Fustrated With Article Marketing

[turbostar52]

I've submitted many articles--mostly ghostwritten--to EzineArticles, and unfortunately, the articles go dead after a week or two. In other words, I get many clicks on the articles the first week or two, and then they die down. Why? Does this mean competitors are submitting articles for the same keywords?

[Charles Washington]

That's how it works. Try building backlinks to your articles to keep them up in the rankings.

[Heuristic]

My experience is that it is getting harder to rank for moderately competitive keywords without doing some backlinking. The level of competition for just about any good keyword has skyrocketed. Most articles never stick and drop off after a few days.

[AaronJones]

Originally Posted by turbostar52

I've submitted many articles--mostly ghostwritten--to EzineArticles, and unfortunately, the articles go dead after a week or two. In other words, I get many clicks on the articles the first week or two, and then they die down. Why? Does this mean competitors are submitting articles for the same keywords?

Yes. After you submit it to directories you:

Bookmark it.
Re-write the article and submit to your blog as well as web 2.0
Then create a video of your article and submit it to video sites.

Doing any or all of the above will give you backlinks and keep your article ranked high longer.

Aaron

[Justin Jordan]

Unless you target a keyword that you can get some search engine results for OR you get on the most viewed page, that's exactly what will happen. The former will lead to the latter, which is nice.

For instance, I have one niche in which I have fourteen articles published at EZA.

None of these are particularly keyword researched or optimized, so the only traffic they get is from people browsing Ezinearticles.

So I got 400 views in January from the four new articles. This dropped to 90 views the next month, then 50 and so forth until JUly, where I have, lemme see, 6 views.

So yeah, a spike and then a drop off is normal, although you will get some residual views (which is not to be discounted - enough articles can lead to a decent trickle of sales for no work).

[Zeus66]

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

[gskesavan]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

Seriously, I've seen it sometimes too but after reading this post of yours I realize it all..

Thank you so much for such a professional advice.

What tool do you use for keyword research? May I ask how much articles do you submit on an average per niche?

[turbostar52]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

I will take heed to your advice. Thanks!

[dsmpublishing]

I always work differently when i submit my articles to ezinearticles compared to other article directories. For starters i will create a free wordpress blog about the article thus creating a backlink. I will also bookmark it to at least 15 bookmarking sites.

here is a bookmarking list:

Top 20 Social Bookmarking Sites | myeasyonlinepay.com The Samantha Milner Blog

if your article is a top ten list send other articles to it. Say if it is the top ten plugins for wp do a review for each of these plugins and send them to the source.

After a few weeks has passed i always look on google to see who has reused my article with my resource box in it and then when i find them i will also bookmark these blog posts as they are heading straight back to me.

I also recommend showing off your link to the article on twitter, facebook, myspace and any other social site your involved in. I also do a favourite blog post and favourite article on twitter once a day showcasing ones that have gone off the radar.

hope that helps and good luck with your articles.

kind regards


sam
X

[turbostar52]

Thanks Warriors! I appreciate all of the advice.

[Zeus66]

What tool do you use for keyword research? May I ask how much articles do you submit on an average per niche?

I use Micro Niche Finder, but then I verify what it reports by checking Google's External Keyword Tool manually. There are sometimes significant discrepancies. MNF costs about $100, but honestly the time it saves me makes it worth easily 10X that.

In terms of numbers, I honestly do not submit that many articles. I don't have to because I spend so much time finding the really good keywords. In that pellet gun niche, I have the aforementioned article and about 6 others. I have several EZA accounts (you're not supposed to do that, but many of us do) and I sometimes spread them around depending on the niche.

I used to use the more common Quantity approach, but unless you really enjoy writing a lot, it's a quick trip to burnout. I once wrote about 40 articles in the span of about 4 days and submitted them all to EZA. But I didn't do a lick of keyword research. I just sat down and wrote and wrote, because it was a niche I knew by heart.

And you know what? Those 40 articles combined don't even come close to the number of page views and link clicks that ONE pellet gun article has gotten. The Quality approach is so much better in every way. But you have to put in the time to really learn how to do proper keyword research. Get yourself a good tool like Micro Niche Finder or something like it... think there's one called Market Samurai that others say is good as well. That will cut way down on your research time. For many niches, it only takes a handful of great keywords and some backlinks to drive a nice steady flow of targeted visitors to your money page. Seriously.

John

[gskesavan]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

I use Micro Niche Finder, but then I verify what it reports by checking Google's External Keyword Tool manually. There are sometimes significant discrepancies. MNF costs about $100, but honestly the time it saves me makes it worth easily 10X that.

In terms of numbers, I honestly do not submit that many articles. I don't have to because I spend so much time finding the really good keywords. In that pellet gun niche, I have the aforementioned article and about 6 others. I have several EZA accounts (you're not supposed to do that, but many of us do) and I sometimes spread them around depending on the niche.

I used to use the more common Quantity approach, but unless you really enjoy writing a lot, it's a quick trip to burnout. I once wrote about 40 articles in the span of about 4 days and submitted them all to EZA. But I didn't do a lick of keyword research. I just sat down and wrote and wrote, because it was a niche I knew by heart.

And you know what? Those 40 articles combined don't even come close to the number of page views and link clicks that ONE pellet gun article has gotten. The Quality approach is so much better in every way. But you have to put in the time to really learn how to do proper keyword research. Get yourself a good tool like Micro Niche Finder or something like it... think there's one called Market Samurai that others say is good as well. That will cut way down on your research time. For many niches, it only takes a handful of great keywords and some backlinks to drive a nice steady flow of targeted visitors to your money page. Seriously.

John

Omg! I have no words to thank you! I bought MNF 2 months back and used to use it for keyword research. Later I didn't enjoy it much because other people were telling it is better to do the research using external keyword tool.

But, back to MNF again. Thanks loads and I'll never forget this.

I write about 10 - 15 articles a day to see 10 sales a week. After a week or 2 I run out of articles and there the sales stop. Only a handful of article gets picked up nicely and produce sales, the rest just rest in peace.

Do you always follow the green, red and yellow stuff on MNF?

Also, can you tell me a bit about the exact and broad match given there? Thanks.

[yommys01]

Great post John ( Zeus66 ). You have really opened my eyes to why keyword research is great. One question though ...Is the payment for micro niche finder one time payment?

[gskesavan]

Originally Posted by yommys01

Great post John ( Zeus66 ). You have really opened my eyes to why keyword research is great. One question though ...Is the payment for micro niche finder one time payment?

If you don't mind me answering the question, Yes it is.

[John Dufresne]

Nice posts, this helps out a lot.
Thank you.

[Steven Wagenheim]

There is another method that works but it takes a hell of a long time and a
ton of work, but it's how I did it.

Tackle the bread and butter "everybody and their grandmother is looking
them up" keywords (tens of thousands of searches or even hundreds of
thousands a month) and write like a demon, building yourself up as an
authority in that area.

Took me several years to crack the top keywords but it can be done.

However, the advice that you got from Zeus66 is excellent.

You absolutely can't go wrong with it.

[gskesavan]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

There is another method that works but it takes a hell of a long time and a
ton of work, but it's how I did it.

Tackle the bread and butter "everybody and their grandmother is looking
them up" keywords (tens of thousands of searches or even hundreds of
thousands a month) and write like a demon, building yourself up as an
authority in that area.

Took me several years to crack the top keywords but it can be done.

However, the advice that you got from Zeus66 is excellent.

You absolutely can't go wrong with it.

I think it's the same I'm doing but since I'm a starter who has been around for just 4 months, I'm not able to even come in the first 10 pages of google for highly competitive keywords.

I've tried backlinking a lot but the more I backlinked the further it vanished, that got me irritated with article marketing.

[Zeus66]

Do you always follow the green, red and yellow stuff on MNF?

Also, can you tell me a bit about the exact and broad match given there? Thanks.

I do not always go with the SOC color on MNF, no. Usually, though. It depends on how committed I am to that niche and how many searches per month are being conducted. For example, I have a site that ranks #7 at Google for a keyword that MNF shows as a high Yellow. Ordinarily I wouldn't have attempted it because it took a lot of backlinks (time) to get on Page 1 at Google. But that keyword gets almost 1 million monthly searches! Well worth my time.

But for keywords with a lot fewer searches, I'll stick to Green SOC on MNF and single digits if I can find them.

Exact = searching with quotes around the keyword. Broad = searching without quotes. Exact is good for seeing how many sites you are in competition with that have specifically used that exact phrase on their page, in the title, etc. I like keywords with less than 100,000, but I'll go as high as 300,000 if the search totals are high enough. As long as you use decent SEO on your page (keyword in title, meta tags, body of your page, etc.), and then get some backlinks that also use that keyword as anchor text, you can usually score a Page 1 ranking after awhile.

John

[JAIDEEP2959]

You need to use long tail keywords in your articles so that they rank better in Search Engines.

According to me ,this is the only way your articles will get traffic.

[BlueBetty]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

Hi John

Love the approach. Do you think this would be the same if you promoted a digital product?

Tasha

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic.

John

Zeus,

what numbers are you shooting for? I am using market samurai and i am unsure about the SEOC value, that is "competing site which come up for the keyword in google".

They all say to go for <30.000....but i wonder whether it would make sense to TRY to find keywords...say... <75.000 which would yield WAY more keywords. Since EZA usually always ranks high to start with i think it would make sense to be a little more "brave" in terms of competing sites.

Just wondering if you have experience yourself in terms of rankings and what numbers to shoot for.

[LilBlackDress]

Just to clarify, for searches John you feel 100,000 (in quotes) results is low competition and worth going after? And 300,000 if there is enough searching for it?

[k8spy8]

To make a hit you need to include as many ingredient as you can in your articles. Obviously they need to be relevant. Use as much backlinks you can in the articles and always try to use the hot keywords.

[Zeus66]

Love the approach. Do you think this would be the same if you promoted a digital product?

I cannot think of a reason why it wouldn't apply to any type of product/service that people search for.

what numbers are you shooting for? I am using market samurai and i am unsure about the SEOC value, that is "competing site which come up for the keyword in google".

They all say to go for <30.000....but i wonder whether it would make sense to TRY to find keywords...say... <75.000 which would yield WAY more keywords. Since EZA usually always ranks high to start with i think it would make sense to be a little more "brave" in terms of competing sites.

Just wondering if you have experience yourself in terms of rankings and what numbers to shoot for.

I don't get too hung up on the numbers other than a general range. The pellet gun hunting keyword I mentioned has about 140,000 competition in the broad search... that's nothing really. It's under 2500 for the exact search... again, a tiny number. That's why it was so easy to rank for without a lot of time-consuming backlinking.

I use Micro Niche Finder to give me a quick idea of whether or not a keyword is worth pursuing. Then I check the Google External Keyword Tool to verify the stats. Then I'll do both a broad and exact search at Google and if broad is under 300,000 and exact is under about 50,000, I know I can get to Page 1 pretty fast. I don't sweat it out more than that, most times. Others will have their own systems, so don't take what I'm telling you as gospel. There are several ways to go at this.

Just to clarify, for searches John you feel 100,000 (in quotes) results is low competition and worth going after? And 300,000 if there is enough searching for it?

No, sorry for creating confusion. I shoot for 50,000 or less (in quotes) for competition level. The pellet gun example was really low (under 2500), which is why it was such an appealing keyword to go after. The 100,000 to 300,000 was a broad search range (no quotes). But I want to be sure you understand that it's ok to go after keywords with much higher broad search competition IF the exact search competition (searching that same keyword in quotes) drops way down. That's because exact search shows you a much clearer picture of webmasters who have purposefully tried to rank for that keyword. Broad searches return pages with the individual words in your keyword phrase in any order. In other words, it does not give you a clear idea of your true level of SEO competition. Hope that clears things up a bit.

John

[newBum76]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

That sounds like some great advice, I'm glad I stumbled onto this thread. Yesterday I spent all day coming up with 30 keywords in an EXTREMELY competetive niche, and surprisingly I found quite a few that were under 5,000 competition in exact searches, and all of the keywords on my list are under 30,000. I even found one keyword that had 10,000 monthly searches but only 290 competition, so I'm gonna be sure to write an awesome article for that one!

I can't yet afford micro niche finder or market samurai so I'm only using google for my keyword research. Think I'll be ok with just looking up monthly search volume vs. google competition? Or would I be much better off including more detailed strength of competition factors in my keyword research? (stuff I don't really know much about yet) Thanks again for that great post!

-Jon

[Zack Lim]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

Hi John,

Thank you for sharing this post. A good reminder that doing proper keyword research is important.

Zack

[Kingshouse]

Keywords are the way the SE's find your article.

Put it this way Keywords are the keys to get found for whatever you write online be that a blog, article, or any text for that matter.

No keyword = No one knows your text exists as your text (article) will probably be sitting on page 987 of Google! I don't think anyone goes that far except they are paid to!

I guess it then comes down to which keywords you use.

Go for popular keywords like "affiliate marketing" and you just get lost in the crowd.

you go looking for keywords with less competition say "affiliate marketing for newbies" and you will more likely get less competition.

Most truths online are half truths and just mislead people. It's no wonder people leave the long chain keywords and target elusive keywords that everyone else is targeting. It's either that or they spend time looking for keywords hardly anyone uses at all.

You really have to do some work here and choose a good keyword search tool for your keywords.

That said you can get a grip on keywords and use the free Google Keyword search tool and still do well.

I'd say that between Zeus66 and Steven Wagenheim you got the ultimate advice.

All the best

Great contribiutions by the way!

Khs

[willz605]

I've been researching keywords/keyphrases for months now and tracking competition.
The #1 way for newbies to make money quickly is to find long-tail keywords, build a wordpress or similar site and build loads of backlinks to it. Ideally, do everything the pros speak of in this thread and similar. Use every bit of automated feed and continue to write and or build more pages/websites to accomplish your goal.

good luck

[homebasedmom]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

Now I get it. Thank you!

[Troy_Phillips]

I am not new to marketing but pretty new to article marketing . I searched for a long tail that was under 10,000 competition and found several even in the money from home niche .

So far every article I have submitted has been 1 or 2 on google's first page . Course I also bought the long tail domain names ans optimized these for their namesake .

What really surprised me was one of the longtails gets over 100 searches a day and had no exact competition. I have 6 places on googles 1st page for it and will have more when my site gets crawled again . The longtails were searched for articles but I have figured out that sometimes the content on your page is just as good if there is not a lot of competiiton.

I didn't learn this for the fact that I am super marketer or anything . I do well with this because the person I learned from stressed long tails first . I just didn't know any other way to do it .

[FriendlyRob]

I have found that the same thing happens to me with most niches but not all. The ones that die out quickly, I simply do not commit a lot of effort to. I try to focus my efforts on the niches that tend to give me consistent views and click through s.

[mayapearl]

YOU ROCK! THANK YOU

[MatthewBass]

Take the duds and post them elsewhere after your EZA traffic has died down a bit. If you have a ton of original content then start blogs on specific niches with that content. Build some links to your new blog network and start seeing results. This isn't as easy as submitting an article to EZA...it takes work, but the payoff's are much better. You'll then have an entire blog network that you can control.

[thegoddessofeleven]

How are you measuring "competing" sites? You're not just referring to the sites that come up when you do an exact match search in Google, are you? My understanding is that the NUMBER of results returned don't matter... it's the page rank of the sites returned by a quote-less search...

???

[Zeus66]

It's not really about PageRank. That matters, don't get me wrong, but there's a lot more going on. If you let JUST PR scare you away, you'll miss out on a lot of good keywords you could rank for without a lot of work.

Really, when you get right down to it, the most important part is analyzing the SERPs Top 10 for that keyword. Worrying only or even mostly about the numbers of results with and without quotation marks, etc. will just have you spinning your wheels needlessly. I mean, sure, have some benchmarks if you want (I use them sometimes), but it's easy to clutter up your mind and get stuck, when in reality this stuff's easier than that.

John

[Saul']

Originally Posted by gskesavan

I've tried backlinking a lot but the more I backlinked the further it vanished, that got me irritated with article marketing.

99.9% of bookmarks are only good to get your site crawled and re-evaluated. You're not gonna improve your rankings with bookmarks.

The more you bookmark the more chances you get your page to be re-evaluated and if you don't build links otherwise and don't refresh the page content, it will go lower and lower as it loses its "freshness".

That's just a theory, mind you, but I'm seeing it over and over again. I'm using bookmarks anytime I want for Google to re-evaluate my pages for other changes to take effect - works every time.

[Paul Hancox]

John, I noticed your article has a PR of 2, yet according to SEO For Firefox, it doesn't have any backlinks.

Any idea how it got a PR 2? Is it because of the popularity of the link itself, or do you have a couple of backlinks tucked away?

[Aimee_91]

You can try using secondaring keywords so you stand a higher chance of staying popular for longer and to maintain high traffic levels

[Chris Dark]

Hi john, excellent post.... its definately given me some food for thought.


I just wanted to ask you a question, so i can get an idea of this process from start to finish, finish obviously being a sale. I notice from your pellet gun article, you link to a site selling pellet guns.

I am considering doing something very similar to your approach but within a very different niche/product, and what i wanted to ask you is, do you own that pellet gun site, and if so, how do you get your stock - is it from a wholesaler etc?. The reason i ask is because i notice there is no affiliate linking to CB or Amazon etc, you seem to sell the guns direct from your site..... this is similar to what i want to do.

[Mr Money Maker]

I think press-release article posts work great. I can keyword and article and have it listed on the top pages on google in 2 hours time !! If your good at SEO, you can really cash in using this.

[MikeGriffith]

Turbo,
Your article marketing campaign doesn't stop when you submit your articles. What you have to do in order to rank with the search engines is to start building backlinks to your articles. That's one of the single most effective ways to increase your page rank and your sales.

[Liam Hamer]

Great thread full of useful info I'm still pretty new to article marketing, but I can already vouch for the keyword/competition approach. Earlier in the week, I decided I was going to target 3 or 4 keyword phrases related to the niche of a new site I have. I did some thorough research(in Market Samurai), and found some with fairly low competition in terms of the amount of sites ranking for the same keywords, PR and backlinks. I settled on 3, put these keyword phrases in each individual article title, in the body a little and submitted them to EZA.

My articles went live a matter of hours ago, and to my surprise one of them is already ranking on page 2 of Google for it's keyword phrase at number 20. This is without ANY promotion, no backlinks, nothing! Once I build some quality backlinks, I think I can comfortably get into the top 10, and there's no reason why I can't get the number one spot This particular keyword phrase gets between 150 and 200 searches per day. If I was in the number one spot, that would be a some nice daily traffic, and with a 30% CTR could bring a few sales here and there too. These 3 keyword phrase articles are in addition to all the promotion and backlinking of the actual site and it's main 3 or 4 keywords. I consider ranking for those keywords as more of a long term goal, but I know I'll get there and when I do I should be seeing substantial traffic every day.

So yeah, listen to the experts here(and the article marketing newbies like me who put into practice what they learn here too ) - they know what they are talking about. Do your research, put your plan into action and you'll give yourself every chance of getting the success you desire

[Paul Ho]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Ahh, my favorite topic. You MUST... let me repeat that... YOU MUST pick conquerable keywords. This is so absolutely critical and it's what almost every new article marketer gets entirely wrong.

So, what's "conquerable?" It's a keyword that has very low competition. You can go one of two ways here: quality or quantity. Quality = digging in and really taking the time to find keywords in your niche that have extremely low competition AND get a good number of searches. Trust me, they're out there, no matter what niche you're in. I promise. I've done a ton of keyword research in more niches than I care to remember. Every one of them had at least a few conquerable keywords that got anywhere from 100-1,000 searches per day.

The other approach is also viable (quantity). You simply find a whole lot of low competition - low search volume keywords in your niche and start writing until your hands turn blue. Takes a lot less time to find good keywords, but you'll more than make up for it churning out articles for all those keywords.

Either way, the common denominator is low competition. The lower the better.

Which do I prefer? No contest... I go for the Quality approach. I don't want to write all day unless I'm getting paid (and paid nicely) for it by a client. I don't have the patience.

Anyway, I'll give you a good example of the power of the Quality approach...

Search Google for the phrase pellet gun hunting. Competition is scarce. But that phrase gets about 250-300 searches per day at Google. The #2 site in the search results for that phrase is one of my EzineArticles articles. That article has gotten (by far) the most page views of any article in the Hunting category at EzineArticles. And it's only been live for about 4 months. Yep... just 4 months (April 6). More page views than articles in that category that have been there for years.

A bit further down Page 1 at Google is a YouTube video I made from that same article. So I hold 2 spots in the Top 10 at Google for a keyword that gets 8,000-10,000 searches per month.

And it took almost no link building. That's the point. It's ALL about the keywords you pick. In fact, I'd say that is the single most important factor in determining article marketing winners from losers. If I had to narrow it to just one factor.

Learn how to do keyword research at a professional level. It will make all the difference in the world in your success - regardless of the niche you're in.

John

Wow.. this is what this forum is all about. This is goldmine advice. It was all there before but this post sums it all up nicely.. Thanks =)

[jabnamedia]

one of the things I look for when targeting Keywords is to check the backlinks of the sites already on page one of G the lower the easier it will be to overtake them.

[redrossero]

It is not just about keywords and competition nowadays with article marketing...it is getting even more 'interesting' to say the least....

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by Paul Hancox

John, I noticed your article has a PR of 2, yet according to SEO For Firefox, it doesn't have any backlinks.

Any idea how it got a PR 2? Is it because of the popularity of the link itself, or do you have a couple of backlinks tucked away?

Hey Paul,

That SEO For FireFox add-on isn't very good at picking up backlinks. I have a new article marketing ebook and video course out that goes into the specific details with that pellet gun hunting example.

I'll just say here that I did do some backlinking to that article, and they're from high PR sites. So it's a combination of the article being on EzineArticles.com (PR6) and another dozen or so backlinks from high PR sites (all PR5 or higher).

That's all it took to get to #2 at Google for that keyword - putting the article on EZA and getting about a dozen more backlinks. That's it. Took me about 2 hours total, from finding the keyword, to writing the article, to building a few backlinks.

See, that's the beauty of doing proper keyword research before you write. It's the people who just sit down and write off the top of their heads that get frustrated by article writing and marketing. They burn out. I know... I was one of them for a LONG time.

By the way, a few slots down from that article is a youtube video about pellet gun hunting. That's mine too. And it took even FEWER backlinks than the article [HINT HINT].

John

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by Dark Cognitive

I just wanted to ask you a question, so i can get an idea of this process from start to finish, finish obviously being a sale. I notice from your pellet gun article, you link to a site selling pellet guns.

I am considering doing something very similar to your approach but within a very different niche/product, and what i wanted to ask you is, do you own that pellet gun site, and if so, how do you get your stock - is it from a wholesaler etc?. The reason i ask is because i notice there is no affiliate linking to CB or Amazon etc, you seem to sell the guns direct from your site..... this is similar to what i want to do.

Yes, that site selling the pellet guns is mine and the products being offered there are drop-shipped by the vendor. I have a dealer arrangement worked out with them. Basically, I take the order, then order from them at a big discount. They then slap my label on the package and ship it from their warehouse to my customer.

I don't have to keep any inventory and I just order when an order comes in to me. It's perfect! I make a lot more profit than I'd make as a traditional affiliate. I think I'd only make about 5% as an affiliate, but I have complete control over the mark-up on the prices I charge my customers. And the best part is, because I get such a nice discount as a dealer, I can mark it up nicely and STILL charge less than my competitors. I have almost no overhead. It's win-win!

I highly recommend it. All I did was call around until I found a vendor willing to work out a dealer agreement with me. The only downside is if there's a return, it comes to me and then I have to ship it back to the vendor. But that's not been a problem so far.

Hope that helps!

John

[thejoeb]

Go to the next level and turn the article into a podcast. From there turn it into a video. Submit to other article sites as well. As you do this the search engines will start picking up your links. Google really like video.

Hope this is helpful.

[squadron]

You could try social bookmarking your articles. It can't hurt.

[Chris Dark]

Thanks for the reply John, you've answered all i needed to know. I suppose the challenge here is finding a decent dealer willing to dropship, i may make some calls myself as we all know how bad some of these wholesale/dropship websites can be.

Anyway, not wishing to hijack the thread, back to article marketing

I have to chime in with you and agree about quality and pre-planning before you write an article. I'm new to article marketing so i'm certainly no authority, but after submitting my first 10 articles, i noticed instantly that the first 8 articles which i wrote basically with no decent research, gained very little views and url clicks.

For my last 2 i did some keyword research, and both of these articles surpassed my first 8 articles in terms of views and clicks by about 10 times the amount! - and that was within a day of writing them. My first eight have been up for weeks!

So i couldnt not agree more, and i'll definately take a more calculated approach with all my future articles.