Article Marketing: The Key to SEO Success
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Article Marketing is One of the Best Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking.
I've been using article as a key SEO strategy for some time. Article marketing is the practice of self-publishing articles to your website and/or article directories such as Article Alley, Ezine Articles, or GoArticles. In this post, I'll provide a listing of the most common article directories on the Net. But first, let me explain the value of article marketing and how to get the most from your marketing efforts.
Article marketing provides a viral benefit - if done properly. The Internet is hungry for good content. So, your job as an article marketer is to provide it. Quality content means authoring articles based on your area of expertise. If you research this marketing concept on the web you'll find tons of software programs that promise an "easy" way of creating tons of articles. The truth of the matter is that quality counts as much as quantity.
Once you've written an article, between 600 and 800+ words, you want to be sure to post that article to your website or blog. Search engines are starting to evaluate the origin of duplicate content on the web- so you want to make sure that your original content appears on your site first.
Once you've published your article to your blog or website, its time to push it out to website that can distribute your article for you. Many of these sites serve as destinations for website owners who are seeking fresh content. They re-purpose these article on their own websites with the proper attribution. This is often referred to as an Author Box or resource area.
When creating your resource box, include links back to your website with the proper link text. The proper link text will include the keywords you're optimizing for. For example, here is one of the Author Box's I like to use:
Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. For more free marketing articles visit MarketingScoop.com.
By including the specific keywords that you're optimizing for, your spreading links back to your website all over the Internet. Google's ranking algorithm favors one-way links back to your site and you'll benefit by ensuring that the link text includes your keywords.
There are a number of popular article directories. You can submit to these directories manually or with the help of online tools. I personally recommend using article distribution software to manage this are of your SEO marketing efforts. The most popular is Article Submitter Pro which allows you to automate the article submission process to hundreds of article directories.
If you'd like to submit each of your articles manually, here is a small sample of article directory websites:
You may have to register for a number of these, but once you do, you'll be able to log in and post additional articles. Its essential that you stick with article marketing for some time. It takes a few weeks to get going, but once you do, you'll see a significant number of links pointing back to your website!
Marketing Blog founder and top-selling author Michael Fleischner has been featured on The TODAY Show, ABC World News, and Bloomerg Radio. 
