Article Marketing And A Basic Introduction To SEO Link Profiles

There are a lot of ways to promote a business or a website online. Article marketing is one of the more popular, and can prove an extremely fruitful experience under the right circumstances. A well written article submitted to relevant, popular directories can drive traffic directly to your site and improve your search engine ranking. With literally hundreds of article directories and article submission sites, there are more challenges than creating a marketable and linkable article, though.

What Is Article Marketing?

Essentially, article marketing means providing an article that you have written to other websites. They include this article on a page of their own site, and include links that direct to your own pages. These links are usually included in an Author Bio or About The Author paragraph at the end of the text.

What's In It For You?

When surfers visit these other sites and read the article you have provided, they will also read that the article was created by you. They also have the opportunity to click on the link and visit your site. If they enjoyed the article and it was relevant to them then there is a very reasonable chance they will click the link.

High Quality Content

Part of the challenge in article marketing is obviously the writing of the article. Not only should the article appeal to your potential visitors but it must also appeal to the Webmasters and website owners that you are attempting to attract. While the primary reason for the article, from your viewpoint, is to promote your website you must make it appealing for site owners.

Marketable Articles

Webmasters and website owners look for articles that offer value to their visitors. The article you write should not be filled with blatant self promotion. Any self promotional aspects should be left for the appropriate paragraph at the end. However, it is important that the topic is relevant to your site. Otherwise your article will be picked up and used by other sites but it will either attract no clicks or the visitors that do navigate to your site will not be interested in looking around. And, they almost certainly won't be interested in purchasing your service or product.

About The Author

The link itself, or in some cases two links, should be placed in the About The Author paragraph as we've already mentioned. Wherever possible, include properly formatted HTML links with keywords in the anchor text of the link. This will help build a powerful link profile in order to improve your search engine ranking.

Choosing Directories To Submit Your Article

Another important facet of article marketing is picking the right article directories. There are literally hundreds of directories available, some geared towards niche topics, others categorized for any topic. Submitting to this many directories is counter productive in some respects, and selecting the most appropriate directories with the highest levels of traffic is usually the best bet.

Avoiding Automated Submission Software And Services

There are submission services available that will submit your article to a number of directories. If you choose to use this kind of service, first ensure that the submission is not automated. Many directories frown on this activity and may ban your account and refuse to publish your articles if you are discovered.

Link Profile Introduction

We've mentioned link profiles two or three times so far in this article, but what exactly is a link profile? It is literally a profile of the number and quality of links pointing to your site. Search engines use this profile to determine how popular, and by assumption useful, your web pages are. A link, if you like, counts as a vote of confidence towards your page.

Good Links

As with many things, though, not all links are created equal. A link from a page that is itself deemed to be higher quality will have a greater impact on your profile. It will also, therefore, improve your ranking more significantly than a brand new page on a brand new site, that has yet to establish itself as a useful indicator.

The Select Few

Article marketing provides a simple but effective method of driving traffic to your site and building a good link profile. The actual effectiveness of using a single article and submitting to hundreds of directories is somewhat diminished, certainly with Google. They do not take into account all of the pages that include your content instead taking a small sub-section (possibly only one of the pages).

A Staged Link Building Campaign

Initially, though, submitting quality articles to directories can help to build a good basis for a link profile. After time, when your site naturally gains higher rankings, you may wish to submit unique articles to more popular, individual websites. This will help to generate links that are individually more powerful.

Article Marketing And Your Link Profile

Links are a major part of SEO and article marketing provides a good basis for building these links. Writing quality content and submitting to good quality directories can lead to increased traffic and search engine rankings. However, it is best not to get carried away submitting to hundreds of directories and you should always avoid the temptation (and it is a temptation) of using automated submission software.

Matt Jackson is webmaster and copywriter for WebWiseWords, creating compelling website content and provides article writing for distribution as well as other new media content.