Various Article Marketing Strategies That Work & What Works Best
There are several article marketing strategies employed by internet marketers to build back links to their web properties, but which one of these approaches works best, especially in an ever changing search engine algorithm landscape?
Because back links are still very much relevant and important in terms of where your web property is positioned on the internet, article marketing is also relevant and important because it is one of the better ways to build back links to your web properties in a manner that you can control.
Many have completely backed off from article marketing after the multiple updates to the Google search algorithm, but such changes are only going to increase over time. In addition, Google is not the only search engine and thus other players in the market are also trying a variety of things, some that will work in your favor, and some that won’t.
But with that said, I don’t see article marketing going away completely because building back links is and will remain part of any search algorithm’s formula. However, the method by which you build back links has and will continue to evolve.
The Different Article Marketing Strategies
I have personally applied a variety of article marketing strategies that have worked for me which I have also written about on this blog. All article marketing strategies boil down to two simple methods in my opinion, direct and indirect linking. I will discuss these two and provide my thoughts on how well I feel each article marketing strategy works.
Direct Linking
Direct linking is exactly what it sounds like. You link directly to your website or blog’s home page from within the article utilizing a relevant anchor text or simply listing out the web properties URL.
In the earlier days, everyone linked directly to a web property’s home page, but as internet marketing evolved, the concept of deep linking emerged, which is the practice of linking from within an article to a sub page or web page of the main website or blog being promoted (thus, a “deep page”).
Indirect Linking
Indirect linking refers to a link layering strategy in which you are linking from within an article to another article, blog post, forum posting, etc. and from within that linking to the actual web property that is being promoted.
Indirect linking picked up a lot of steam in more recent times, particularly when everyone was getting into a number of niche site projects, and even more so exacerbated by the effectiveness of linkwheeling as a link building strategy.
There were several other offshoots of this article marketing strategy as well such as broken link wheels, but in essence this strategy involves interlinking between several avenues in an effort to push link building momentum to the web property being promoted.
What Works Best? What is Your Objective?
Sounds dandy, but which one of the above article marketing strategies works best? The answer is that all are, and if you are wondering whether the quality or quantity of back links is more critical to your success, both are.
That wasn’t the answer you were looking for, right? Truth is, at least in my experience managing over 20 niche sites, a more important consideration is not what strategy to focus on, or whether to focus on quality or quantity, but rather how you go about executing your strategy and acquiring the quantity of back links.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating spamming the internet and getting just any kind of back link to your web properties, but a PR 1 back link is not necessarily a poor quality link.
What I am trying to convey in this post is that both quality and quantity of back links are just as important, and the clean article marketing strategies we’ve used in the past still work with due care given to how we execute them today.
What do I mean by due care?
Due care involves an ethical and reasonable approach to link building, the same that was true even in the past but unfortunately overlooked by many. It’s easy to get carried away when things are on the up and up, and unfortunately sometimes it takes major set backs for us to take a step back to reflect and reevaluate.
Fortunately, we are constantly reminded to be cognizant of velocity, relevancy and variety as it pertains to our link building efforts.
Velocity refers to the speed at which you build links. If you are using a tool like Unique Article Wizard like I do, I encourage you to slow down the frequency of your daily submissions and instead slowly drip feed them over time. The tool allows you to make such adjustments instantly.
Relevancy refers to the content of your article and the avenue it is linking to. For example, you cannot submit an article to Ezine about dogs and have a link within going to a website about bats. Ensure that not only the content of the article is relevant, but also the anchor text you are using to link to your web property.
Finally, variety refers to the anchor text you use to link to your website. In addition to ensuring the anchor text is relevant to your web property, mix up the text instead of using the same keyword repeatedly. In addition, ensure an ample amount of plain URL links (www) pointing to your web property.
So while many have completely backed off article marketing, I still find it working for me. I encourage you to continue building back links to your web properties. However, be very cognizant of the new search landscape and thus pay close attention to the variety of anchors you are using, the relevancy of your article content to where you are linking, as well as the velocity of your link building efforts.
So, have you given up on article marketing as a method of building back links? Why or why not? What alternative internet marketing strategies are you finding work best for your websites and blogs in today’s internet landscape?
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15 Responses to “Various Article Marketing Strategies That Work & What Works Best”
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Sunil,
The problem then wth those using article marketing was because of the traffic they were getting from the article directly itself.
Gone are the days when ezinearticles do rank on the front page of google and since those stuffs stopped, people thought that’s all about article marketing.
Now in the age of solely organic traffic (I really don’t do solely), its best bet to use article marketing to build links so as to rank the blog / site itself.
You’ve just re-opened this avenue.
Sheyi
Sheyi – I too use article marketing more so for link building. any direct traffic coming from articles is icing on the cake. how are you specifically using article marketing today and how is it going for you?
Yea agree with Sheyi on the issue of ezinearticle, people no longer regard them as been effective but that doesn’t stop majority of Internet Marketers including me from using them to build backlinks. Although i do get carried away sometimes and think that I’m waisting my time but no matter what, Article marketing is still effective.
Thanks for sharing Sunil.
you’re welcome Theodore. what I like about ezine is that you can submit existing content, as long as you hold the rights.
I appreciate the reasoned approach to article marketing and the limitations on what it may and may not accomplish. Thanks again for the tools to grow one’s blog.
always welcome Barb
This is definitely something on my to do list, but I must admit it does worry me somewhat.
Google doesn’t like manufactured backlinks i.e. backlinks to make your site look popular, so who’s to say that in algorithm changes to come Google won’t target sites with hundreds of links from article directories? You could argue ‘it works now, so why not do it?’ but are we not just then falling into the same trap as before? Will Google not one day see that too many people are taking this strategy over the top because it gets good results, so they’ll eventually say enough is enough?
I am hugely inexperienced so couldn’t say either way, but it’s just my gut feeling about it.
you are right in that the possibility exists, and in such case a diversified link building strategy would work better. this is why I also build links from social networks, web 2.0 properties, other blogs / forums, etc.
Making it look more natural. Got it.
totally. diversification will get you there
Many internet marketers struggle to get a good promotion with article marketing. The truth is that article marketing isn’t what it used to be!
Sunil, I noticed you can still get the most out of article marketing if you publish your articles in spinnable format on those big private blog networks. But there is a catch: it either costs a lot of money or the blog network has a poor quality.
I do not engage in blog networks for article marketing purposes at all. the traditional way of article marketing still works for me in terms of link building, but the velocity has slowed down. I also focus a lot on diversity (i.e. instead of submitting 5 articles each to 10 sites submit one article each to 30)
what’s working for your today Julius?
Hi Sunil,
Just curious of your opinion on unique article wizard now in 2013. I have used it extensively to rank sites successfully by both linking directly to money site and to tier 1 sites. I get the feeling it’s only a matter of time until Google squashes the network and potentially penalizes sites using it. To remove the temptation of using it still while it is still working, I cancelled my subscription – when you can get a few hundred links in a handful of minutes it is VERY tempting to continue to use it! What are your thoughts on it now, May 2013?
Greg – software is just a means to make tasks easier for us. so thoughts would depend on overall link building strategy. I am building links a lot slower with a lot more KW variation no days. velocity and frequency have been the two most important factors in my experience. I do agree with you that sooner or later those sites will become meaningless. not sure about penalties, but you may just not get the benefit of the back links.
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