How I Use Articles To Get More Backlinks And Visibility
I wrote this article a while ago to demonstrate the power of article marketing as a way of getting backlinks and visibility online.
I usually encourage our clients to provide me with articles 300 to 500 words in length, at least once a month (more often is better). I use these articles to boost their PageRank and get them more visibility by submitting them to article directories.
6 Article Marketing Smarts- How To Get More Reprints And Exposure
Copyright © 2005 Priya Shah
Article marketing is the latest buzzword for marketers looking to promote their sites and products online. But how do you measure the success of your article marketing campaign?
It probably depends on what you expect your article to achieve for you - better branding, more sales, or more publicity.
One way to measure article performance is to check how many times your article has been picked up and reproduced on various sites.
To do that, just copy and paste the article title in quotes into a search engine like Google, and you’ll see how many sites it’s been reprinted on.
My article “How To Get To The Top Of The Marketing Food Chain” shows 1061 links in Google.
That means Google has indexed 1061 sites on which this article appears.
This gives me about 1061 quality links to each of the sites I included in my resource box.
As you can see, this makes article marketing a very powerful way of building quality links.
So how do you ensure that your article gets picked up and reprinted by as many publishers as possible?
1. Pick A Topic That’s Hot Or Always Fresh
For instance, my article on Neuromarketing got picked up pretty quickly because it was a hot topic.
The problem with hot topics is that they also tend to cool off quickly. So while they may get a lot of reprints over a short time, they may get very few reprints once the craze is over.
There are some articles that are slow starters but eternally fresh, like the one I wrote here.
To Be A Champion, Become A Child (591 links in Google)
These are the ones that will give you reprints over a longer period of time. I think in the long run, these are more valuable.
2. Target A Large Audience
Another way to get a lot of coverage is write an article for a large target audience or one that is very active online - like bloggers.
This one gave me 164 links back, mostly from other blogs, even some for which I had to use a translation service 
This shows 248 links back. 316 links for this one.
But again, it’s the quality of links back that matters - not the quantity.
Another large target audience is the health market. I get a lot of links back from my health articles.
3. Craft A Catchy, Relevant Title
A catchy title ensures that your article gets the attention of publishers - the first step to getting your article published.
Follow the basic rules of copywriting to make your article interesting and readable.
Publishers are more likely to pick up an article if its title includes the keywords that they (and you) want to target.
Use your main keywords in your title, preferable in the first half (like I did in the title of this article), to ensure better rankings for those who reprint it.
4. Offer Publishers A Monetary Incentive
Give people an incentive to publish your article. I have an affiliate program and I allow publishers to use their affiliate link for my ezine in the resource box.
Allow publishers to earn by publishing your article and they will gladly reprint it.
5. Write An Article Series
Break up a long article or report into a series of articles like I did with my “Marketing With Blogs” series here.
Marketing With Blogs - Part 1, 2, 3 and 4.
These gave me 5270 links back in all.
As you can see, a series of articles can be a very powerful link-building technique.
6. Distribute Your Article Widely
Ensure that your article is distributed to the best and most appropriate article directories and announcement lists online.
Feel free to browse through my own collection of article
directories and announcement lists.
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Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine optimization firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog. Visit Article Writing Tips for more article marketing tips and tools.
This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.
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September 23rd, 2005 at 5:20 pm
Dear Priya..
I always enjoy reading your insights, and this particular post about getting more backlinks from articles has inspired me to ask you a few questions.
I have only written a few articles, and agree with the premise that submitting articles about hot topics, in the short term, can be a good sprint..
However, the articles with universal themes, like health, wealth, and self-improvement will be more of a marathon, with an increasing amount of reprints spread throughout cyberspace.
With that being said, I wrote an article entitled “Forgive All Ebay Sins.” It is about applying good customer service to “bidders & buyers” who might make mistakes, and are unfamiliar with bid retracting. It also points out some of ill treatment that auction sellers heap upon their customers..
To the point..If you search in Yahoo and Google for “Forgive All Ebay Sins” you will find the following results..
Yahoo—Results 1 - 10 of about 19,200 for “forgive all ebay sins”
Google–Results 1 - 10 of about 490 for “forgive all ebay sins”.
This amount goes up, and then down, depending on how temperamental the SE’s are that day, and how many times the article gets picked up. The number in Yahoo (19,200) use to be 24,000. Why it went down I don’t
know but I would assume that some sites were “delisted” from their index.
Be that as it may, even though there is a fair about of sites carrying the article, the traffic to my Productsforresale.com site is not that impressive.
I will say that most of the traffic from that title is coming from the article banks that I submitted it to like Ezinearticles.com, Ideamarketers.com, etc. I have been told that my text link and my articles do not focus in on keyword phrases that will show up in search engine results.
I realize that hot topics, and specific phrases are the key to a successful article backlink campaign, but you can’t always write articles with a “keyword” only factor in mind. I think having a catchy title (as you mention) is just as important.
And I know that “Forgive All Ebay Sins” is not a well searched title, or phrase. I thought it was a catchy though. Maybe that is why is has received the most exposure and is carried by a lot of sites. The fact that is about Ebay, might also contribute to it’s appeal.
I was also under the impression that my signature file, with my textlink, and some of the keywords (wholesale, surplus, etc.) might help me show up in the SE’s..
Even an article I wrote “Wholesale Secrets Revealed: The Holy Grail Of Wholesale” that appears on over 600 websites between Yahoo, and Google, (which does carry the keyword phrases I know would rank) the results are the same. Matter of fact, this month, I think I got two people clicking to my site from that article.
I have noticed that the first 100 results that I get (for each article) from both search engines (Google & Yahoo) are listed with some pretty decent websites, and the article has everything in place (signature box with active link to my site). But then, it sort of goes down hill when you dig into the results.
A good amount of websites, while they do retain the signature file, and identify me as the author, have the link to my site in plain text and not as a live link. I wish I could go to all 600, or 19,000 results to see where all my articles are appearing.
Also, some are using the article as a “keyword” stuffing campaign for their landing pages. This is especially true of “Wholesale Secrets Revealed!” I wonder how many sites are carrying my sig file correctly!
Personal anecdotes aside, I guess my question is, what I am doing wrong, and what can I do to improve my traffic results? Why do I have the articles on so many sites, but receive so little traffic?
In addition, do software programs like Article Announcer really work? I can’t imagine that you can just send your article to every article bank or group with the touch of a button. Most article groups, and ezine publishers want you to register first. What paid submission services (if you have used any) have you used with success? Such as..
ArticleMarketer.com
http://www.articlemarketer.com
ThePhatomwriters.com
http://thephantomwriters.com/
Your thoughts and comments are appreciated..
Robert C. Potter
http://www.productsforresale.com
Robert@productsforresale.com
October 5th, 2005 at 6:26 am
Wow Robert, that was a long post
Ill try to answer what I can.
The main reason for your observation that the number of links fluctuate is because sites like EzineArticles.com syndicate articles with RSS feeds. Many publishers use these feeds on their sites, so your articles get a short burst of exposure there.
But as new articles are added to a feed, the old articles disappear, so the number of links will fluctuate. Not sure why Yahoo and Google vary so much in the number of links they display, but I suspect its because Yahoo displays more sites with duplicate content, while Google is trying to weed them out. The size of their index also differs, and that might be a factor.
About the live link in the sig file, I try to ensure this by adding a line about it in my resource box, but have stopped bothering to write to sites and remind them about it, since I measure exposure not just in terms of links back, but also the number of reprints and branding that it creates.
October 28th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
Priya!
Sorry about the long post, but I just wanted to make sure that I covered all my bases. Looks like I covered the field as well! (LOL!) Anyway, this post will not be as long! Your points about RSS feeds, and fluctuation makes sense.
I have also noticed that my articles have shown up on a more than a few spam sites. Yahoo eventually gets around to delisting them (spam sites) so that would explain the drop in links as well.
You are right about Google. They do filter pretty well, and I find that most of the links I am generating from the articles, are featured on better quality sites. Thanks again for your perspective!
Warmest Regards..
Robert C. Potter