Article Marketing

[lucysdoghouse]

Have any of you used Article Marketing with good results? I am just starting out with it so I am not sure how it is going to pan out. I have been hanging out with a bunch of affiliate marketers and a lot of them swear by it.

An unintended consequence for me is that I found that I like writing and researching again. Who knew??

[Cactus_AudreyK]

One of the benefits of Article Marketing/Writing is that you end up creating relative content for your website as well, which can offer your consumers more information, offer you the opportunity to link within your research to products within your store (generating sales), and also improve your search engine standings.

It also gives you an opportunity to send an email blast to your customers that has that relevant content inside it, where you can link back to your site within the article itself, and possibly offer a special.

All in all, it's a win/win situation - your customers get educated, your business benefits and it's an extra bonus that it's something that you enjoy writing and researching... What's that old saying? Do what you love, the money will follow!

Edited to add this link: Article marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[lucysdoghouse]

Audrey,

Thanks for the link. Your comments are very helpful as usual.

All my best,

Hans

[cperry]

Hi Hans
Yes - we have done this. We did a combination of researching and writing our own content as well as some "for hire" content. One of the avenues we used was a writers forum called Constant Content - Website Content, Order Articles that you can pay for full rights of certain articles and use them as 100% as your own and/or commission writers to write on a subject for your site. They are then yours and only yours - unique to your site. We thought it helped immensely.

One thing - I guess that is comes with the territory - is that people do rip off the articles from our site for their blogs etc and call them their own - but not much you can do about that without spending a ton of time hunting them down and having them removed. Guess it goes back to the saying that we are doing things right if ppl want to copy

Carol

[cactus_donnat]

I agree that writing creative, relevant articles can definitely help not only with SEO, but also to increase conversions (as Audrey mentioned, linking to product pages)... as a bonus, you can also build confidence with your customers by appearing as an expert in your field.

But how do you find the time to write all this content? If you don't have time yourself or an employee to write the content, there are several ways to get that content... I actually used to do a lot of freelance content and article writing for e-commerce sites- I used elance.com to connect with business owners needing writers-- also, Craig's List is a great place to fine a quality, local writer. (use the Gigs area, not Jobs) Most writers will charge by the article and/or word count. Going to a local college newspaper or writing center or English department may be a good place to find talented writers-for-hire for your short-term article writing project.

And, don't forget that SC offers SEO services too!

[lucysdoghouse]

I have tried out a bunch of different ghost writers. I am okay at writing but only so much. Some of the writers do it very cheap but I am concerned if the content is truly original or just lifted from another article or website. I had one that was just lifting huge paragraphs from wikipedia. Needless to say they will never get my buisness again.

I will try the craig's list idea. I am looking for reasons to post on craig's list anyway.

All the best,

Hans

[lucysdoghouse]

Carol,

I am not too worried about this as there is only so much that you can do about it. As long as I get my benefit from it, I guess everything will be okay.

All the best,

Hans

[cactus_donnat]

Originally Posted by lucysdoghouse

Carol,

I am not too worried about this as there is only so much that you can do about it. As long as I get my benefit from it, I guess everything will be okay.

All the best,

Hans

The only thing to keep in mind is that duplicate content can hurt SEO- so every now and then doing "a patrol" on your unique content would be good just to make sure others aren't using it. There are a few sites that allow you to do that... you can try Article Checker | Free Plagiarism Checker. This is also a great tool if you suspect a freelance writer you hired lifted from Wikipedia or another site.

Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search - Web Site Content Copyright Protection also will allow you to search any URL to see if it has been duplicated elsewhere.

[cperry]

Cool - will check out those links. I used copyscape at one point and it sent me SO much stuff to filter thru - not worth it - it would pull up anything that had more than 2-3 words and was overwhelming.....I will take another peek and let you know....

[lucysdoghouse]

Well it has been a little while since I posted about article marketing. I have submitted about 20 articles so far and it having a good affect on my overall marketing efforts.

I am definately a believer that it works, plus the price is right.

Google and the other search engines have started to pick up the links inbound to my site, no impact at google yet but I have experienced a pretty positive move at yahoo and msn, I would assume partly because of the article marketing.

I have experienced a pretty nice upsurge in traffic directly from the articles on the directories. They are being picked up by folks and placed on blogs and other places and traffic is coming from those places.

I was worried that it all a bunch of hype. So I guess that is the reason for the post.