Article Marketing "Syndication" SEO Requirements and/or Theming Procedures?

by Ernie Mitchell

Posted: 12 years ago 17 replies

Over the past few months, I've spent a lot of time reading and bookmarking WF posts on Article Syndication Marketing by experts like Alexa Smith, Paul Uhl, Bill Platt, John McCabe, and others.

Lately, to stay abreast of her latest posts and not miss anything, I've frequented Alexa's profile (Statistics > Find All Posts By Alexa) page so much that I'm a little concerned that she might think I'm stalking her.

At last count, I've read and bookmarked over 50 threads that predominately address Post-Panda Article "Syndication Marketing.

I now have so many threads bookmarked and therefore so much information to sort through that I cannot find what I'm looking for! I should also add that the 60s were extremely good to me!

I killed a lot of brain cells between 1965 and 1969 therefore, I often have to go back and review information after I've read it. :confused:

Getting to the point --- it seems like the other evening I read a thread where someone in authority wrote that overly concentrating on keywords isn't all that critical when writing for syndication. I can't remember who wrote it --- maybe Alexa --- maybe not?

Whoever it was, I remember thinking that the person's logic made sense in that when a publisher is browsing EZA for content to syndicate their first criteria for selection might simply be whether he or she feels their readers would enjoy reading the piece. Perhaps I'm all wrong on this and I certainly don't want to get all the SEO guns riled up.

Somebody please jump out and share some insight on this subject.

I have a fairly large archive of columns/articles that have been published repeatedly in print (newspaper) media and therefore are not SEO optimized. I want to repurpose these pieces for online syndication and if I don't have to go through them one-by-one and add keywords I would rather not. In reality, I suppose the keywords are already there by default --- just not to modern SEA standards. When you write for the off-line world, you write to engage, entertain, and inform with no regard to bending your "creative" around the search engines.

Also --- Moving on to item two: In another thread, the subject of Article Theming was mentioned but not discussed at length. I read their propaganda on WebContentStudio.com (no affiliation) and it sounded logical. Is anyone using the theming technique in their article marketing with success?

Thanks in advance and thank-you to all those fighting the good fight to tell the real story about Article "Syndication" Marketing.

Ernie Mitchell

#“syndication” #“syndication” #and or or #article #marketing #procedures #requirements #seo #theming

Alexa Smith

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

I’ve frequented Alexa’s profile (Statistics > Find All Posts By Alexa) page so much that I’m a little concerned that she might think I’m stalking her.

Don't worry about it at all: we know about it, here, when someone's stalking me.

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

the 60s were extremely good to me!

I killed a lot of brain cells between 1965 and 1969

It reminds me of the story of the pop-star, planning to write his autobiography, who put an announcement in the newspaper: "If anyone can remember what I was doing throughout the 1960's I'd be grateful if they could please let me know" ...

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

someone in authority wrote that overly concentrating on keywords isn’t all that critical when writing for syndication.

I think it's fair to say that it's less essential in the sense that the proportion of traffic coming to you through search engines is far smaller. Mine is about 20%. Paul has been doing this for 5 times as long as I, and earns 5 times as much from it, and I believe his is probably close to 0%, but he may post, anyway - and confirm or refute that, or just send me a lawyer's letter ...

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

when a publisher is browsing EZA for content to syndicate their first criteria for selection might simply be whether he or she feels their readers would enjoy reading the piece.

Exactly so. It's "do I want to share this content with my readers/subscirbers/visitors?". That decision is typically nothing to do with SEO at all. But if they put copies on authority sites, there's no harm in your later benefitting from that, to some extent, in SEO terms as well as getting targeted traffic.

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

I want to repurpose these pieces for online syndication and if I don’t have to go through them one-by-one and add keywords I would rather not.

Maybe you did a little more in the 1960's than you remember, after all?

If it helps, what I'd do is "keyword-based SEO for the titles only."

If your articles are going to become widely circulated, there's no harm in ensuring that their titles each start with a "major keyword". ("5 Things You Didn't Know About XYZ" is not much good: you need it to be "XYZ - 5 Things You Didn't Know About It". This is quite a big and significant point). It's quick and easy and potentially beneficial. One can, eventually, gradually, end up - as a bonus - with some of the sort of traffic described in the last paragraph of this post: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794 (it sounds like you have that post in your "collection" already: I'm just alerting you to that one paragraph to cover this specific point).

I'll have to leave question two for others ...

[ 2 ] Thanks
1 reply

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Ernie Mitchell

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Don't worry about it at all: we know about it, here, when someone's stalking me.

Alexa --- Thanks for your reply.

Firstly, concerning my grand tour through the 60s --- don't "ever" attempt to consume a case of Pernod and smoke one of those large round bales of weed in one sitting! I attempted to do so one Saturday night in Saigon back in 68 and I haven't been quite the same since!

Though I haven't thoroughly reviewed it yet, I believe the link you included to "Your Article ISN'T Working - This Is Why" is to the thread I was looking for. Thanks.

Your response confirmed my preconceived conclusions about publisher's criteria for selecting content to syndicate.

Having said this, and looking into the future, one would think that as the old school spinners and crap content creators take their last flailing breath and a new wave of high quality Article "Syndication" content creators enter the game, the competition for publishes to syndicate their work will become more intense.

As more and more quality creators aggressively enter the market, it seems logical to assume that they will have to vie harder for publishers to syndicate their content. Does this mean that the bar will raise and future authors will have to thoroughly SEO their content to make it more appealing to publishers or perhaps entertain something like "Theming" as mentioned earlier, to position their work above the heard? Your guess is as good as mine. :confused:

I may be off point on this but it seems to me, from a big picture standpoint, that even though publishers may not assign a lot of importance to SEO when they pick an article to syndicate (given my situation I'm glad they don't

), SEO "may" play a critical role in where their traffic comes from.

This is above my pay-grade but I see it as a possible future competitive edge. Maybe this is all idiocy but me thinks NOW is the time to be creating relationships with publishers and digging the trenches deep before the market gets crowded.

Wheeeew! --- Back to reality.

Thank-You for the tip on SEOing the titles and the link to the post. Yes --- I indeed did have it in my collection. Now I know where to look.

Much Obliged,

Ernie Mitchell

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2 replies

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Alexa Smith

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

don’t “ever” attempt to consume a case of Pernod and smoke one of those large round bales of weed in one sitting! I attempted to do so one Saturday night in Saigon back in 68

Ooh, noted; thank you. (I quite like Pernod!) ...

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

one would think that as the old school spinners and crap content creators take their last flailing breath and a new wave of high quality Article “Syndication” content creators enter the game, the competition for publishes to syndicate their work will become more intense.

Yes, perhaps so ... but the availability of syndication is also growing.

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

it seems to me, from a big picture standpoint, that even though publishers may not assign a lot of importance to SEO when they pick an article to syndicate (given my situation I’m glad they don’t

), SEO “may” play a critical role in where their traffic comes from.

Yes - to varying degrees, of course; this may be so.

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

me thinks NOW is the time to be creating relationships with publishers and digging the trenches deep before the market gets crowded.

Yes - this can easily turn out to be right, IMHO.

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2 replies

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Ernie Mitchell

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Ooh, noted; thank you. (I quite like Pernod!) ...

So do I. That was my problem!

I once had a dream that there was a world Pernod crop failure. It was terrible, just terrible.

Thanks
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JohnMcCabe

12 years ago

Ernie, I often sit in the "publisher selecting content" chair, and Kurt is correct about how I, at least, search directories like EZA. First, I look for new articles by "my" writers - the ones who have provided just what I was looking for in the past. Doesn't take all that long, as it's a short list.

Next, I use the site search.

I never scan the categories. Never. Even with the ongoing cleanup, there's still so much crap to wade through you have to filter it somehow.

I'd also like to endorse the idea of doing the SEO on your titles. If you have time, and the article lends itself, adding useful headings with keywords in them will also help.

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1 reply

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Ernie Mitchell

12 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Thanks John,

I am definitely going to revisit the headlines and taglines on my archived articles.

What I've recently learned on the WF has been very encouraging and enlightening!

I had more or less written off the columns/articles in my old newspaper column archive as worthless for digital publication unless they were completely SEOed, which in my opinion would be a monumental task. The archive represents about a year's writing work and it is a perfect fit for an affiliate program I want to promote. I am elated that all I have to do is retool the headlines --- yes-yes-yes.

I'm also going to do some PPC banner advertising and I'm toying with approaching webmasters of sites that I'm advertising on and using the banner campaign business as a lead in for syndication solicitation. I figure the best way to establish a relationship with publishers is to give them some business.

By all that's holy, one would think if I get good click through rates with banners on a given website, I should also get good click throughs on the articles as well. We'll see.

Ernie Mitchell

Thanks

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Ernie Mitchell 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

.... Yes, perhaps so ... but the availability of syndication is also growing.

This is good to know.

Late last night I thoroughly read "Your Article Marketing ISN'T Working - This Is Why" thread that you sent the link to in your first post.

I have to say that had I thoroughly read the thread before hand I wouldn't have bothered voicing the concerns I brought up about "attempting" to employ stringent SEO on syndication articles, nor the Theming issue concerns.

I FINALLY "get it!" Outside of using some keyword common sense, and carefully choosing the title and sub title, the creative writing process automatically addresses the SEO issue, naturally and organicallly, without getting in the way the creative process and therefore the quality of the work.

Enjoy your Pernod.

Ernie Mitchell
- Thanks
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John Coutts

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

Firstly, concerning my grand tour through the 60s --- don't "ever" attempt to consume a case of Pernod and smoke one of those large round bales of weed in one sitting! I attempted to do so one Saturday night in Saigon back in 68 and I haven't been quite the same since!

You can remember the things you did on Saturday nights in 1968?

:confused:

I remember 1968, but not many, if any, of the Saturday nights ...

John.

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Ernie Mitchell 12 years ago

Originally Posted by John Coutts

You can remember the things you did on Saturday nights in 1968? :confused:

I remember 1968, but not many, if any, of the Saturday nights ...

John.

You've been reading my mail!

I know exactly where you're coming from.

I've come to the conclusioin that if I had it all to do all over again I'd make the same mistakes but I'd hire someone to document it and tell me what happened.
- Thanks
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NicoleBeckett 12 years ago

Alexa has answered so thoroughly (as usual!) that there's not much I can add I, too, am going to suggest the SEO title route for the articles you've already written, because it's a whole heck of alot easier than trying to optimize the body of each article - while still giving you some SEO "power".

As for your future articles, Ernie, I would focus on keywords to some extent. That way, you can still provide awesome, compelling, well-written information - and get some lovin' from the search engines. Personally, I focus on a couple of keywords for each article and consider the search engine traffic I get from them to be a bonus, rather than my "whole ball of wax". You'd probably be pleasantly surprised to find that it's really not that difficult to naturally integrate some target keywords into your writing.
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Kurt

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time reading and bookmarking WF posts on Article Syndication Marketing by experts like Alexa Smith, Paul Uhl, Bill Platt, John McCabe, and others.

Lately, to stay abreast of her latest posts and not miss anything, I’ve frequented Alexa’s profile (Statistics > Find All Posts By Alexa) page so much that I’m a little concerned that she might think I’m stalking her.

At last count, I’ve read and bookmarked over 50 threads that predominately address Post-Panda Article “Syndication Marketing.

I now have so many threads bookmarked and therefore so much information to sort through that I cannot find what I’m looking for! I should also add that the 60s were extremely good to me!

I killed a lot of brain cells between 1965 and 1969 therefore, I often have to go back and review information after I’ve read it. :confused:

Getting to the point --- it seems like the other evening I read a thread where someone in authority wrote that overly concentrating on keywords isn’t all that critical when writing for syndication. I can’t remember who wrote it --- maybe Alexa --- maybe not?

Whoever it was, I remember thinking that the person’s logic made sense in that when a publisher is browsing EZA for content to syndicate their first criteria for selection might simply be whether he or she feels their readers would enjoy reading the piece. Perhaps I’m all wrong on this and I certainly don’t want to get all the SEO guns riled up.

Somebody please jump out and share some insight on this subject.

I have a fairly large archive of columns/articles that have been published repeatedly in print (newspaper) media and therefore are not SEO optimized. I want to repurpose these pieces for online syndication and if I don’t have to go through them one-by-one and add keywords I would rather not. In reality, I suppose the keywords are already there by default --- just not to modern SEA standards. When you write for the off-line world, you write to engage, entertain, and inform with no regard to bending your “creative” around the search engines.

Also --- Moving on to item two: In another thread, the subject of Article Theming was mentioned but not discussed at length. I read their propaganda on WebContentStudio.com (no affiliation) and it sounded logical. Is anyone using the theming technique in their article marketing with success?

Thanks in advance and thank-you to all those fighting the good fight to tell the real story about Article “Syndication” Marketing.

Ernie Mitchell

The number one rule of SEO is content...In your particular case, since your content is already written, I wouldn't worry about SEO. Just work on the titles and then get it out there.

However, remember this: When publishers seek content at EZA, they don't always browse the categories. Publishers will often use EZA's own search box. SEO isn't limited to Google. The more variety you have in your titles and body keywords, the more likely you'll show up in the EZA SERPs.

For example, if I had a site and wanted to publish an article, I may search for "train a poodle" instead of "dog training" at EZA. Here's EZA's SERPs for "train a poodle":
Your Search Results Are In!

One thing to notice is how the top results have "poodle in the title. Also note that EZA's search is powered by Google.

Again, in your particular situation I wouldn't worry about optimizing your existing content. Instead focus on getting it online. But stuff you write from here on out, spend a couple of extra minutes to do a little SEO and add some more relevant keywords. Just because you intend to syndicate your content doesn't mean a publisher isn't using a search at EZA to find it.

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myob 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell

When you write for the off-line world, you write to engage, entertain, and inform with no regard to bending your "creative" around the search engines.

^^^ This has been precisely my style of on-line article syndication for nearly 15 years and it has always transended SEO, Panda, Google dances and all possible algorithm iterations. Article syndication and SEO are actually two separate and entirely distinct methods for generating traffic, although with some conditional overlap depending upon variable market factors.

For example, a well-written article may contain a 1% keyword density without requiring any specific SEO considerations at all. Using optimization methods as mentioned by others to integrate keywords may boost it a point or two. However, in some very heavily competitive markets such as all of mine, SEO keywords are so overwhelmingly entrenched that article syndication may become virtually the only source of traffic.
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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Kurt

I agree work on the Titles & also minimize stop words on the older off line articles.

Just a note about EZAs search, that search is a Google Custom search, anyone that owns a site can include a Google Custom search on their own sites. I've had Google Custom search on my own sites for a few years now.

The Google Custom search that appears on regular sites will not display any pages that are not already indexed in the regular Google SERPs. Just a heads up.

Thanks

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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

Ernie, how many of the off line articles do you have?

Thanks
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Ernie Mitchell

12 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Ernie, how many of the off line articles do you have?

Hello,

Thanks for the advice on Google Custom Search and Stop Words.

I have approximately 200-archived evergreen 750 to 800 word columns or "articles." This may not sound like a lot for a years work but they are very well written, if I do say so myself --- and I will.

I did a newspaper column for almost four years but quit a few months ago because I was getting burned out. I subscribe to the philosophy that you are only as good as your last work and I felt I was slipping. Evidently, I wasn't because when I quit it bummed out several people.

When I start writing again, which will be soon, I've considered starting up the newsprint column again but doing so creates a bit of a dilemma. Newspaper publishers don't like to give up over 800 words of real estate where according to Alexa Smith the best size for online syndication is around 1,200 words.

Thanks Again,

Ernie Mitchell

Thanks
1 reply

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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

I have a fairly large archive of columns/articles that have been published repeatedly in print (newspaper) media and therefore are not SEO optimized.

After reading the OP again my only concern would be that other newspapers have already posted your articles online (newspaper archives, etc...). Have you checked any of your older off line articles by copy & pasting a sample of text with quotes into Google search?

Example: "Thanks in advance and thank-you to all those fighting the good fight to tell the real story"

The above search is a sample of your original post in this forum thread, this exact search will only return this forum thread.

My suggestion is to do a few sample Google searches of your off line articles & see what pops up in Google search.

Thanks
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Ernie Mitchell

12 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Some of the columns were indeed published online. When published online they were only supposed to be published behind a pay wall and therefore not accessible to the search engine bots but an absent-minded webmaster published some of them on an open site.

It is my opinion that the only adverse effect of this will be that I will not get credit for the original indexization rights, which isn't insignificant but it will not affect my prospects of getting them syndicated. ???

Thanks,

Ernie Mitchell

Thanks

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Article Marketing "Syndication" SEO Requirements and/or Theming Procedures?

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