, you may never see the value from article marketing in Google’s search results, and if that is the case, the “today money” is your best and only hope for making article marketing profitable for you!!!
When I advise people how to write articles, I am very adamant about the idea of NOT WRITING for the search engines.
I absolutely recommend that you always write your articles for newsletters, first and foremost. That means that you are writing the article to impress publishers, so that you can gain access to the publishers’ readers.
Granted, you may not get search engine value from the article when you are published in a newsletter. But then you may get the search engine value also, either because the newsletter is archived online OR more likely, because many of the newsletters’ readers will reprint your article on their website or blog, after reading it in a newsletter.
Even if you do or do not get search engine value from your article getting published in a newsletter, you do get access to an interested and excited audience – people who are likely impatiently waiting to receive their favorite newsletter. Sometimes this audience only numbers in the few thousand, but it is also possible that the audience will number in the hundreds of thousands. There are a couple of newsletters that I am regularly published in that reach 750,000 perfectly-targeted subscribers.
It must be noted that Google employee’s are not going to race to your website to buy what you are selling and Google’s users may not come running either, but the readers of the newsletter are often itching to buy what you sell. They are simply looking for you to show them why they should buy from you, and when your article impresses them, they are more likely to buy from you, rather than the other guy.
When I say to NOT WRITE for the search engines, that does not mean that you should not write for the search engines.
I am not just being contrary when I say that. There is a method to this madness.
I advise (and I practice in my own articles) that you should always write for the newsletter publisher first and the reader second.
You should write to gain the newsletter publisher’s acceptance of your article, as an article worthy of his or her audience.
You should also write the article to impress the person who is most likely to buy what you sell. If you can impress the reader, you can ATTRACT more readers to your website, where the real selling will take place.
Once you have written an article that you are satisfied a newsletter publisher will want to publish and a reader will be thankful for having read, then and only then should you take into account the desires of the search engines.
On your final edit, seed your target keywords into the article copy.
Where most writers fail with article marketing is they start writing with a list of keywords in mind.
To be more successful in article marketing – getting published in newsletters as well as on websites – one should not give any consideration to keywords during the writing process. During the writing process, all focus should be on telling a story that people will WANT TO READ.
Only after the article that people will want to read has been produced, then and only then should consideration be given to target keywords.
On your final edit of the article, look at the words that can be changed to your target keywords, without changing the context or the quality of the story being told in the article.
Your reader must always remain the number #1 priority of your article.
Change the words in the body of the article that can be changed to your target keywords. But never focus on a single keyword, but rather a family of keywords.
For example, the following keywords are among what I call a “family of keywords”:
- website
- websites
- web site
- web sites
- domain
- domains
- URLs
- home page
- vre
- virtual real estate
The concept of using a family of keywords is to tell Google, and to a lesser extent, the other search engines that your article is about the general topic of “websites”, as opposed to the singular keyword, “website”.
There are two key reasons why you should seek to seed your article with a “family of keywords”, as opposed to a “singular keyword or keyword phrase”:
- It makes for a smooth, unhindered read of your article. When people notice your keywords in the article, then you will lose their attention and interest in your article;
- Latent Semantic Indexing – Also referred to as LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing is a mathematical principle used by Google and other search engines to determine the true meaning of the words on a page. Take the word “traffic” for example. Traffic could refer to “transportation” or “roadway volume”, or it could refer to “visitors on a website”. Google utilizes LSI to figure out the context of the keywords used on a page. It looks at surrounding words on the page to make the determination as to whether you are talking about transportation “traffic” or website visitor “traffic”. The “family of keywords” helps Google make the appropriate assessment as to what your web page is about, so that they can quantify it and display it with the right search queries.
The final step in your article writing process is to include your target keywords in your article, but always, and I do mean always, your primary focus should be on getting a larger audience for your article AND delivering those readers to your website, so that you can have an opportunity to present to them your products or services.
In Conclusion
We started this article with one very simple question, “So you’re saying article marketing is more powerful than search engines? I am confused. Doesn’t article marketing rely on search?”
My answer should be crystal clear at this point. While your search engine marketing may rely on article marketing, article marketing does not rely on search engines.
When you can stop long enough to realize that search engine marketing is ONLY one aspect of the article marketing equation, then you should have no doubt in your mind that you should reach higher with your article marketing endeavors.
As I have often said, When you set your goals, AIM for the clouds. If you fall short, you may still reach the mountain top.
.
Bill Platt – owner of The Phantom Writers Article Marketing Service
Related posts:
- 403 Errors Done – Site Upgrades Underway – More Article Marketing Tips
- How The Phantom Writers Has Been So Successful In The Search Engines
- Article Marketing for Links
- “Article Marketing: Beyond The Basics” – Free Ebook
- Article Marketing and the Duplicate Content Penalty Myth
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