Some advice about article traffic and backlinks
You want backlinks and traffic to your site. So you decide to write some articles and submit them to EzineArticles and other article directories. They accept your articles and you get backlinks and a ton of new readers. Simple right?
Here are some areas where people trip themselves up:
Here are some areas where people trip themselves up:
- Giving away their good-quality articles. If it's your best work, don't give it away to Ezine Articles. Keep it and publish it yourself. Build your own site up into an authority site in your niche. Write regularly and in six months, you'll have hundreds of unique visitors daily, so think in the long term. Hey, even if you want to give the article to EzineArticles, at least publish it on one of your own sites first -- remember, Blogger blogs are free so there's no excuse for not self-publishing your work before submitting it to EZA. Who knows, your little Blogger site might get some pagerank in a few months; then you won't need as many backlinks from EZA.
- Failing to decide whether they're in it for backlinks or for traffic. If you want traffic, you should write articles that complement (but don't directly compete with) the content of your site. If you just want backlinks, make sure you never write articles that might compete with your own pages in the SERPs.
- Confusing other peoples' business model with your own. It is easy to find examples of people who target a valuable keyphrase in an EZA article in hopes that people will click through to their site. These people act as a middle man between EZA and some content provider. They don't have a site that can rank for a competitive phrase and they don't care if the traffic even notices their site as long as they get the requisite clicks. If you are trying to build up your site by getting backlinks -- rather than just trying to drive traffic to someone else's site so you can score a commission -- don't give up your most valuable keyphrases to EzineArticles.
- Going after the wrong traffic. You need to have a clear idea of the type of reader you're looking for. If your ideal reader is someone with bad skin who is desperate for an acne cure, you shouldn't write an article entitled, "Top ten pizza-faced celebrities". This article doesn't attract buyers, it just attracts curiosity seekers. Traffic does you little good if it doesn't convert. It might even hurt you if your advertisers decide that your click-through rate is ridiculously low.
- Believing the "Expert Author" hype. Nobody cares if you're an EzineArticles Expert Author. Make sure to compartmentalize your different niches by using various pen names. That way, you won't feel bound to uphold some self-imposed standard. With pen names, you can have one version of yourself that argues against a certain product (all the while trying to convince readers to try another product), and another version that sells that very product. Better yet, get separate accounts for even more compartmentalization.
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