Article Marketing for a Physical Product

6 replies
This is my first time focusing on a specific physical product in a store format rather than a more informational type site, so I want to make sure I understand correctly...

Let's say that the store is about widgets. There's different pages for metal widgets and wood widgets and so on.

Most of the keywords are people looking to buy widgets. When you type those keywords into the search engines, you get other store sites that sell widgets.

So, if I want to compete with these sites and sell my widgets, I want to write articles mostly for backlinks, not necessarily to get on the first page of google. Is this right?

I might write "Benefits of Widgets", "Why Use Wood Widgets Instead of Metal Widgets" and so on. Few, if any, people are searching for "benefits of widgets", and the real keyword is "widgets". So the real benefit is the backlinks?

It's confusing to me cuz you don't see articles ranking for these keywords like you would something like "make your ex jealous" ya know?

Love,
Shannon
#article #marketing #physical #product
  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    First of all, if you are going to write for your site - write informative articles about the products themselves - it's good practice to have a lot of content on your site that will inform your readers. Naturally written articles explaining items and their uses, benefits, etc, will also naturally contain keywords, so having the content and keywords will not only draw search engines but viewers who want to know more about products.

    If you have a product that might be sold by larger stores and listed on those sites they seem hard to compete with because they will be large sites and often have established customers - but they also usually don't have much content about products - so you will pick up some advantage there. If you only have a few products you can really go all out doing a written description, too. I have an off niche and find the products with some written descriptions, etc. helps them sell. People want to know about what they are buying and will often buy from the person that tells them what they want to know about it rather than just clicking a link with a picture and hoping it's the right item for them.

    Once you have an article up on your site you will want to list it on the submission site. You will get a backlink from the site and some views from that sites traffic - but your aim is to write articles that will make others want to put them on their sites. Are widgets something that pertain to sports or construction - write articles that will not only be valuable to your site viewers - but also will be good content for someone with a related site to pick up and use on their own site, blog, or newsletter - it's not posting to 100 submission sites that is the point of submitting articles, it is to get those articles posted on sites with RELATED info and viewers. Actually, not being in a field with high volume keywords is not a bad thing at all. The quality of your traffic should be more important than the quantity when you have a very targeted product. It doesn't matter if 5,000 people view your widgets if they don't have an interest in widgets - you are only interested in the 100 that do.

    If you really concentrate on providing a site with good information and products, you will be surprised how many backlinks you will just inadvertently pick up along the way.
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    Sal
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    • Profile picture of the author ecdavis
      Originally Posted by HeySal View Post

      First of all, if you are going to write for your site - write informative articles about the products themselves - it's good practice to have a lot of content on your site that will inform your readers . . . .

      If you have a product that might be sold by larger stores and listed on those sites they seem hard to compete with because they will be large sites and often have established customers - but they also usually don't have much content about products - so you will pick up some advantage there.
      I wanted to say, "what she said," and also add not to be intimidated should there be larger businesses already in your widget area. This is a perfect opportunity for you to slip in relatively unnoticed under their "umbrella," set up shop, and start earning a share of the profits. Also, although I'm not one to jump on the web 2.0 wagon, your widget area might benefit from your presence on twitter and facebook.

      Evan
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  • Profile picture of the author Kenneth Harvell
    Let us know how that turns out for you. I will follow this thread.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Hi Shannon,

    As Sal said - think more about your potential readers as people than just for backlinks - links won't buy anything but people will.

    If you use all of the widget industry terms and related keywords throughout your content and links that'll help, but you should probably also consider creating a robust system for your content before you start.

    For example, create a blog about the subject, make sure that blog pings update sites whenever you post, make sure that every new post (article) gets social bookmarked (go to onlywire.com and then get a wordpress plugin to feed onlywire (they're free) to see how)

    So even just with that, every new article of yours will get pinged and bookmarked before you even do any distribution, so this adds to your links on autopilot.

    If you're not familiar with doing this, that'll probably be enough to get you going so I won't complicate things by adding more ways.

    And remember to have fun and focus on the people and what will interest them while you're writing.

    Andy
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  • Profile picture of the author Shannon Tani
    Thanks for the advice!

    I was going to tailor content for people and what people wanted to read, but then started second guessing myself when I saw what types of results there were in the search engines.

    Love,
    Shannon
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    • Profile picture of the author Spiros
      An effective strategy is to write articles not for rankings, or even backlinks, but for wide distribution.

      Submit a well-written article that will appeal to a mass audience. Then create a Google alert to see who picks it up and publishes it on their sites.

      As articles get picked up, contact those publishers directly, offering unique articles for their sites. In the unique articles, you can include more diverse links (with varying anchor text) than you would get with all the publishers reprinting the same stuff. You can also insert links into the body of the text, rather than just a resource box. This all diversifies your link profile, giving your main site a stronger presence in Google.

      However, using this strategy, article topics need to be broader and more appealing. So "benefits of Acme baby joggers" is out (because nobody will republish it, other than scraper sites). "Five ways to quickly shed those pregnancy pounds" is much better.

      The key is to find a topic that's related to your products, with mass appeal, that can have a high-interest headline (how-to, 5 secrets of, 7 worst mistakes of, etc.)
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