ArticleMarketing: How Writing Just One Article a Week Can Drive Massive Traffic to Your Website

Article marketing is still a great way to to drive lots of traffic to your web site, as well as a phenomenal way to demonstrate your expertise to potential clients. The 7 article marketing rules I follow regularly include:

Written Sep 02, 2011, read 691 times since then.

Article marketing is still a great way to to drive lots of traffic to your web site, as well as a phenomenal way to demonstrate your expertise to potential clients. In recent years, however, article marketing has taken a beating with the Google Farmer/Panda update, where many article "farms" were slapped and lost significant search engine ranking (or were entirely removed from search results) because of the poor quality of content on their sites. My results with article marketing didn't suffer at all. In fact, I gained more traffic during this time because I've always adhered to 7 very important rules in my article marketing process. The 7 article marketing rules I follow regularly include:

Publishing only quality content. I've never been a big fan of quickly slapping together articles or tried to compete in the "30 articles in 30 days" events. I've always put thought and consideration into my articles so that my readers will gain real value from reading them. In fact, a reader recently told me that she appreciated that I shared all the steps in how to do something, rather than holding back vital information in the articles that I write, which made her want to share my information with her colleagues. Writing articles is the BEST way to demonstrate your expertise, so be sure and share what you know. Readers appreciate the value that you add to their lives, and you remain top of mind when they become ready to solve the problem that you're the expert in solving.
Post on your site first. You want to get credit for your wonderful content, so be sure and post your new article on your site first. Give it a week to be indexed by the search engines, and then you can start to submit it to other sites.
Keep keyword density reasonable. Most article sites require that the keyword density not exceed 1%. Don't try and focus on more than one keyword in each article. You can easily check out the keyword density of your article with this free online took, Live Keyword Analysis. However, for your own site, you can have a 2-5% keyword density. A great tool to help you maximize your keyword density the right way is a Wordpress plugin call SEOPressor or the free Wordpress plugin, All-in-One SEO Pack.
Keyword in article title. Be sure to place your keyword in the first 4 words of your article title. You may want to use a title that contains your keyword, and then a sub-title that offers additional info as to the content of the article, just like I have done in the title of this article.
Keyword in summary and content. Your primary keyword needs to appear in the summary of your article when you submit it to article directories, as well as in the first sentence and last sentence of your article, to make your article more SEO-friendly.
Transitional resource box. The resource box is the biographical information about the author that appears at the end of an article. Typically, the resource box also contains a strong call to action, which is the primary driver of traffic back to your web site. However, if you craft a resource box that appears to be part of the article, like an ending transitory paragraph that contains your call to action or an invitation to get more information, you'll experience a higher click-through rate than from a traditional resource box.
Content syndication is vital. You need to reach out to readers where they are. That means repurposing your articles into slideshows, podcasts, videos, documents, etc. so that you can be found where your potential customers hang out online and have your content in a format that is in tune with their best learning style.

If you're not in the habit of creating great content for your web site, it's not too late to begin. Article marketing is far from dead, and I find it to still be the #1 method to help get your business found online.

Learn more about the author, Donna Gunter.

Posted by DeBorah Beatty, Beaverton, Oregon | Sep 02, 2011

Excellent article, but how do you get around the duplicate content filter on Google if you publish on your site then other places?

I've been publishing articles for quite awhile, but have not seen any increase in traffic from them. Perhaps they're on the wrong topics?
Posted by Donna Gunter, Orange, Texas | Sep 12, 2011

I don't worry about a "duplicate content penalty," as I don't think it really exists. As long as I have a resource box with a strong call to action, people who are interested will visit my site anyhow and opt into my list, which is really my goal in content syndication.

Your articles may indeed be on the wrong topics, that is, one that isn't compelling to your target market. Or, the title or your resource box might not be compelling enough. I'd be happy to take a look at one of your articles and give you feedback, if you'd like.