The Only Article Marketing Guide You Will Ever Need

If I write this “right”, this should be the only guide on article marketing you will ever need. In this, I will discuss the what’s and why’s of article marketing and show you what the “big” players in this internet marketing field do to make the kinds of money they claim to make. So, let’s jump right in. And for those of you who aren’t beginners, you can simply scroll down until you find the place where you are at….

What is article marketing?

First of all, before you understand how to make money with article marketing, you need to know what you are getting yourself into. The premise is simple. You write articles and post them in article directories. They, in turn, give you a spot, normally at the bottom of the article where you can place your link and drive traffic to where ever it is you are wanting to drive traffic to.

However, it is a trade off. You are giving the article directory what it wants (fresh content that they can monetize and hopefully make money). The article directory is giving you what you want (a backlink that will either help your site rank for your keyword or funnel traffic to your site OR both.)

Additionally because most article directories operate under Creative Commons, others can take your article and publish it on their site giving you more backlinks and more exposure. Pretty Cool, right?

But does it work out like that?

For the Backlink or for the Exposure?

So, you write an article (your opus), submit it ezine articles and then you get a wave of traffic, people are publishing your stuff all over the place and your website is climbing the charts. Here is the reality….

Most of the sites publishing your article won’t be “authoritative” enough for the link to really matter….so writing to get your article syndicated out “there” is not a good marketing strategy in and of itself. It worked 8 years ago. It doesn’t work now….

Google discounts article directory links because it is one of those places where anyone can get one. Several years ago, if you wanted to rank for a competitive term, you could blast the article directories and get ranked fairly quickly. These days, that is different. And although many people still profess that spinning content and automatically submitting it to the hundreds of directories out there will do something, understand that the links are of low quality in most cases and you would be basically building volumes of links that don’t matter when you could find just a few links that do. So, all in all, using article directories to boost rankings for YOUR site isn’t a good marketing strategy either.

So what is article marketing good for?

Two words…creating traffic funnels. Let me explain…..

You see, many article directories have built up a trust factor with Google. Now, I am not going to explain this here (if you want to know what this is, you can check out my SEO Guide for Marketers) but what you need to know is that certain article directories rank relatively easy for long tail keywords. What this means for you is that if you are attacking a market, you can literally inundate your market with articles that rank and get traffic to the article and (hopefully) then funnel from your article to your website.

Makes sense, right?

So, let’s pretend that you are in the Kombucha Market (which is a tea tonic that is supposed to boost your immune system). You do a little keyword research and find the conversations with some traffic and very little competition. You write a little article focusing in on the keyword (optimizing the article for that keyword) and as a result, your article ranks on the front page for it which in turn get you traffic to your article.

There are many article directories that will rank outright for the keyword without any “nudging” (which I will explain later). Others will require a little prodding to push it up the search engine rankings. And make no bones about it. All things considered equal, an article on ezine articles will rank quicker and better than an article you write on your brand spanking new website…initially at first.

The professional article marketers know this. So, what do they do? They spit out article after article in their market and basically change a little here and a little there. There may be only so many ways you can something but I have to hand it to these article marketers; They are persistent and creative.

As a result, they rank for a ton of long tails keywords in their market and get a smattering of traffic here and there. Some hit paydirt. The reason for the high volumes of articles is because you never know what google is going to rank and what they are going to rank you for coming out of the gate….

In other words, you may write one article that has 10,000 visits a month while 50 other articles get 0. It can really be that hit and miss.

So, how many articles do you need to write to make money?

This depends. I see in internet marketing forums all the time cases that are so polarized, you would wonder who is lying and who is telling the truth. For instance, I have seen posts in which people complain that after 6 months and 100 articles later, they still aren’t making any money. Alternatively, I have seen marketers make a decent part time income almost immediately with fewer articles…

The bottom line is that the more traffic your articles get, the more chances you have for conversion.

Traffic funnels are the only reason why you should be writing articles…

This is part of the reason why you hear many people tell you that you need to write volumes of articles. The more articles you write, the greater the chance that you will get a lot of traffic. In most cases, the traffic is collective though.

Just to use an example:

These articles were written for me to test the market (sorry I couldn’t show you the niche) about 4 months ago. In this short 4 month timespan, they have accumulated a little over 5,000 article views. If I were to target this niche fully via article marketing, I would have written 20-100 more articles. As you can imagine, the more articles I write, provided that I target the keywords correctly could net me 20,000+ article views, provided that the market has that many “eyes”.

By the way, these examples aren’t meant to “impress” anyone. They are, by all standards, average.

Here is another example:

Another article campaign…different niche. This time, this campaign was a 10 article campaign written roughly 6 months ago once again to test the market’s viability. Notice the huge differences in traffic from article to another. This isn’t an anomaly and is probably why you hear so many marketers get such polarized results. One article could account for 50%+ of your traffic.

Just like building or writing for your own website, the more content you have out there, the more potential traffic volume you get.

In other words, the takeaway from this is that generating traffic via article marketing has a cumulative effect. If you write 100 articles, you will get a little traffic; if you write 1,000 articles, you will get far more. Once again, the best way to do this is to do it smart though (which I will cover in my article marketing strategies section of this guide).

Article Marketing is more than just about traffic…..you need a good click through rate to make it worth your time….

However, getting the traffic is just the first step for the article marketer. The next is converting the searcher and getting them to do what you want them to do….clicking the link in your bio box.

Conversion or Click-through strategies should be important no matter whether the website is one you own yourself or, in the case of an article you wrote for a directory, the website is owned by someone else. However, it is especially important when you are dealing with an article directory as a traffic funnel.

The reason?

Article directories aren’t really out for you best interests. They place big block clickable ads at the top of the page, giving the visitor the option to “click off”. In some cases, they use ad services like Kontera which actually places ads embedded in the text of the article, giving a visitor more options to click somewhere else other than your links in the bio box.

In addition to this, with the exception of a few article directories, your “bio box”, where you are allowed to place links, is usually below the fold, diminishing the chances of the visitor clicking your link. This isn’t an accident, by the way. Considering the fact that most visitors will spend an average of 4-7 seconds on a page, chances are good that they are either going to click the first, most relevant link that they see or they are going to hit the back button.

Make no bones about it, article directories want the visitor to click the ad, not your link. The hurdles they put in front of the average article marketer are designed to where your link get clicked less.

Marketers call these points, exit points by the way. On a regular web page that you own yourself, you will typically place the exit points above the fold, directly in the face of the visitor. The visitor usually will elect to either read the article, click the exit point you have for them, or hit the back button.

So, how do you battle this?

Traditional article marketers will tell you to brand yourself. A normal bio box will look a lot like…well, like a short biography that will give you credibility. In my experience, usually the best bio box has a very strong call to action that is the most relevant to your targeted visitor. Makes sense in a very general way, right?

The right visitor that is responsive + The right call to action = a high click through rate….

What you can expect on a click through rate…..

While there aren’t any definitive numbers to support this average, I will say that, in most cases, you can expect a CTR percentage in the range of 10%-30%, depending on the niche or market and how well you have managed to pique the interest of the visitor. In some cases, it is lower (which could indicate an unresponsive market)….in some cases, it can be much higher (I have had articles that have averages that are close to 50%).

While there are some things tweaking that can be done to improve your CTR, your click through rate will be determined by your skills as a writer/copywriter and the actual market or niches responsiveness.

All this said, your focus shouldn’t be on making money initially. Your focus should be on finding keywords that you can rank for and the action (in this case, your click through rate) that the person takes. In other words, you have to learn the rules of the game before you play. And article marketing has some skill sets that you will need to hone and hopefully master….

Proper keyword research = more chances at traffic to the ARTICLE PAGE

The more people who do the thing you want them to do (click on your link) = the greater chance of accomplishing your goal.

The reality is that your article marketing success will hinge on a few factors:

• How much traffic your article gets via organic search- This is important because if the traffic is coming directly from the article directory itself, chances are it is nothing more than another marketer researching your niche….organic traffic is traffic looking for a solution to whatever problem they are having. You need targeted traffic looking for a solution to a problem for your article to be effective. In other words, social traffic from StumbleUpon, Digg, random “tweets” ect. won’t be an effective strategy for article marketing. (although I do have an interesting slant on this…more on THAT later….)
• How well you have composed the article and the bio box- Traffic to the article is nice but all is for naught if the visitor isn’t moving along in the link funnel to your website, right? A strong call to action coupled with how well you formulated your article could be the difference between a click through rate of 5% and a CTR of 25%. Remember, the article directories DON’T want the traffic to travel to your link….they won’t make any money from it.
• The type of person coming from the “conversation” or keywordIn short, the market has to be willing to buy and the conversation driving the market has to be in a buying mood as well. Note: When I say “buy” I don’t necessarily mean actual selling. “Buying” is simply a generic metric for getting the visitor to do what you want them to do.
• How “convincing” your website is and how good you are at prodding the visitor into doing what you want them to do- You can get all the traffic in the world but if your market isn’t prime for whatever you are hoping them to do, then you can hang it up. This is actually the final step and sometimes the article marketer will send this directly to the sales page (through a redirect) or will take them to their website for additional information. Regardless of what you do, testing and tracking is very important to see what you are doing right from the near “misses”.

Keyword Research and more importantly understanding your market and the long tail conversations is VERY important in the article marketers world….

I think that the place where most new article marketers go wrong is not understanding the importance of keyword research. There are ways to cheat the process (which I will explain once we get into the strategies section) but all in all, if you don’t “drill” down in keywords far enough, you will wind up with a ton of articles that get little to no views.

Articles with little to no views = Time Wasted…..something that no article writer wants.

This process is hit and miss thanks largely to Google and ultimately they decide if your article is relevant enough to place on the front page of search engines though. However, if you know your market and can drill down deep in conversations, you will be able to pretty quickly “own” a spot at the top of the SERPS.

How Long Should My Articles Be?

There is a lot of discussion about how long your articles are. My articles with the highest click through rate are as short as possible with a strong call to action. The reason for this is because most searchers will arrive on the article and leave very quickly, either by clicking the “back” button or clicking a link.

People follow links. They are more likely to follow a link if the question they are asking is not answered. The majority of searchers are more likely to follow the first link they find. In geek speak, this means keeping the link “above the fold“. Most article directories won’t afford you this opportunity because it is the trade-off.

Article directories are hoping that they click a link (the contextual ad kind like adsense) and it is very likely that they will…..or more likely that they will click an adsense ad than your link going to your site. This is because the adsense ads are above the fold while YOUR link is typically below the fold.

Your article should be long enough to get its point across but short enough for the person to not lose interest. Ideally, you would want your link to be above the fold as well. We will discuss how to do this in the article marketing strategies part of this guide.

So, how do you “pick” the right keywords that will get you ranked? It is all about Article Marketing Strategies…..

In the next article, I am going to show you what some of the best and brightest minds are doing to make money with article marketing. But I have to warn you…some of these aren’t so nice.

Next Article- Article Marketing Strategies