15 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
15 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Article Marketing - Are You Just Wasting Your Time?

by Ron Douglas
13 replies
I'm in the process of outsourcing the article marketing for a new site I recently started.

I know that there are many article marketing experts on this forum. But, there are also many people who are frustrated by writing articles and not making any money.

This is not an article marketing bashing thread. Rather, I'd like to get some feedback that could possibly help everyone.

From my experience and research, it seems that to be successful you either need to write a great viral article, or you need to focus on the right keywords. If you can do both, then great.

But how do you know whether or not you're wasting your time by targeting certain keywords? There seems to be many different opinions on this.

Competitive analysis
Number of searches per day
Relevancy
Trends
Longtail keywords searched for by likely buyers

I'd like to hear from experienced article writers who are making money. What criteria do you use to determine if a keyword or group of keywords are worth targeting?
#article #marketing #time #wasting
  • Profile picture of the author Imran Naseem
    Banned
    [DELETED]
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216848].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Zach Booker
      The best thing you can ever do is download the free version of market samurai...it will save you or your article writer hours in keyword research.

      As long as the keyword get's decent traffic and as long as the keyword isn't too competitive than it'd be a good idea to have an article for that keyword.

      Zach
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216890].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Ron Douglas
        Originally Posted by Zach Booker View Post

        The best thing you can ever do is download the free version of market samurai...it will save you or your article writer hours in keyword research.

        As long as the keyword get's decent traffic and as long as the keyword isn't too competitive than it'd be a good idea to have an article for that keyword.

        Zach
        Hi Zach,

        Specifically, how do you determine 'too competitive' and decent 'traffic'?
        Signature
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216898].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Zach Booker
          Hey Ron,
          As far as how much traffic should be the minimum, it is totally up to you. I think I know what niche your referring too and you would probably wanna stay around any keyword that get's 50+ searches a day, but if you want to target more keywords, and pay for more articles than go for it


          As far as competition goes, I would try and stick under 25, 000 competing pages per article. In quotations of course. But you can easily get your article listed on the first page of Goggle for keywords that have 40-50 thousand competing pages, you just need to social bookmark and submit your rss feeds. (you can outsource this easily for like 20 bucks too)

          The best thing you can do is use market samurai, all you do is type in your niche (e.g 'make money') and than it will give you 100's even 1000's of results. Than all you do is pick ones with under say 40 000 competing pages and you only pick ones with 50 plus searches a day...
          It really is a life saver...

          Zach
          Signature
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216951].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Emailrevealer
    I hope I'm understanding your question but here's what I do. I use tools like spyfu and gogle keyword tools in adwords to see how many people are searching for my keywords and then I use quotes in the google search to see what my compition is like.

    If my compition is under 50k I can usually get on the first page of google with a well optimized article and some social bookmarking.

    To give you an idea. Last year I was paying about 3500 a month on PPC to get about 70% of the sales I get now for writing about 25 articles a month.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216857].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author KenJ
    Hi Ron

    This is a great topic for a thread. Here is my look on it.

    I cannot predict which of my articles will work the best. I have used obscure terms very successfully and high search terms unsuccessfully.
    I now focus on terms that have the following criteria.

    600 + searches per month
    with <750,000 competition (No brackets)

    What I find works for me is combining a number of these keywords in an article. I do not know the theory behind this but this seems to work well.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216866].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Michael Dominic
    You pretty much listed all of the things I look at before writing an article. At the end of the day I make sales from a majority of my articles.

    I would say that I depend on getting those articles ranked in a decent spot. If they don't make it, I see poor results.

    Hit and miss I guess. What else can I ask for from 15 minute articles? I do provide quality information though. My intention is to help people in each article I write.

    If I was to write articles to promote a new site of mine, I would spend more time writing those articles. Quality Articles = Quality Backlinks in my opinion.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216869].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Chiayee
    hi Ron:

    I have published over 100 articles in EZA. These articles are from different niche, and yes, I made money from article marketing.
    Granted, not all articles yield profit.

    Here's what work for me:

    1. Write for people, not search engine.

    2. Choose niches where audience are hungry and desperate.

    3. Write articles with products/brands/problem related keywords.

    4. Write compeling headlines. If you really have no clue how to write one, just grab mangazines in your niche, they should give you tons of ideas.

    5. Write compeling resource box that leads people to your website. I spent a lot of efforts in resource bos. As a result, my average CTR is 30%. In one of the article I published, I managed to achieve 85% CTR.

    6. If you run out of idea on what to write, visit forums of your niche, that should give you plenty of ideas.

    just my $0.02,
    CY
    Signature

    Nothing to see here

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216900].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
      Pick the right niche, perform good keyword research and take action. That is a good start. Yes, article marketing works.
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216911].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author AskJesusLeon
    Hey Ron,

    You need to pick up a good keyword tool. Reason is that they will tell you how competitive a certain keyword is and based on whatever criteria you set you will say if it is a good keyword or not. Personally, for me, if the keyword I am researching has more than 20K in the competition column I leave it alone and look for another one. 20k and below for me works, 10k and below is even better, this is what works for me and my business. Good Luck
    Signature

    Grow Your IM Business NOW with these 8 Free Gifts ==>Give Me My Reports Now!!

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[216919].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author JJ-Undercover
    What he said above ^^^^^^^^

    Check google's 1st page both with and without quotes. If the sites listed there are weak and or there are articles from article directories on the page, it's a go.

    Other than that, it's kinda hit or miss if you DON'T pick good keywords.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[217001].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Neil S
    Hey Ron, you have some good information here already, I will add an additional tactic that works.

    Go to Ezine articles and look up an article in the niche you want to promote. Then look at the bottom under "Most viewed articles for the past 90 days". Look at the keywords they are writing for. More often than not you can emulate them with great success.

    Good luck.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[217026].message }}

Trending Topics