One of the best ways for people who are new to internet marketing to get started is with article marketing. This is the first in a series of posts about article marketing. In the next ones, I'll go through how to write one and how to get them publish, etc… Make sure you bookmark this site so you can come back and check them out. For today, I'm going to walk you through the pros and cons so you can decide whether it is right for you.
Article marketing is by far one of the most effective types of internet marketing, if done correctly.
When someone tells me there is good news and bad news, I always take the bad first so that I can end on a good note. You don't really have a choice, but the same rule applies.
First the Bad, well, not necessarily bad but things you need to know before you expect a miracle in the next few days.
#1 – Article marketing is a notoriously slow and laborious process. It consists of writing say, 1 piece of content every day. It should be at least 500-700 words, and be completely original material. The reason I say it is slow is because it takes a while for the search engines to find, track, and trust you. For a brand new blog site, expect at least a 90-100 day lag before you are given some authority. But if you play your cards right, like I'll show you, it will pay off for years to come.
#2 – It is a Highly Competitive arena. Article marketing is perhaps the most-popular method of FREE traffic out there so, of course everyone wants to do it. Who doesn't want free traffic? Also, everyone that does article marketing is fighting over the top 5 places for each keyword. Statistically, if you aren't on the first page of search results, you aren't going to get any traffic.
#3 – Once you write an article, what then? Well, you have to get it published. It's not as bad as it sounds. There lots of article directories around the web, they are free, but you have to abide by the rules of each one. It becomes sort of an art form, I'll give you good general rules in the follow up posts.
#4 – Consistency is key. In order for your article marketing strategy to pay off, you must be consistent. Remember how I said that it would take at least 90-100 days to get some authority? I wasn't kidding. If you can crank out one piece of content per day for 100 days, it will become second nature to you and you should have no trouble continuing. Then, you will really start to see the traffic pour in.
#5 – Keywords, Back links, SEO. These are all terms you need to get really familiar with. You see, it's not enough to just write an article and publish it in an article directory once a day. You have to be everywhere, and you need to have your site optimized so that the search engines can find your content. No worries about this for now. This is where a most people get stuck. It's easy to write an article, it's quite another to get people to see it, read it and act.
Now that I have sufficiently scared you away from article marketing, let's look at the benefits.
#1 – You can build a steady stream of traffic over time. If you write good "evergreen" articles, they can have a long a profitable life. I still get traffic on articles I wrote a couple of years ago. As the number of articles you contribute grows and gets spread around, magical things start happening. Traffic starts appearing out of nowhere, only it's not nowhere, it's the fruit of your hard work.
#2 – It never hurts to practice writing. As an internet marketer, you had better like to write and be pretty good at it. Every article should have a purpose. Think of it like high school writing class. Practice persuasion, emotion, story-telling, conversational writing, etc… all these are valuable tools when communicating with your audience.
#3 – You learn by osmosis. Just having to come up with an article a day will teach you a tremendous amount without you even realizing it. If you don't think you know enough to write one piece a day, think again. All you have to do is go learn something new and write it in your own words. No one has rights to knowledge, only the specific words used to describe it. You can do reviews, "how-to" lessons, general thoughts, questions, whatever. All of these are good. Remember you only need 500-700 words so you don't have to get crazy here. Keep it simple and straightforward.
#4 – Here is the biggie. Article Marketing gives YOU "Authority". When new people come to your site and they tons of articles about all kinds of stuff related to the same thing, you have just positioned yourself as an expert in the field (even if you really aren't). Any time you can teach someone something, you automatically have some level of authority.
#5 – Your website gets "Authority", and this is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. When the search engines bless your site with authority, they trust that you aren't some fly-by-night scam shop and will open the gates of traffic to you. That means visitors to your site, and money in the bank.
There really is no ugly, except maybe the time consideration and some decisions you'll need to make later on…
So, although article marketing has a learning curve and takes a while to gain momentum, the experience, authority, and flow of free traffic to your site is well worth the time investment. Here's a great webinar on article marketing for free, just sign in. It's great, and it will also get you some more information on how article marketing fits in to the bigger picture of internet marketing. Watch out for the next posts in this series.
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