Article Marketing Strategies

Okay, now that we have gone over the basics to article marketing and you understand that it isn’t necessarily volume of articles written that matters but how you “pick” your keywords. In this article, I am going to go over various article marketing strategies.

But first, some parameters to help you….There are some things that you should know:

If, during keyword research, you find more than one article directory or web2.0 property on the first page of the SERPS, it is very likely that you will be able to rank for a similar themed article.
If you see one article listed, there is a very good chance that you can rank in a dual listing with the same article directory- This may change in the future as universal search starts to fill up the first pages of the search engines
If there are already two listings from the same article directory on the first page, you will want to use another similar article directory…for instance, if there are two listings in google for ezine but none in Buzzle, you may consider syndicating your article via Buzzle.
You will use any traffic data freely available to confirm keyword traffic but do so with extreme caution…The issue with this is the minority of article writers that have figured out how to “game” the directories.
There are 1000’s of article directories out there….Very few actually matter. If they don’t have ranking power, don’t bother….not even for backlinks. It isn’t worth your time.

PiggyBacking on the dual listings in organic search method..

In this method, you basically search long tail data in your market, google it, and if there is a page from an article directory, you write a similar article that targets that keyword. Usually, your article will get what some call a “dual listing”, meaning that both your article and the other article will be on the first page.

The result? Instant traffic if the long tail gets traffic. For more on this, you can check out my article on how to get dual listings in Google from bum marketing

How to determine how much traffic the original article is getting

EZA has a treasure trove of information that the freely give out. On every article, you get the number of views that the article has received. In most cases, this can be taken as absolute (I will talk more in detail about the other cases). I call this the slam dunk piggyback method because what you are essentially doing is using Ezine’s most viewed section on their site, reverse engineering the article itself to determine what is causing the amount of traffic, and writing a similar article optimized for the same keywords as the most viewed.

The interesting part about this method is that it is highly likely that the article is relatively new, meaning that ranking for it quickly is plausible.

The reason why it works is because Google will sometimes employ dual listings. Dual listings simply mean that it has found more than one relevant article on the same subject on the same site…in this case it is EZA but it could be any site that ranks.

For instance, if you find an article that was published 12 months ago and has a total of 6,000 views (which is quite a bit), you can pretty much assume that if you wrote a similar article, you should get about 500 views should you rank.

This strategy may change as universal search starts to really crowd up the front page listings but right now, dual listings happen, and they happen often.

The key to this technique is to be able to reverse engineer the article that is getting the views and compare it to the average traffic that Google says the keyword is getting. If it varies wildly, then the article may be getting a lot of its traffic from a long tail in the article as well as the keyword it is supposedly optimized for.

If this isn’t the case or the amount of traffic looks “fishy”, it usually means that it is. (which I will explain in another strategy down the line)….

The best part of this strategy is that, if done successfully, you will be able to solidify your spot on top by belonging to the most viewed section yourself.

Getting on the Most Viewed Section Strategy

This is in relation to ezine articles but many other websites do essentially the same thing. Why would you care if you are on the most viewed section? Simple. You will create yet another avenue of traffic to your website because your article will be on the every article page in your niche on the site.

There is another reason though…..

Having a link on every article page in your niche will solidify your site’s relevance for Google and help you maintain your ranking organically.

When you first write an article (for EZA), you will get a jolt of instant traffic because your article will be placed on the front page AND also get a link from every other article written for your niche.

Because of this, your article will likely zoom up the search engines and appear on the first page provided that the long tail isn’t that competitive.

And because this is only temporary, chances are you will also begin to fall in rank fairly quickly without adding any back links to bolster the importance, at least in the eyes of the search engines.

Enter the most viewed section of ezinearticles….

Ezine has a system in place that rewards the articles in your niche that get the most views by placing the top 10 most viewed articles over the last 90 days on every article in the niche.

This will help bolster and confirm that, yes, this article is the most relevant article in the directory for your selected keyword. This, of course, is strictly for organic search although you will get some views from simply having a link on other people’s articles.

So, how do you do this?

You could piggy back by leeching traffic and writing a similar article that is already getting traffic OR you could buy traffic to get to the page in the first place.

There are many places you can get free traffic to your site at prices that are wayyyyy low.

For instance, you could choose to buy stumble traffic. This traffic will typically cost you around .05 per view. Considering that there are many niche markets on this directory that only need a couple hundred views to get listed, choosing a stumbleupon campaign could quickly get you on the most viewed list.

Of course, the stumbleupon traffic itself will likely not be that interested in what you have to say but that isn’t important. Your goal would be the extra link juice you will get from the most viewed segment of your EZA campaign and help to solidify your SERP rankings.

The Long Elaborate Titles and (practically) Non-Existent Content Strategy

This strategy takes a page from the once lucrative, now practically non-existent MFA sites (Made-for-Adsense). The premise here is to not provide any real solutions in the article itself and instead, focus on the “exit” point for the reader.

The long elaborate titles will do a couple things for the writer.

There may be more options for traffic because the since the title of the article is clearly the most important to the search engines in terms of on site SEO, you can cram more keywords and long tail potentials into it.
Long elaborate titles will, in a sense, separate your articles from what most article marketers are doing (short titles meant to directly target a certain keyword), making the article more likely to actually get clicked by the visitor

This method is a little more black hat. While traditional article marketing will rely on a 4 part system commonly associated with building ad copy (attract attention with the title, opening paragraph with a problem in mind, inside paragraphs giving a solution to the problem with the last paragraph as a summary, and finally a bio box with a swift call to action), this method is more reliant on getting the visitor to the page and then getting them to exit quickly via a call to action in the bio box.

The bare minimum that most article directories will allow in word count is 250 words. What most people and marketers don’t realize is that this 250 words can include both the bio AND the actual content, making the call to action and exit points closer up toward the top of the page.

And usually, rather than focus on solving the problem with hints, tips, or tricks in the actual content, they will instead paraphrase the problem and make the call to action THE place for the visitor to go to solve the problem.

This is fringe marketing. If you are looking to brand your name as a marketer, this method is not recommended. If you are simply using the article as a direct funnel to an offer, this may be a strategy you can successfully employ.

Getting hundreds of backlinks quickly method

Sometimes, your article will make it to the front page of google and start to fall. In most cases, the traditional article marketer won’t spend near enough time on the article to keep it visible to its audience. The reality is that you are going to need to build backlinks to your articles.

This method is a quick solution and I must warn you, it is black hat in nature. The reason why I am even showing you this method is because, in marketing, sometimes to stay ahead of the curve, you have to resort to shady tactics.

I will also say for the record that while many article marketers will consider this as cheating the system, there is nothing illegal with doing it and there are tons of marketers who do this.

To understand why this method is so effective, you have to understand that Google allows web sites that it trusts more leeway than sites that are new. In other words, if you have a new site and throw hundreds of links to it in a couple days, then it is likely that you will be marked as suspicious and sandboxed for a time.

However, if you were to do the same thing to EZA or hubpages (or squidoo) or any site that is already trusted by google, you would not only NOT suffer a penalty, in all likelihood, you would rank higher.

So, how do you go about getting hundreds of links quickly? Aside from building an article that is link bait or spending hours building links via web2.0 properties, the hands down quick way is to use software that will do this for you.

The black hat community uses a product called xrumer that has a monthly price tag of hundreds of dollars. Basically what the software does is drops thousands of links in various forums and as a result, you get the link juice.

The links are, by and large, negligible in importance but with thousands of them, they add up.

The result? Your article moves up the ranks in the search engines and you reap the rewards of traffic.

I have tested this by the way. Some niches respond quite well to the tactic….others not at all.

The Volume of Articles Method

The final strategy is probably the most common strategy employed by article marketers….

Write hundreds of articles and dominate a niche by only having YOUR articles in the niche….

Let me explain this method. Basically, you will write 10-20 articles a day solely focused on your niche market. The result will be that, for the most part, only your articles will appear in the “recently published” list and because of this, only your articles will reap the benefits of people randomly searching for more information on the niche.

There are some issues with this. First of all, the niche you are targeting should be highly competitive which means that there are other article marketers that are targeting the same niche and doing the exact same thing.

Also, in order to effectively do this, you will need to map out the ROI and get some metrics on your exit points to keep costs down and profits up. In all likelihood, to compete using this strategy, you will need to outsource your writing.

For instance, let’s say that you are planning to dominate the weight loss niche. If you are getting a 25% CTR to your landing page that is building a list and then averaging 100 subscribers a day AND you have figured out that each subscriber is worth $50 lifetime value, then you know that spending $300 a day for 20 subscribers is well worth the expense of outsourcing.

If, on the other hand, your exit point is a redirect directly to an offer, and the click through rate is 25% with 1,000 daily visitors (meaning 250 people reach your target page) BUT the conversion rate is 1% and the offer pays you $50, then you know that in order to break even, you can’t spend more than $100 a day in outsourcing article writing.

I am oversimplifying the process by the way, but I hope you catch my drift. Understanding your metrics, conversion and acquisition data as well as the actual worth of each click through will help you to figure out what you can and can’t afford.