Developing a Long Term Legitimate Article Marketing Strategy for SEO

[pjman]

All of my sites are aged and have good backlink profiles. Looking back the only thing I really neglected was Article Marketing. Because it use to just take too much time. With the open market now, it makes it much less time oriented, if you are willing to pay a few bucks.


All methods I have ever used for link building stand the test of time. I am not interested in anything that will disappear or be devalued over time. Here are the methods I have pondered:


1. I thought about Blog and Article distribution sites (Unique Article Wizard), but the links built in there would never stand the test of time. G will figure it out; they probably already did and devalue the links.



2. Spinning articles will eventually be a complete waste of time and end up devaluing your links as well. Finding that kind of footprint might take G time, but they will get it. Really you are just spamming your own content.


So this leaves me thinking about how I should approach article marketing as a long term link building solution. Should I just post quality article in article depots? Should I seek out guest blog spots?


Anybody have any other ideas that will stand the test of time when it comes to article marketing?


Any input you have is much appreciated.

[FamilyFrugal]

bumping this, I'd like to see an answer as well.

[bizwebstart]

I understand what you are saying but the thing about the Internet is that it is ever changing so in my opinion I would promote with what works now and not worry about the future.

It's a bit like buying a PC - you would never buy one if you kept waiting for the latest version of everything

Regards

[NicoleBeckett]

Originally Posted by pjman

Should I just post quality article in article depots? Should I seek out guest blog spots?

Both.

Article directories can help you build quality links. And, of course, the better your articles are, the higher chance they stand of getting picked up by other people (which gives you even more links).

Guest blogging gives you a link from a quality blog in your niche, and it gives you a chance to get out in front of highly-targeted traffic. After all, the blog's readers are already interested in your niche (if they weren't, they wouldn't be visiting the blog!). All you need to do is impress them with your guest post. If they like what they see, they'll head to your site to see what else you have to offer.

And yes, both techniques last the test of time. You never know when your article or guest post is going to be discovered by someone who then heads to your site and buys something. It's definitely possible to make sales off an article that you published months or even years ago.

[CcKilian]

Nicole is definitely right.... both is the way to go.

Keep in mind that you articles aren't only floating around out there for backlink purposes, but also help drive quality targeted traffic to your websites. Just make sure you're writing compelling content, with a call to action towards the end, so those people reading your article will click through to see what you're offering on your main website.

Remember, in terms of driving traffic through articles there is no harm whatsoever in terms of duplicate content. Getting your article out there and in front of as many readers as possible is what matters.

Cheers,
Carney

[dadamson]

Article marketing is definitely a great way to go to get quality permanent backlinks. I think spinning and mass submission is actually a great idea but is often approached completely wrong.

Mass submission doesn't just mean spinning one article over hundreds of directories, that is spam.

You can do this effectively and permenantly by creating lots of high quality articles and THOROUGHLY spinning them by paragraph and then subspinning each sentence, phrase and word.

This requires a lot of skill to get right and produce quality readable articles. But once you spend the time doing this, you can use a software to submit a few hundred versions to the best directories.

You should then repeat the process on another bunch of directories with more high quality and unique articles.

This results in thousands of high quality, unique content backlinks over time and good articles are often picked up by other webmasters so your links continually grow over time.

If you spend your time getting this right a lot of your articles will develop some PR over time, it has got to be the best future-orientated backlinking strategy around.

[pjman]

It's pretty obvious to everyone that G has found the Unique article wizard and SEO linkvine footprint and discounted those links. Most of those publisher sites are fly by night. So, this wouldn't be a long term viable strategy.

Wouldn't submitting your article to every single directory, just be the same thing?

My working concept is to write unique articles for each of the major hubs, maybe 5 articles for each site I am promoting and submitting them to the top 13 article directories:

ezinearticles.com
ehow.com No Follow
hubpages.com
squidoo.com
articlesbase.com No Folow
buzzle.com
suite101.com
technorati.com
helium.com No Follow
brighthub.com
thefreelibrary.com
selfgrowth.com
goarticles.com



Should I bother sending variations of the articles to other directories or is that a waste of time?

[JacksonRiddle]

I definatly think the Article Marketing does have its place. Although I haven't fully dedicated myself to it yet in terms of using it as pure SEO, I have been looking into some good techniques and will be giving it ago in the next few days.

Obviously seeing some real benefits may take a bit longer, but I guess the sooner you start the sooner you will see the rewards.

Jackson