Any SEO professional worth their salt knows that getting quality links is the key to increasing search engine ranking page (SERP) positions, as well as traffic. There are many different strategies to use, but article marketing has to be one of the best. If you’re looking to achieve all your goals in a quick and relatively easy way, read on.
The first thing we need to do is define what a ‘quality link’ is. There are several different elements to consider, and these can be found using free online tools like Open Site Explorer. Arguably the most important part of a link is the relevance- Google gives more ‘power’ to links that are similar to the website you’re promoting. For instance if you have a site about cars, get car related links! After this, you should check out vital stats such as the domain and page authority, the number of backlinks (more=better), where these are coming from, and what percentage are ‘dofollow’.
So once you’ve done the hard work of finding good websites that you want a link on, contacting webmasters via direct emails, forums or even on the phone is what’s next. What you need to know here is that the better the site, the more likely it is that some amount of money will be involved. While you might get very lucky and find a few for free, the fact is that most webmasters will want some compensation if their sites are of a good authority. If you’re working with a limited amount or, indeed, no money at all, find sites with lower stats.
A good idea is to find a variety of different sites which can range from blogs to article directories. Obviously you should already have a link building strategy in place with regards to which anchor texts you target, so put your ‘golden’ ones in the best places, and maybe go for brand or URL related anchors on directories or sites with lower scores. Think about it before hand so you don’t waste any time, money or effort!
Why should you focus on writing articles then? It’s quite simple really- you want any link to look as natural as possible to Google, and having a link included in a relevant article on a relevant site will be so much better than anything else. Yes, you do have to put in some work to ensure that the content is of a high quality and totally unique, but you’ll certainly reap the rewards later on. Think about it- 10 well written posts on good quality websites will be so much more powerful than 10 blogroll or footer links which look awful. Be natural!
Some tips for writing a good article are:
- Produce the text first and slot the link in afterwards
- Don’t overuse the keyword you’re trying to target
- Don’t put keywords in capital letters
- Check for good spelling, punctuation and grammar
- Ensure the article makes sense, is informative and excites the reader
The subject of duplicate content is an essential one to touch on these days, because if you copy anything that’s already indexed in Google, you will get punished. It’s perfectly acceptable to read other articles to get ideas, but don’t reproduce them exactly. Just like at school or university, it has to be your own work! Not only has the recent Panda update cracked down on this, but copying someone else’s article and putting your link in there will be a waste of time as it will be devalued massively.
Aside from the obvious benefit of gaining a back link for your own website, the other plus point of producing a good quality article and having it featured on a relevant website is that it’ll get indexed and then start to draw in traffic. While most of the visitors will inevitably end up looking on the host website itself, a good proportion will click on your included link. This is a good thing, right?
To sum up then, article marketing is a fantastic strategy that you should use more than anything else. Affecting both SERP rankings directly and also assisting with traffic generation, it’s the best way to achieve your goals.
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Posted in: Internet
