Article Marketing Improve Search Engine Rankings
March 20, 2009 by Michael Fleischner
Filed under SEO
Have you heard about article marketing? The concept of article marketing has really gained momentum during the last few years. As webmasters learned more about SEO and the drivers of search engine rankings, quality content has risen to the top.
If you have yet to jump on the article marketing bandwagon, then I suggest that you get started right away. Article marketing is here to stay. So you do not have to be all that concerned that others are using article marketing as well. In fact, article marketing works no matter how many people use it.
Article marketing is effective because you search engines love quality content. Moreover, you are producing content that will be ranked by search engines and including a link back to your website. Content focused around specific keywords is identified by search engines to display when users search on a particular niche or topic of interest. When your article includes links back to your website, you pass value back to your site.
When you post your article on article directory websites, your content receives additional exposure and is added to related content. As your article ages you benefit from the Google page rank assigned to your article. If you included article back to your website, the value is passed back to your website.
One error I see made all too often is when individuals, new to article marketing, is that they forget to include a link back to their website or simply link in the wrong way. The proper way to develop in bound links is with keyword rich link text. What this means is that your link is displayed with your keyword not the traditional http.
If not sure about the best method to produce a keyword rich link, search Google for a tutorial or simply the html code you need to produce a link in the right way. There are many websites that can provide instructions for creating links that display your keywords in the link text. This is essential if you are going to get the full value of article marketing.
After writing your articles and including links using the proper format, the next step is to distribute them on sites that have a high Google PR and are popular for article aggregation and or distribution. I used to believe that the benefit of these article distribution sites were that they served as a resource for webmasters seeking content. The truth however is that it is the sites Google PR itself that provides the value.
A lot of article websites do not distribute content to any great extent. The number of webmasters who copy content and paste it into their website or blog in the right way is limited. You can improve your article marketing success by focusing on top article directories.
Create your articles and design them properly. Include links to your website in the author box. You can also try including links in the flow of text but this is sometimes not allowed by article websites. Keep in mind that your links should use keywords in the anchor text. Before you submit your articles, test all of your links to make sure they work properly. Then, you are off and running.
