So Google recently make a big change to the algorithm they use to rank websites. This change negatively impacted thousands (probably closer to millions) of websites that Google thinks are “content farms.” A content farm is basically a site full of content that was created for the sole reason to make advertising money. In the IM industry the most common of this type of site is referred to as an “Adsense Site.”

If you’ve read my popular ebook Article Marketing Domination, and you put into place my article marketing strategies you probably haven’t seen any drop in rankings =)

This new update CONFIRMS the Article Marketing Domination techniques of:

- Only submitting your articles to the top few directories (not hundreds or thousands.)
- Not submitting your articles to your website AND article directories.
- Not pointing all of your links to the root (homepage) of your site… deep link when possible.
- Always producing good, quality content.

Many top article directories took a hit from this new update as well, because of all of the people who submit the same article (often low quality) to hundreds of article directories. The big ones like EzineArticles will gain their trust back because they are tightening their standards. For example, the minimum word for is now 400 words for EzineArticles and review times will be longer now, as they are being more strict with grammar and overall quality.

Just like always, it comes down to quality and moderation, as I teach in Article Marketing Domination. You can outsource article writing… you can even using a good spinner, but ALWAYS go over the articles before publishing them and make appropriate changes. You can submit your articles to a handful of article directories, but never overdo it and only submit to the highest quality directories.

For more on this update and some very good, detailed info and theories, check out Jonathan Leger’s “Google vs. Content Farms” blog post. Jonathan is a great guy who I’ve known for years now and he is one of the few people I trust in regards to SEO advice.

I’ve probably said that 500 times here, there and everywhere. And I don’t say it because I don’t believe the backlinks are worth anything, because they are… I say it because it seems like most people who market with articles are always talking about links, links, links, links.

BUT, I want to bring up this topic once more and talk a little about it.

Yesterday I was submitting a few fresh articles to promote a review site of mine. This, like many of my niche sites, targets several long-tail phrases. These long-tail phrases don’t have huge search volumes with Google, but they have consistent monthly search volumes with some fairly weak competition.

This site in particular, which I will not specify because it is somewhat “risqué” (no, not porn) converts very well, but many of the articles haven’t gained traction in the Search Engines. However, the pages bring in consistent search traffic for the review keywords they are targeting.

However, the only forms of promotion I have used for this site are Link Directory Submissions and Article Directory Submissions. The web directory links certainly helped, but those article directory links are typically a bit stronger and they definitely helped.

This story is similar to several other sites I’ve promoted in the past. Not every article is going to gain traction in the SE’s and not every site is going to be a success. But many times, those sites that are being promoted by articles which don’t drive much traffic, are often times still profitable in the long run simply because of the incoming links the sites have received from those articles pointing to those internal pages targeting long-tail phrases.

So my “updated” thoughts on the whole Article Marketing as a Link Builder can be summed up like this:

My own thoughts on it have not changed at all. It’s really more of the advice that I provide that I want to update. I think over time I’ve kind of pushed the primary benefit too hard, when in reality the link building aspect, in many cases, can be just as important and valuable as the direct traffic you receive as a result of your articles ranking in Google for the keywords they target.

If you’re using article marketing to promote a more authoritative site, which targets keywords that have a good deal of competition, those backlinks aren’t going to be nearly as important as that direct traffic. But if you’re promoting niche sites, which target long-tail, less competitive keywords, those backlinks can still make a pretty noticeable difference and should definitely not be ignored!

The answer to the question is 98% of the time, no. And 2% of the time, yes.

Many people believe that if they build links to the articles that they’ve submitted to article directories, those articles will then receive more authority, causing them to rank higher and drive even more traffic and authority to their site pages. This is true, but it only makes sense to do that about 2% of the time.

To understand why, you need to understand why Article Marketing is worth our time in the first place. The article directories already possess authority, so by submitting articles to them we are able to leverage that authority into traffic and also into incoming authority into our site pages.

If they didn’t possess authority, and you had to build the authority in order for them to drive traffic, they would be completely useless, because if that were the case we would just post the articles to our own site and promote that instead of promoting someone elses site.

So, any authority that we build to any one of our articles in an article directory is authority that we could have built to our own pages. With that being said, if your articles aren’t ranking for the keywords you’re targeting, it isn’t an authority problem, it’s a keyword research problem!!

Article Marketing isn’t meant to get your articles ranked for highly competitive phrases. It’s meant to get your articles ranked for long-tail phrases and if you’re doing good keyword research your articles are going to rank highly for those long-tail phrases without the help of your own link building efforts!

The argument could be made that if an article is ranked at #3 (for example) and that articles is driving traffic to your site, then why not do a little link-building and boost it to #1 for more traffic. That’s a legitimate argument BUT 98% of the time, when targeting long-tail phrases, the difference between the #3, 4, 5, 6 or even 7,8 and 9 spot and the #1 spot isn’t very large. When dealing with highly-competitive, popular phrases the difference can be huge, but with long-tail phrases it’s usually not. And even when it is, you have remember that this isn’t traffic to your site! The article still has to convert that traffic to your site!

Every once in a while though, I’ll hit a long-tail phrase that drives ALOT of traffic to my site without that article even being in the top 3 in the SERPS. This is very rare, happens about 2% of the time, but when it does happen I start building link to that article to get that #1 spot for even more traffic.

So, any time and/or money spent on building links to an article is usually better spent on building links to your own site.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you build links to your articles? If so, what is your reasoning and how do you justify the time investment?

-edit- Here are a few good points brought up in the comment field below:

Brian says: “Let me ask you this though. If you wanted an article to rank for a more competitive term, not so much long tail, wouldn’t it be easier to get an article on EZA ranked on the first page rather than trying to get a page on your own site ranked on the first page? I believe with some link building to the article that is on EZA, it can rank pretty easy for a more competitive term with some link building to your article. Just my 2 cents.”

MY ANSWER: Yes, it would be easier. But don’t forget, you’re only going to get about 10% of that traffic, at best (usually not even 10%) So you’re sacrificing 90% or more of the traffic.

Andy Beard says: “I am one of the world’s laziest linkbuilders but I really can’t see a problem taking an articlesnatch.com author feed and submitting it to Feedage or maybe a web2.0 site that can take a feed. Content gets buried on large article sites and you want to ensure it remains in the primary index.”

MY REPLY: Good point. Nothing wrong with that at all. My point is time. Doing any kind of automated link building that’s effective and takes very little time certainly isn’t a bad idea. It’s just not worth it if you’re going to spend much time at all doing so.

img credit: Marco Bellucci

No keyword research is bad, but you can still get lucky and get some traffic from it. The body of the article should contain quality, but even decent articles can still drive traffic. But a bad signature will completely ruin any chance of that article driving traffic to your site!

There are three key characteristics of an effective Article Signature:

1. Relevant to the article topic – I’ve seen it done many times before and I’ve even done it myself years ago: Using the signature of an article strictly for link building, totally disregarding the relevancy of the link in comparison to the article. Sure, that link will count, but you can kiss any free traffic from that article good by. It should be common sense, but people do it every day. The links in your signature should be as laser targeted to the article as possible! The more relevant, the more traffic!

2. Effective call to action – Just linking to your site’s pages with a couple words around them doesn’t cut it. People don’t just click on random links for the heck of it. They need to be told where to go and WHY they should go there. If the article provides tips for painting a car, your signature should reflect that. Something like “To learn more about my advanced car painting techniques, go to http://www.mysite.com/ where I provide that and…” Stay on topic, tell them what they can get and tell them where they can get it. That means using at least one full URL in the call to action, not anchor text!

3. Proper SEO balance – This goes hand-in-hand with #2. EzineArticles allows 2 links in your signature. Some others allow 3. No matter what is allowed, one of those links should always be a full URL, without anchor text. The other one or two should be using anchor text. Remember, the primary benefit to article marketing is the direct traffic. At least one of those links that uses anchor text should be pointing to an internal page, if possible and relevant to get those SE spiders deep into your site and to increase the authority of internal pages. The problem is that many people don’t get much direct traffic from their articles because they don’t do proper keyword research and/or don’t know how to compose an effective signature, so they figure it’s all about the links.

———–

One thing you do NOT want to include, in most cases, is your name. Some people will recommend that you do so, but they typically fail to explain when and why. The only time you should mention your name in your signature is if you are aggressively branding your name in that niche and/or you are directly related to the topic of the article.

So, if you’re a typical niche marketer submitting articles about dog training to promote your dog training site, you definitely don’t want to mention your name. No one cares about who you are, as bad as that may sound. Your name is below the title as the article author and that’s enough. You don’t need to waste precious signature space talking about you.

On the other hand if you’re sharing a story or experience (for example) that you personally went through or you’re using article marketing to promote your personal consulting service (for example) then mentioning yourself in the signature is a good idea.

With all of that being said, don’t over think it. Most of my signatures are very similar. I only change the topics (obviously,) links and anchor text. In MOST cases (not all) the following will prove to be an effective resource box (I’ll use “hedge pruning techniques” as an example.) This is a made up niche:

“To learn more of my advanced hedge pruning techniques, visit http://www.advanced-hedge-pruning.com/ where I provide step-by-step instruction on how to prune shapes into shrubs and much more!”

image source: Markus Rödder

When you put good info out there, good things come back to you!

But HOW do you consistently produce good, helpful content?

The answer to this question depends on your model. Just like I have my “Info-Product Success Formula” (I no longer own this product) split into two different “paths” most people either work on authority sites or niche sites and the way in which you produce killer content will depend on which path you’re taking.

Authority site – This is where my little “secret” comes in, which I mentioned in the title of this post. Here it is: ALWAYS write content as if your ONLY audience are friends and family… people you deeply care about! I guarantee the content you produce from there on out will be 100%, 200% even 500% better than if you were writing what you think your audience wants to hear. Think of one person who you love enormously. Imagine if that person wanted to know everything about the niche you’re targeting. NOW, start writing for that person!

Niche site – The importance of “KILLER” content on your niche site is determined by your ultimate goal. If you are just creating sites for adsense income the quality doesn’t need to be “killer.” It just needs to be legible and somewhat helpful. But if you want to build a list with your niche site and/or establish a long-term relationship with your readers, you need to go back and take the same advice I gave for authority sites.

That’s it for today. Short and sweet, but very powerful if you actually do it!

image credit: striatic

“Writers Block!”

I get it, you get it and everyone else who writes anything, whether online or offline, gets it too. It just sucks, doesn’t it?

It’s what happens when you know you need to write an article, blog post, web page etc. but you just can’t think of something good to write about.

Although I, myself, still get it, it happens much less frequently these days because of the advice I’m about to give you.

The following are the 5 best ways in my opinion to come up with topics to write about online when you’re suffering from your own unique case of “writer’s block:”

1. Go to one or more forums in your niche. Discussion forums are probably the BEST place to go to find topics in your niche that your readers will want to hear because forums are full of people just like your customers and in some cases they may BE your customers and/or readers! Check out the “hot” threads. The threads with LOADS of replies. These are awesome topics to write about!

2. Ask your subscribers what they want you to write about! Sending out a survey is the best way to do that. Offer something for free to those who complete the survey or some kind of contest. Asking a visitor what he or she wants to learn from you is about as accurate as it gets. You can offer the survey to your list if you have one, on your homepage etc.

3. Watch your competition! Particularly the competitors who are authoritative in your niche. They got that authority somehow and it’s a good bet their readers like what they are writing about, so looking at their content will usually give you some good ideas as to what you should be writing about.

4. Actively participate in social networking! Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. are social networks that provide a unique opportunity to not only interact and get to know others in your niche to JV with etc. they are also full of potential readers, clients, customers and leads! Any chance you get to interact with these people is good. Social networking is a great way to find out what they’re interested in within your niche.

5. Look at what you’ve written in the past that seemed to have done well (if possible.) It won’t give you an exact topic, but it will give you an idea of some of the things you know your readers respond to historically.

Although some of these points may seem obvious or basic to you, hopefully you can refer back to this post next time you get writer’s block and hopefully they help find an idea for you:

(Keep in mind, if your business model targets long-tail phrases with niche marketing, it’s not about finding topics. Your keyword research will yield your topics for you. But for just about any other model this advice should come in handy.)

img credit: re_birf

The basic concepts behind article marketing are fairly simple. It’s understanding what has worked and what hasn’t worked historically that can get confusing. One of the handful of questions that is constantly asked is this:

Should I submit the same article to my site/blog AND article directories?

The answer to this question is No, you shouldn’t.

But, it isn’t going to hurt you dramatically. To understand my logic you need to understand the primary benefit to article marketing.

First, let me say this. The #1 biggest misconception of article marketing is that the backlinks you obtain within your article’s signature block are the main advantage to article marketing.

Man, how this myth has remained alive over the years is beyond me. Look, those links help, but they are not very strong!!!!

Here is an example, showing the primary benefit to article marketing:

I build a mini-site in the cell phone market. I do some keyword research and I find a list of, lets say 25 long tail phrases in that niche. Each of these phrases have some daily search volume, but little to no competition. (easy to obtain a top 10 ranking.)

We write an article about each of these 25 phrases, 25 total articles, each targeting a different phrase.

We create 5 (for example) pages on our mini-site. Each page will contain one of these articles and obviously we’ll insert the targeted phrase in the title of that page etc.

We submit the remaining 20 articles to article directories. Since the good article directories already possess authority, and since I’m targeting long-tail phrases, the top article directories are able to get my article in the top 10 search results of Google.

Since they are long-tail phrases and have little to no competition it’s easy for these top 10 rankings to stick, with no additional effort.

That means each of these articles will be getting search traffic. This traffic lands on our articles and they like it, so they click on the link(s) to our site that we inserted into the signature block.

This generates long-term traffic directly from the article directories.

So, whether our own mini-site pages end up ranking for their targeted keyword phrases or not is irrelevant. We just target each site page to a keyword just for the heck of it, would be dumb not to.

So, why shouldn’t I submit the same article to my site and article directories?

Because that article is targeting one phrase! If you submit the same article to your site/blog that you submit to article directories, you’re just competing against yourself!

Will it hurt you? Probably not, but it’s going to take extra time and the return of investment (time) is typically not going to be worth it. Also, I want my sites content to be as unique as possible. Obviously you can’t control spammers who scrape your content, but why make your own content even less unique? You won’t get a penalty, but you never know, you may lose a spot or two in the SERPS.

photo credit: ~EvidenceE~

With that being said, you can probably imagine there are VERY few people I would even consider taking advice from on the subject of article marketing… actually there’s 1 person, Tim Gorman!

Tim is a friend of mine, who I consider a mentor in may ways. He’s the one who got my feet wet with article marketing and niche marketing in the first place and he’s the absolute only person I listen to when I hear “article marketing advice.”

Tim was recently invited to speak at the System Seminar, which in case you don’t know is one of the biggest, most popular Internet Marketing Seminars in existence.

This was Tim’s second appearance at the System Seminar (last year too) and he’s been a speaker at several other seminars as well.

They invite him because he’s “the man” when it comes to article marketing!

Now that you have an idea of how highly I, and many others, think of Tim, I’d like to let you know about something that’s actually pretty exciting.

After the overwhelming response Tim had, as usual, to his presentation at the seminar, he decided to add video narration to the exact slides he used for his System Seminar Presentation.

So we can now see and hear his presentation and we didn’t even have to pay the HUNDREDS of dollars for entry.

He’s running it as a WSO at the Warrior Forum though, so it won’t be accessible forever!

In the videos he goes over basically everything he does in order to make a 5 figure a month income through article marketing!

Get over there and grab it before it’s gone… I know I did!

http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=255022

I just watched the videos and I’ll admit, this is some pretty powerful stuff! (I receive no profit from sales made through that link. As with all things I recommend, I thoroughly enjoy the product and I believe you will too!)

My Article Submission History

I’ve submitted LOADS of articles within that time span and my technique has changed many, many times!

- When I first began the absolute best way to submit articles was to simply blast them to as many article directories as you could possibly find! It worked. I was getting alot of traffic and loads of incoming links. But the effectiveness of this very simple technique, for one reason or another, eventually died off.

- I then limited my submissions to only 3 high-quality article directories, which at that time were EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and ArticleCity.com These incoming links seemed to be much stronger and the traffic increased as compared to the later days of my mass submission. Things were once again doing well. I was getting alot of direct traffic as well as the indirect SE traffic that come in as a result of the incoming links.

I used this very simple technique for another year or so and it was doing me well, but I missed all of those links I was getting before.

So I began testing mass submission again. What I eventually realized was that mass submission wasn’t the problem!

Google DOES NOT PENALIZE sites/pages that are syndicated! BUT, if the same article appears on hundreds of LOW-QUALITY sites there are algorithmic factors which lower the ranking. On top of that, you have to understand that many of those sites are so low in quality, they simply don’t have enough authority to receive ample attention from the SE spiders to get your articles indexed!

The Solution

Submit 1/2 of your articles to the top 5-10 article directories, which in my opinion are:

1: EzineArticles.com
2: Buzzle.com
3: ArticleDashboard.com
4: Amazines.com
5: IdeaMarketers.com (because of their bidding system)

Submit the other half to the top 30-50 QUALITY article directories! These are article directories which possess high rankings, accept quality articles and have strict submission guidelines!

I use Automatic Article Submitter to make the process much quicker and easier and I highly recommend it.

By splitting up your submission techniques you’re getting the best of both worlds. You’re getting a handful of strong backlinks with the very limited submissions and you’re getting a higher quantity of backlinks with the “mass” submission to high-quality article directories. The best part is that you’re not relying on one simple technique! SE’s change their algorithms on a daily basis, so we really don’t know what will be effective in the future.

By using this technique, I effectively get the best of both worlds and provide a much more solid foundation for my article marketing campaign in the future!

I wasn’t extremely surprised or even impressed that this guy was ranking well for various long-tail keywords; that’s a given. What I was very impressed with though was the fact that this site was, and still is, ranking VERY well for some of the more competitive mortgage related keywords like “Mortgage Quote” (without quotes) etc.

I ended up doing a small analysis of his site. I checked his backlinks with Yahoo Site Explorer and noticed that a good majority, if not all, of his incoming links were internal links and article directory links.

I know for a fact that the mortgage market coverts at over $1 per click with Google Adsense, so I can’t even imagine how much money this guy is making off of the affiliate programs he promoting there.

I checked the estimated search volume for the first competitive keyword I noticed he was ranking for “mortgage quotes” and noticed it’s at 189 estimated daily searches…that’s huge for a long-tail mini-site promoted solely through article marketing!

There isn’t much of a lesson here today, but hopefully this example will provide some motivation to you if you have yet to start marketing with articles!!

Image source: Elizabeth Salib