Ezine Articles Case Study..Can a New Site Outrank an Ezine Article in the Search Engines?

Roughly 2-3 months ago, I posed the question to my partner “could a new website gain the same quick results that high powered article directories such as Ezine Articles gets in the search engines just by adding a few links from high pagerank sites?”  
I theorized that it could.  My thoughts at the time were, since most of the articles were getting views via search engines and, aside from internal links, most of these articles weren’t aggressively linked to, that the prospect of outranking them should be easy. But, would it be as easy as I thought?  As always, I don’t necessarily consider myself an expert in this…this is just a log of things that I learn along the way….

In this post, I highlight the following:

1. An overview of ezine articles and why I even bothered to do this case study…
2. The criteria I used…
3. My linking strategy…
4. My results…..
5. What you could learn from this study…
6. What you should take away from this post….
7. Is EZA really a good way for ranking for long tail keywords?….
8. EZA is not the only show in town…other sites that can help you build your funnels…

If you are into bum marketing or article marketing, then you probably know that this form of marketing is probably the cheapest and easiest form of marketing, entry point-wise, to get into.  And because of this, it is typically one of the first strategies that most new internet marketers will attempt to make money online.

The premise is simple…..write articles until your hand is blue and hope that the targeted traffic will wind up moving from the article itself to your landing page.  Most fail.  The smart ones figure out what to target….

….which brings me to this post….

EzineArticles and Bum Marketing Overview

Before I go into my results (which may surprise you), I should go into the criteria that I followed to find the articles that actually are getting decent pageviews from the search engines.

It is probably no secret to most that the reason why ezinearticles is such a good tool for internet marketers is that they give you some analytics to each and every article.  These aren’t the hard core metrics that can be life changing but what you get is a little window in which you can see what articles are doing the best in the last 90 days.  It also gives a great indication into exactly how fast they can rise in the ranks and how trustworthy Google deems the article directory to be….

First, here is the proof of how powerful a well worded, well formatted (for the search engines) article can be for the bum marketer….

This smallish 250 word article has gotten over 1,000 page views in less than 2 and a half months. The reason for this is simple…google has it listed among a myriad of search queries on the internet….

• Send Mass Email Outlook- #6 out of 290,000 results…
• Outlook Express Bulk Mail- #9 out of 350,000 results…
• Send Mass Emails- #3 out of 44,ooo,ooo results….
• Send Mass Email using Outlook- #6 out of 2,420,000 results…

…you get the picture.  The article itself probably took the writer 10-15 minutes to write and in less than 3 months, his article has been viewed over 1,000 times.  Now, imagine if he had 100…200…1,000 other articles out there that produced the same results…

The Problem with Ezine Articles and other Article Directories

The problem that most marketers face is that in order to really get the most bang for your buck, you need to create a killer resource box that will get them to click to your site.  EzineArticles doesn’t want them to leave the article through your bio box…they want the visitor to leave via the adsense on their site.

So, let’s take a look at the possibilities with this article:

• Viewed 1,000 times
• Let’s suppose a very conservative click through rate of 10% (I have had CTR’s as high as 35% on some of my articles)….
• That is 100 new visitors to your site from an article that took probably 10-15 minutes to make.

I should point out that I seriously doubt that the original author got a lot of mileage out of this article because his bio box is set up all wrong….The outgoing link isn’t anchored for a keyword but a URL……there isn’t a strong call to action…….once the visitor reaches the landing page, it has very little to do with the search term at all…..So I would guess that while this article did very well in terms of page views, chances are the ROI wasn’t that great.

There are hundreds of articles on ezine articles that rank for something in the long tail fashion and are probably getting more views on a per page basis than most blogs and websites get, even if the article is a carefully well thought out essay in which the author/publisher/blogger spent hours coming up with.

Can a brand new website/blog be able to rank for the same keywords ahead of EZA within the same amount of time?

What this tells me is that there are plenty of long tails that you should be able to rank for rather quickly without the help of ezine articles, right?  And if you were able to rank for these long tails, how hard would it be to simply snipe other ezine articles and outrank them quickly, all the while gobbling up the traffic that could come from your copy-cats?

Now imagine what you could do if you could grab the same long tails that are getting proven traffic for your site?  Theoretically, you could simply base your articles on the results of the most popular ezine articles, traffic wise and clean house.

Well, that is the question I posed for my case study….

What Criteria I used….

• Since, this website/blog is very new, I thought that this would be a perfect platform to use.  I have owned this domain now for a couple years but up until 3 months ago, I hardly ever used it, other than to use the domain for ebooks or videos I was selling.  In other words, the domain was somewhat aged but not aged to the point where it would have any kind of authority….
• I also chose a static website format (like ezine articles) BUT one that still had the capabilities of me using RSS feeds.  This would give me the chance to spread the articles easily and get them indexed fairly fast.
• I also SEO’d the page itself…much like my competing ezine article page….
• The website itself would be silo’d out…in other words, any articles I wrote could easily go into their respective niche, making that section of the site highly relevant…(more so than ezine articles, even).  I did this because it has been my experience that the more relevant a “sub-site” is, the greater the chance that Google would deem the page, itself as relevant.
• I would give myself 2 months to rank for it…I have seen results from EZA as quick as a couple days but I figured that I would probably need to give a new site the chance to get indexed and for Google to figure out where in the search results to place me.

The metric I used for this test wasn’t traffic but search engine results in my datacenter.  The keyword I chose was Article Marketing Secrets, a keyword that has a decent amount of competition (1 million +) and one that has an ezine article ranking 4th.

My linking strategy

Since I knew that most articles on EZA weren’t linked to too often (let’s face it, most of the “published” articles are on low rent sites), that a simple linking campaign should be able to move a page easily up the search engine rankings.

• I used a couple “link brokering” services to drop a few links to my page.  These were sites that were high in page rank (although nothing more than link farm networks)
• I also used bookmarking demon and added the link to several social bookmarking sites and scuttle sites (very little in link juice but it is automated and easy).
• I should add that I didn’t use any article directories or guest posts.  I didn’t use any comment marketing because the point wasn’t to get views via overt promotion but to get the page ranked.

My Results

Like I said, I expected to get ranked fairly quickly for this.  I reasoned that since EZA could effectively get ranked in less than 2 months for article marketing secrets, why shouldn’t I?

Within the first couple weeks, my article (which is not something I am particularly proud of…it was meant more as a test than anything else) vaulted past over a million competing pages and landed on page 4 (#35). 

This was done without any kind of external linking (although I did some internal linking to help it rank).  

I quickly moved to phase 2 and aggressively hit the bookmarking sites with bookmarking demon.  I also added an RSS feed and started submitting it to the RSS directories.

….it moved to #30….this was all within the one month timeframe.

My next step was to add a few links across my link membership sites, such as linkvana and a couple others that have proven to work well in the past….

It was at this point, that my site fell off the google landscape.  In fact, this particular page is not ranking within the first 1,000 pages.  

What happened?  

Was I too aggressive with getting too many links in an effort to rank?  Maybe, although I would have to say that other parts of my site aren’t getting the same treatment in spite of more links on some pages.

Was it a case of getting the wrong kinds of links?  Once again, maybe.  Since I was using scuttle sites as part of my link building (something that a lot of black hat marketers use because it is easy and can be automated), google could have diluted the results.  Although they say that your site can’t be hurt by incoming links, I have a sneaky suspicion that this is not exactly true.

Was it a case of my site being too new, with no authority?  Unlike ezine articles, my site is hardly a juggernaut for article marketing.  It is too new and has no authority.  This is despite the fact that my page had more links coming in.

Was it a case where my page (which was hardly filled with anything remotely original)…it was original in the search engines eyes but could have been deemed as similar to the thousands of other pages out there….

Three months have passed and I still am not anywhere to be found for the this keyword…a keyword that,incidentally, should not have been that hard to rank for in the grand scheme of things.

So, what could YOU Learn from this study?

I want to be clear here.  Will this page eventually rank for “article marketing secrets?”  Maybe.  If you throw enough back links at any long tail keyword, chances are good that you will eventually rank for it.  But I wanted to see if I could rank in google just as quickly as EZA…in other words, could a page from a new site outrank the heavyweight of the article directories?

Now had I decided to really gun for this keyword whole heartedly, I probably would have done some things differently and may have gained some traction….  I would have based an entire site for the keyword.  But, I knew that the keyword itself wasn’t really worth the small amount of traffic that it may have brought in to devote an entire site for the keyword….besides, I wanted to see if I could use this to build an authority site (knowing the page view numbers for keywords takes the guess work out of how much potential there is, traffic wise)…

• The actual keyword would have been the domain or would have been as close of a match as possible. 
• I would have keyword sniped the keyword, Article Marketing Secrets, built a few pages around it with a proper internal link structure.
• I would have also slowly built external links around it, mostly from the “freebie” directories, adding a page or two a month to keep the content fresh….  

Using this method, I would have most likely ranked within a couple months (although beating ezine articles would have been a stretch in that time frame.)

But what if you are building an authority site in which long tails are pages, not whole domains?  How would you go about doing it?

One of the things that I clearly underestimated in relation to ezine articles is that they interlink their most popular articles together from within their network.  I knew that internal link structure carries a bit of weight in terms of site structure and combine this with the fact that EZA is trusted by google (and this site isn’t yet proven), then you have to think that their internal links carry much more power than my rather feeble attempt of connecting the dots with this site.

The best articles (ones with the most traffic) get more internal link love from EZA, making it very difficult for a new website or blog (like mine) to outrank the article or even get close…

Another thing that I noticed is that, unlike what some people say, just because you get more links doesn’t neccessarily mean that you will outrank a site….there is much, much more to this equation.  For instance, the age of the domain has a lot to do with proving that you are worthy of getting ranked.

Does PageRank have anything to do with this?  Given the fact that a site like EZA has a pretty established PR, you have to think that some of that weight passes easily to their inner pages.  Also, given the fact that this article directory will display the newest article links on their front page, you would have to think that the article in question would get a temporary boost as well…..

I can say I have a new found respect in EZA’s trust rank among Google…something that I have known but didn’t understand to this degree until I tested it.  But still, this leaves me thinking, what other option would I have if I was trying to rank for this keyword (or any internet marketing related keyword?)  Well, to put it like so many article marketers (and affiliate marketers) would, it is all about building those social funnels….

What YOU should take away from this article….

Given the fact that I don’t mess with niche sites as much anymore (although I recently ran into some information that has renewed my interest in them), what internet marketing strategies could I employ to increase my overall visibility in the search engines?

After all, if I can’t rank my site quickly for terms like “article marketing secrets” or “send bulk mass email using outlook”, what would be the next best way?

If you can’t beat them, join them…

The answer is to do what SUCCESSFUL affiliate marketers and bum marketers do….find axillary web properties (such as web 2.0 properties) that already have trust and authority rank in google and use them as funnels to your landing page or website.

Trust and Authority of your Site on Google (or someone else’s site that you contribute to) will always trump a new site no matter how “authoritative” or “revolutionary” your article may be….

It should be no surprise that you could write a crap article that has been optimized with a keyword on EZA and expect to rank for it much easier coming out of the gate than trying to rank for it on a site that doesn’t carry the same authority or trust.  

It should also be no surprise that if you have had any experience with other web 2.0 platforms that google likes, that they too will trump a new site….

Alternatively, I could have written an opus on article marketing and although it may be eventually lifted up in the search engines through WOM (word of mouth) marketing or through a link building campaign, the chances are great that the results wouldn’t come near as quick.

Is Ezine Articles a good Strategy for getting ranked for long tail keywords?….

Obviously, the answer is yes.  If you use article directories such as EZA wisely, you can easily funnel a ton of long tail traffic  to your site quickly.  This includes using popular modifiers that searchers will use in their searches (free, best, ect.)  And the reality is that until a website gains the trust and authority rank of google, they will find that the climb to the top to be much slower than using another site as a ladder to getting ranked quickly.

Ezine Articles isn’t the only show in town though…

I understand that this is really just a case study on the “ezine article effect”, but really….ezine article isn’t the only way to getting ranked for a keyword.  And article marketing on other directories isn’t the only path to getting ranked in Google either.  In fact, I have found that other web 2.0 properties will perform better sometimes than the article directories themselves.  

The trick is to find these types of sites…..

Find web 2.0 properties that google favors right now and create a mini-net that will funnel visitors from that site to your site using a strong call-to-action.

Sites like Wetpaint, YouTube, Bumpzee, Feedage, Scrib’d, and hubpages can be great ways to create funnels of traffic (pretty much the same thing that article marketers do when using article directories) AND may actually be easier to create, given the fact that you won’t have to pass through moderation in most cases….

If you closely monitor things such as product launches, you will find different web2.0 properties that google deems as authoritive and will rank accordingly.  In other words, main stays like propeller (like digg) and feedage (rss directory that manages to find its way on google’s front page), have all been excellent ways for marketers to funnel traffic through to your main site.  In fact, these types of sites will outrank a new site 9 times out of ten for long tail keywords because of the authority and trust that Google gives them.  And every week, there is another web platform that starts to gain trust and authority that a marketer could use to funnel traffic through.

Anyway, I guess you could say that the ezine article case study was a failure since I didn’t manage to rank quickly with my own website.  However, on the upside, it did help remind me of some other ways to get ranked using web 2.0 properties.

What do you think?  

How do you use article marketing?  

Have you had success using popular web 2.0 properties to funnel traffic to your site?

Subscribe in a reader