Article Marketing Question...

I think those days are gone!

I've used paid ISnare submission a year ago and was disgusted by their abysmal processing speed. Sometimes it took 2-3 months to distribute the article I submitted using a premium credit. I couldn't see any good change in rankings after submitting a few articles.

I've completely stopped using article marketing.

Jeff, I'll start with your last question first...

Much depends on how you define "article marketing" - using the manure spreader approach to get backlinks from article directories is pretty much a dead dog (see the post above mine), in spite of what the peddlers of article spinners and automatic submission tools will tell you.

Getting your articles published and read by real humans interested in your topic - AKA, content syndication - is alive, well and thriving if you do it right. That dog most definitely still hunts.

I won't get into the mechanics of syndication here. Minimal effort with the forum search button will put anyone in line with hours of reading.

As for what links to put in the sig file or bio box, the important thing is to know what you want the reader to do.

If you want them to visit your blog, link to your blog. If you want them to subscribe to a list, link to your squeeze or other landing page. And so on.

If I'm allowed two links, one will be a mild call to action promising a continuation of the reader's experience. The other would be the naked URL (complete or shortened with a click tracker) to the same page, just in case my content is republished in a format that does not support live links.

If I was writing on a fishing forum or publishing a fishing article, I'd link to a landing page on my site with more content and a very prominent opt-in offer. The sig might read something like this:

"John has been chasing fish for five decades. If you would like to tap his experience or just swap fish stories, visit him on his blog at [url] "