I really don't get why people do article marketing, hubpages, squidoo, etc, etc

It's all about getting traffic and visitors from different sources.

Posting your content on other places on the web is the same as putting up giant billboards on the major highways in the US.

An article on Ezine will not only give me a backlink, but will possibly catch someones attention that I wouldn't get by relying directly on where the search engines want to put me.

You should definitely post your articles to your own site as well, but you get more traffic the more places you have high quality content up for sure.

Getting traffic from being ranked on Google is awesome.

But, Google while the biggest, isn't the only elephant in the traffic jungle. You get lots of traffic from sites like the ones you mentioned because of the enormous amunts of human visitors who use those sites daily.

There are a lot of reasons to use those sites, one being that they get a lot of google-love. Articles/information that you put on those sites typically gets crawled quickly, so they're great for building quality backlinks to your own site.

Also, a lot of people start out with literally no money and no knowledge. Squidoo lenses are easy to build, and a great way to learn the basics on keywords and SEO without spending money. Make a little mini-web of free blogs and ezine articles pointing at your lens, start getting traffic and sales, rinse and repeat.

Now, you've got some money to invest in your own domains etc, and can ramp up your business.

I know it works, because I did it that way. And I still find Squidoo and ezine bring me traffic to my own sites - And my squidoo lenses are a monthly source of decent income on keywords that probably wouldn't have been worth plunking down $10 for a domain name.

Article marketing works because of the authority that those directories have. However, you should always post your articles on your own site, first, before submitting them to any directory rather than the other way round or only on an article directory or two.

I usually have a long version of the same article posted on my own site, first, and then offer the shorter version to ezinearticles.com.

I'm not keen on squidoo and hubpages (haven't got the time to do it all) but if you were to outsource that, they would be another traffic source and even a small number of visitors from those sites could have a positive effect for ranking purposes and your bank balance.

I guess all the above is very true...

However, are you essentially receiving traffic from the same source.

Your article traffic, does it not come straight from people typing in long tail searches into Google.

or are you seeing people in the community of ezine's being the ones viewing the article.

In my mind, people search google with the long tail, and your article is in the top results for that long tail.

The reader goes from Google to your article then from your article to your site.

Why place that middle man in there, when you can easily rank that same article with your own entity.

I agree with you, which is why I do both. I would never spend time doing SEO on anything other than sites I own. But if the content is already written, might as well throw it on article directories and other sites for extra traffic. It's easily outsourced as well.

You are right it is a tedious and long way of getting links but does provide traffic and backlinks. I guess you have to way up the benefits against the time and effort.

Not everything starts and ends at Google.

I can agree that maybe about 20% of traffic out there doesn't come from Google.

-------------------

However, I get it, so these sites do have their own communities of traffic worthwhile of seeking.

I guess I'll have to test it out and see for myself.

However, I will make the point that if you check out these sites clickstreams, 50% of their traffic comes from Google and Search Engines.



So I guess we are after that other 50% of community built traffic

I'm coming in from a different direction, since Squidoo was the first thing I found that was honest, ethical, and actually worked for me.

Now I'm looking at branching out from Squidoo into more of my own stuff, but the more I read and do, the more I appreciate Squidoo and the Squidoo community.

I also don't get it, it so time consuming. Also if English is not your main language like me than you have another problem of letting your article look normal.

That is why I use PLR and just rewrite it, is much more easy for me.

If you can rank your sites and are happy with it, why shouyld you bother with article marketing?

LMC is right, better to put a site up and build rank/authority, squidoo is only useful for those with no website building experience, articles have a place for some longtail but I would always look at a domain first.

You can own the whole first page using each property

How do you go about building backlinks for your websites?

Many folks post articles to directories for link juice. Personally I have been posting 'B' rated articles to the likes of Ezine for SEO.

Often these sites can completely out rank your own website because they are so much more authoritative. So they will provide you with traffic you would not have got if you had published an article directly on your site.

In addition they will send some link juice to your own site which will help them rank - so article marketing is building links.

You can also get multiple listings in the top ten using article marketing. So you may have a squidoo page, a hubpage, an ezine article and your own site all dominating the top ten results, pushing your competitors down and siphoning traffic to your own site.

Why not just pot it to your blog and then syndicate the daylights out of it and hope one of the articles ranks. All of the articles should link to your method of monetization anyway. If you get the sale, who cares what site it came from?

I suspect that for many people it's partly or mostly because they do actually think of it as being "vs".

It isn't really "vs" at all. Or shouldn't be.

I do those things partly as a way of ranking my own pages.

I agree completely with your unwritten inference that people using sites like EZA instead of their own sites don't quite understand what they're doing; but there you are: maybe they never read this fine thread (it says EZA in the subject-line, but very many of comments in the thread apply equally to all those other places you mentioned, and in very similar ways, too.)

@LMC - Here is a simple example - If it can help.

There is this new website. It has about 300 backlinks. It has NO PR. It is about 6 months old.

Now you said "why post a new article on EzineArticles or Squidoo when you can post it on your own website for the same keyword and rank on the top?"

I'm sure you already know what I'm going to type next.

Not all websites or Articles in a website can rank on top for a specific keyword. Especially not when a website is new.

You may have an established and an old age website, but that's not the case with all other websites.

That's where these - not only EzineArticles or Squidoo - But all other Web 2.0 Properties come in picture.

Most people use Web 2.0 properties for INITIAL PROMOTION of their website. Others use them for EXTRA TRAFFIC.

LMC - These Web 2.0 properties really help - Just take a look at it from a different angle!!!

Rob,

Your also in the business of creating your own products.

We have two completely different business models.

I get what your saying, but it doesn't work in my business.

--------------------------

You may of not written an article or anything, but you probably wrote your own product, probably wrote your own salespage, or hired someone...

You had to do some customer service, you had to talk with buyers....

I earn a very nice high five figure monthly income, passively, and I don't do a thing in regards to customer service. I don't own my products. I am an affiliate.

It's two different models.

Hubs are perfect if you are trying to get quick traffic....
I use hubs for product reviews for product launches and they are perfect. Making about 20-30 dollars a day from 10min hub with an hour of SEO. It makes it easier.

Jill,

No i build lists with my sites... I just don't use JV's as my method of producing traffic since I build my own lists.

Sometimes people want a quick buck or just to get ranked fast. There are certain 3rd party sites that can rank high in the search engines easier than your own site. Say, you want to capitalize on a trend and just want people clicking your affiliate link on that 3rd party site and you know the trend will be over real soon. You don't want to bother using your own site and you are not sure if you can get it ranked as fast as a 3rd party site you've used before that you knows gets really fast rankings.

So...you use the 3rd party site instead of your own. It has it's place.

A mix of everything you mentioned proves to be most effective for me. Several marketers seem to have an 'either/or' mentality about it. I think your most dynamite content should be on your own websites along with sufficient backlinking to boost your site in the search engines but this can obviously take time. Article Marketing, Squidoo pages, and other web 2.0 properties are easier to rank in the short term and provide some decent link juice.

Article marketing in particular I believe in because while it is possible to rank your own sites well, you will probably want traffic long before then. Article marketing provides instant traffic which allows you to test and tweak things for when your site DOES rank.

Article marketing is a essential part of getting traffic to your website. In fact you can use article marketing to point to your website, and your blogs and you can actually get ranked high on Google. I recommend article marketing, you don't even have to write a lot, it can be just a few sentences, as long as your content it relative to your niche.

Your write up is such a great one. One thing is certain, you might be ok with not submitting any article to article directories but you might as well use both strategies to pull traffic to your website. After all, it's all about targeted traffic to your website. Put differently, your strategy is ok but could serves as an addition to submitting articles to article directories.

Traffic is very important to each webpage...in order to get enough traffic you need to do article marketing, hubpages, squidoo, youtube videos...this is just one way to get traffic...

Internet marketer do article marketing, hubpages, squidoo and other more so to gain high traffic. The more traffic your site get, a lot more better as it helps you to get in high rank. What's important is you have a quality and related content for your write ups, so to make sense.

I agree that it’s all about the traffic. Search engines like sites with lots of authentic links and can be crawled easily for ranking. These articles on directories and lens are some of the authentic links you can post and increase your traffic.

I have a site in Spanish, weight loss related that is just one squeeze page so I need to send visitors from other sites to mine since my squeeze would never rank for any keyword. I do email marketing to my list.

So it all depends on your business model. If you want to take part in the SEO battle then that's good. I prefer to leverage other sites' natural traffic to my squeeze. It's faster and building a list is what everybody should do.

My business does not entirely depends on Google

The answer is simple, diversity.

If you're relying on google only, you will get burned one day and usually when you least expect it. If you have 520+ sites, (as above your avatar), I'm guessing they're not all authority sites?

The problem is google is insane in how they do things. You really should never rely on them 100%, that's business suicide.

2 things.

#1 - EzineArticles.com is good to get a new site/domain spidered
and indexed, in my experience. Other options do exist, though.

#2 - An 800-word article can be used BOTH on EA and one's own site,
with a minor rewrite and trimming it down to 300 words to post on
EA, and having the complete article on the personal site.

For what little traffic/exposure/branding/SEO it's worth, it seems
good enough ROI, considering how little EXTRA effort it takes to
submit to EA.

Just my 2 cents

All success
Dr.Mani

its a quick fix...
Its proven..
Little work involved...

I always add a squidoo and hub pages as addons to any site i work on...

It just helps..

Sheesh its only 5-10 minutes worth of work.... if it gets ONE person.. its successful.

There seem to be a lot of people here married to their specific strategies and feeling the need to defend their opinion.

LMC - I'm really glad you asked this question because it should make people think about why they do what they do.

Anyone who says you NEED article marketing is just ignorant of the alternatives - we know you don't need it just like you don't need Google to have a successful business. There are many ways to run your business and make money - enough that there is no 'one' strategy that MUST be used.

The question in this thread is about traffic and accessing that traffic.

Does reprinting your content elsewhere really get you more of your target market than just marketing your own site? - yes.

Here's why:

It's math - it's all about the area under the curve - the long tail.

Sure you can promote the hell out of your great content and access a huge number of your target market. You should.

Maybe you'll even capture the lions share of your audience that way - but you'll have to be focused and targeted in your efforts to grab those people based on where you're marketing, what your competition is and what tactics you're using.

That can be enough to keep most people happy (and it seems LMC that this is where you're at now)

However, that long tail of the rest of your market that are using 'other' places to find what they want make up a massive opportunity - perhaps much larger than what appears to be the 'main' mass of your target audience.

You only have to look at Facebook to realise that accessing their community is probably much easier if you advertise on their platform or create collatoral on their system (where their users already are).

The same with Twitter, Youtube etc. etc......

So, back to article marketing - there will be a LOT of people who you're creating content to help that just won't find it because they're not using Google to look for it.

Sure - 'most' of them may be, and that's why dominating the whole front page makes sense - but to do this you need diversity. To show on the front page everywhere completely you'd need:

a) Images
b) News (press releases)
c) Videos
d) Google Places business listing (niche dependant)
e) PPC
f) Organic results - Up to 10 different web properties all competitive to be sure of domination.

So - why spread your content?

Organic results are just one of the ways you get to come up when people are using the search engines but your one website won't take all the spots.

Other traffic - putting your content (or versions of it) on other web properties that get decent traffic is just helping cover some of that long tail of prospect who goes there and searches (EZA, Squidoo, etc...) - plus gives you links to help your main site rank better.

At the end of the day it all comes down to covering 2 angles:

1 - Getting search engines to put your content in front of people

2 - Putting your content in other places where your audience are

With the same aim - they end up at your main site and take your preferred action (sign up/purchase).

You don't HAVE to do both, but if you're already covering most of the market you can access with seo for your site, spreading your content helps touch extra people.

Also, don't forget that some of these article sites also have massive amounts of syndication so putting your article on EZA could actually end up with it published on thousands of other websites where people either manually or automatically reprint relevant content from there.

Andy

It's obvious that we have have a lot of successful internet marketers here, and that many of them have become successful through different means. However, it is funny to hear people downgrading other ways to make money!

I know its been beaten to death, but in Rich Dad, Poor Dad he says "master one formula, and move on to the next".

I think that means that just because something works now, doesn't mean that it is going to work forever, and depending on the needs of your client base, you are probably going to have to be flexible.

For example...I now set up Facebook Fan pages for every company that works with me. Why? Because over 90% of Latin American Internet users have a Social Network Profile, and most of those are on Facebook. I have customers and friends that derive as much as 90% of thier income from updating their page with new specials!

It's all about knowing who you want to reach. And (shameless plug) if you want to reach Spanish speaking customers either in the US or abroad, send me a PM, I would love to help.

Another advantage of using EzineArticles, Squidoo, etc. as traffic generating methods is that you get known in a community. Other authors, other lensmasters, etc. pay attention to your work, and help you in many ways.

EzineArticles does not have the authority that people ascribe to it.

Sure, it's a source of traffic - but between the junk, rehashed articles (really, how many ways are there to say that to get your girlfriend back, you need to ignore her and not pester her with begging and pleading?) - no one in their right mind would bother spending hours to find something genuinely unique and original.

As proof of that, go on, write a genuinely informative article outside of traditionally commercial fields. If EZA had any sort of legitimacy and if your article were at all relevant, you'd have news reporters from across the world calling you for an inside scoop on a fascinating story. But that doesn't happen (take it from someone whose EZA ranks first for the intended keyword and whose website has been visited by the Swiss Federal Government, among other things).

A genuinely credible article directory would give you the same standing and prestige as getting published in a major journal or having your work appear in an op-ed column. Now, does anyone here even remotely believe that EZA is capable of that?

It would be great to know how YOU are building backlinks. Are you building them all with contextual and sidebar links as you mentioned in another thread?

Are you using other methods? If so what?

I am all about not using EZA, Hub etc and ranking just my own pages, but where are you finding all these fast and easy links?

For me article writing is about establishing yourself as the expert and its communication with the reader in addition to the keyword SEO.

it's all about diversifying your traffic source.

ha with over 900 articles on EA, bringign traffic to our site each day, and people emaling them to their lists, yes it doesnt work well at all, and is not building our lists, and is not responsible for some sales.. *insert sarcasm here*

Funny seeing posts like this....

if people stuck to article marketing and maybe even outsourcing it over the long term....i.e. do it each day, each week, even with small amounts of work, they all add up and bring you traffic for years to come. Do ever underestimate the SEO power of a well written article.

just my two cents.

I do it because I can own the front page in some of my niches. I sometimes have as many as 5 or 6 of my articles along with my main site all sitting on the front page of Google. That gives me a 60 - 70 percent chance of having someone go to a page that links to my site. I'm aware that not every one that reads my articles will click through to my site, but at least I have a shot at all of them.

I guess that is relevant. Not only way you can be involved in internet marketing without a group of people taking one side or another, no matter how they are beating their chests over. One day the payment processors and affiliate programs and the next is Where the hell do I put my content? It's the best place?

Regardless of where you choose to place your content, your chances of success are going to largely be based on the content itself rather than where you put it. so content matters as well as the niche itself.Secondly, all these places are very popular in search engines. If you check the PR of each, you'll see they are all very high. If you check the backlinks for each, you will discover that each region has a ton. So whoever you choose, you will not make a bad choice. The question is, is it a choice that is better than others?

Okay, so the question is simple. Why is there such a diversity? Why do some topics rank well with Squidoo and not Hub Pages while Squidoo can't be found to save your life for some topics? The marketers who put the content on their platform of choice did NOT do a good job with the content itself. Maybe the article was thin. Maybe it didn't have enough relevant info in relation to the topic. Or...maybe somebody else did a better job at another platform. Or for that matter, maybe privately owned sites did a better job.

And that brings us to the real issue. All things being equal, a privately owned site is going to rank better than if you put the same content on a Squidoo or Hub Page or wherever. And the reason is because a domain like skydiving dot com is always going to have an advantage over a squidoo or Hub Page subdomain with those keywords in it IF the content is the same for both.

In the long run, having your own domain is going to do better than putting your content on any of those sites...no matter which one you choose.

So, if your own domain is out of the question because of money, fine...pick one of those platforms. It doesn't matter. As long as your content is solid and you're not competing with a ton of independent sites for those keywords, you'll do fine.

For me anyway article marketing does the following:

1 - It sends me targeted traffic
2 - It provides one way to build a strong backlinking structure
3 - It helps with creating/establishing brand awareness
4 - You can manipulate your anchor text the way you want it
5 - It helps with indirect rankings
6 - It promotes a viral effect when done properly
7 - Over time the cost benefit improves drastically along with the ROI
8 - It provides infinite site exposure
9 - It increases the percieved value of your website should you choose to sell it
10 - It augments/compliments every other method of ranking yoru site and driving traffic to it.
11 - Most importantly, I enjoy utilizing it

Respectfully,
Tim

I agree. I think it all depends on the business model. plus I think that if you are relying on purchasing high authority backlinks, you have to manually get your links from places that already have high authority

I agree with you dude, I dont get it either.

SHORT TERM GRAITFICATION... Desire to want results instantaneously...

And of course, not willing to give it their all due to

a) Lack of funds
b) Lack of knowledge
c) Ignorance... Following the GURU
d) due to urban myths

Its all we do for some sort of traffic and backlinking and getting indexed properly..these are really easy ways to generate attention...

Hubpages are very good if you ask me. I make about $500 from them.

I work on article marketing AND on getting my sites ranked for keywords. My articles get lots of people to my sites, where they often stick around to view other posts, products, etc. I always post a new article to my own site first, make sure it is indexed before putting it on eZine. Another thing I like about eZine is that users can publish my articles on their own sites, keeping the links there to my site and products. I get quite a few backlinks that way!

Always go for a diversity in the way you get traffic, and never rely on just one method. Been there, got burned.

Beth

I agree with avenuegirl.
I am really tired of eBay but it's still a great place to get your
name out there, especially if your product has sold. I mean your
advertising will be right in their face after purchase.

LMC,
The Guru's say that you should do this...lol j/k

One reason is the fact that when someone is searching for your keyword(s)
long or short tail they will see results from multiple sources which gives your article/info
more of and authoritative status in the searchers eyes. Plus the fact that if you are
listed 10 times on the front page of Google via different sites the odds of someone
visiting your page increases.

Have a Great Day!
Michael

I do it because I can write quality articles that get accepted to EZA and other directories. This helps to spread my website link around and give my sites more exposure, plus, over time these articles will help my sites to rank better in the SERPS.

Writing articles can also serve to give you validation as an expert in a specific niche.

If you don't like writing, you can always outsource it. But, anyway, article marketing is still a very valid method of gaining credibility and traffic online. IMHO

The reason you want to use articles, squidoo, hub pages, etc can be summed up in one word: Backlinks

Squidoo's good points are that they're a PR 8 website which is good if you can get your lens' link on the front page. I would definitely suggest Hubpages over Squidoo if you're doing article marketing.

There's an old article called "Jiggling the Web" which essentially says:

You will rank higher if a search engine finds your site by following a link than if it crawls your site directly.

And you will rank higher if that link is crawled on a scheduled visit than if you ping Google about it.

In other words, if I tell Google "crawl mysite.com" it will not rank my site as well as it would if I just linked mysite.com in a Squidoo lens which Google crawled on its own schedule, and the link was followed.

I can't say whether this is 100% true, because I don't know what Google does, and because of confidentiality I can't tell you what the search engines I've worked on do.

But I can say that if I personally were to build the best search engine I could, using the best practices I know based on everything I've seen and worked on over the years, my search engine would work like that.

What this means is left to your discretion.

They're isn't one definitive answer for this.... there are several.

I read one guy use to use his first tier of web 2.0 to create backlinks for the website he was ranking. He then made a second tier of backlinks to rank his first tier of web 2.0 sites. The idea was to dominate the highest ranking on google with his main site, and to then get as many of his first tier web 2.0 sites to stick on the first page with his website. That way he got to control more of the overal traffic that keyword received.

Another used it soley for backlinks.

I personally use it for these many reasons:

- Backlinks
- Hope it ranks below my site for extra traffic
- The extra views then gets me on the most viewed so I get traffic from people looking at other articles in the same niche
- Gives me a presence all over the place, so anyone who sees me several times will eventually give in

Same goes for any other web 2.0 site.

my .2s

It's a good way to get a quality backlink to your site and also drive traffic to your site too.
however, google love them!

Here is how I see it...

Is it a waste of time

YES and NO

If you dont do it, YES it is.
If you do it and dont reap any benefits. Yes it is

If you never try it... then its a definite yes
But if you try it .... it may be a no

Point here is marketing online of anything is always going to questionable until you try it

The ultimate tester is Testing.

I once heard a well respected marketer online, call some person out who she had heard was making good money from an affiliate marketing niche because she said that the products were low priced and if you are only making $2 to $7 a commission and who would buy these products

I caught wind of it, did some research on it. Had to shake my head too at the type of product but gave it a whirl and sure enough the market was a winner. It makes me commission every day. Yes the commission in that market is lower but its so damn frequent that is like selling a large ticket item not as frequent.

What people buy and where people go makes me shake my head every day but I have learned not to just sit on the sidelines and question it all. Instead i jump in and test out the waters of products, traffic sources and find out for myself what works

What doesnt work for one, may work for you.

We each approach tasks from different angles.

writing and submitting article are great for backlinks and tons of people visit these article directories everyday so they do generate traffic as well

All things being equal, a privately owned site (your own domain and hosting) is going to rank better than if you put the same content on a Squidoo or Hub Page or wherever.

I think articles bring a different kind of person. if you can presell well.... they are more serious, more targeted, and more likely to buy straight up or someone down the track onyour autoresponder series.....

but that is just in my testing.