It’s a good question – does article marketing work? If so how does it work and if not why do so many bloggers create fresh content every day? Article marketing used to be easier that is for sure. Now thousands of bloggers, website owners and affiliates are competing for the Google organic searches – the main reason people will write articles in the first place.
Reasons for writing articles
Presumably most people are looking for organic reach in the search engines to bring visitors to your site organically, for free, without having to pay for advertising. But why else would you create regular articles? One reason is to create site authority and again this comes back to organic reach. Google likes sites which regularly post new and unique content so it rewards them by posting them nearer the top of the search engine’s results.
Another reason is to create links to your own content which you can keyword target. Building an internal linking structure helps, again with organic results. For example look at this article how to increase organic traffic. This is now an internal link which points to a keyword targeted article, hopefully helping it rank on Google for the keyword. Again the reason is for organic reach.
Intent of article marketing
If the intent is to rank your articles and gain visitors through the search engines it can only work if it is done right. You can gain a top position on Google for a specific set of keywords when keyword targeting your articles. But you are only likely to rank, and therefore gain free traffic, if your articles are long tail. See this article on finding long tail keywords. The more specific the better but of course you will need a certain number of people who are looking for what you are targeting. Using your name in the article title will be easier to rank for than a very competitive keyword term like “forex marketing course” for example. But how many people are searching for your name every month? Not many unless you’re pretty famous – or have a famous name!
To rank for your articles title’s you need to choose long tail keywords which are not very competitive. To gain an authority with Google you need to be creating content regularly. Your site’s authority will again help you rank your articles but only to an extent. Remember who you are competing with – there’s a lot of other websites out there! The age of your site is another factor and its incoming links. Huge authority sites can churn out articles which will rank for any keyword because they have such a huge authority. Sites like bbc.co.uk and wikipedia.org are two such authorities.
So back to the question does article marketing work? The answer is yes but there is a lot of work involved and you will need to be blogging on a daily basis for a good few months before you can see any tangible results. Google takes time to index your site and then rank your articles. Your articles need to be unique content and you need to target low competition long tail keywords with them, otherwise they simply won’t rank. Your only chance to get them seen then, is through social media if you can’t get organic listings. Then you won’t get the ongoing traffic.
Target your market
Another point to mention is the content within your articles should be targeted towards your particular niche. If you are selling something on your site you need to make sure your articles are focused on your potential customers so think about what they may be searching for before you begin writing. It is no use getting the wrong people to your site just for numbers. See why is target market important.
Optimize for keywords
Use a SEO tool to help optimize your article for best results. I use one called WordPress SEO by Yoast. It’s free and you can use it with any wordpress site.
Article marketing is a good long term strategy to build up your organic visitors to your site. Keep doing it regularly and long enough and target specific (low competition long tail) keywords and you will get results. After a while you will get to a tipping point and your traffic will lift substantially. If your content is good people will link to it organically and share it too which will help you gain even more visitors.
If you have any comments please share below. If you are interested in building your own long term internet business see this link for access to a free video series explaining how.