Powerful Strategies For Successful Article Marketing

A good article submission strategy will not only help position you as an expert in your field, but will also provide you with important inbound links that will work to increase your web traffic. So what's the best way to jumpstart your article submission program? Just follow the strategies in this article.

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There are three important reasons to consider using article marketing as a means to build your online business.

1. To position yourself as an expert in your field.

2. To drive traffic to your website.

3. To secure high-quality one-way inbound links to your website

Here are three simple strategies that build upon the above.

Article Submission Strategy #1: Identify Quality Article Sites
There are many article sites out there and it can be difficult to select the ones that will have the most impact on your business.

There are two kinds of article submission sites; general purpose and industry-specific.

The general purpose sites contain a wide variety of topics from relationship articles to pet advice to book reviews. When you select a general purpose site, it is important to make sure they have a category that closely matches your target audience. If they don’t, move on and locate another site.

The industry specific article sites focus on a particular business area. An example of an industry specific site would be Small Business Brief, which focuses articles on helping the small business owner.

A good article submission strategy will utilize both specific and generic article sites. Start with identifying your industry specific sites and then look to add a generic site or two to round out your list.

Article Submission Strategy #2: Select Articles Sites with High PageRank

PageRank is a measure of how many high-quality inbound links a site has obtained.

You can see the PageRank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar on your web browser and enabling the PageRank feature. Once this is done, you will see an indication of PageRank within the toolbar for every site you visit. PageRank is given as a number between zero and ten, with ten being the best possible score.

One of the advantages of article marketing is that you are allowed to place links back to your website in the author bio area at the end of your article. By sticking with high PageRank article sites, these links back to your website carry more weight. I recommend sticking with article sites that have a PageRank of 4 or higher. Ultimately, you want to select article sites that have a higher PageRank than your own site.

Article Submission Strategy #3: Avoiding Duplicate Content

As search engines have gotten smarter, they have built in filters that help cut down on duplicate content in search results. So, for example, if you have an original article you wrote on your PageRank 3 site and that same article is reproduced on a PageRank 5 article distribution site, the chances are good your site will get pushed down the search engine rankings for the main keywords used in the article.

Many people who use article marketing simply copy the content they have already produced on their website. I recommend you spend some time rewriting your article so that at least 30% of it is unique content.

Here are some tips for changing your content without having to rewrite the entire article.

- Select a different title for your article
- Completely rewrite the first paragraph and the last paragraph
- Reword the first sentence of the middle paragraphs
- Cut some content or add some completely new content

Although it takes a little extra time to do this, I feel the results are worth it. Some marketers will not agree that this is necessary, but the reality is that no one knows for sure how Google is filtering out duplicate content. Since their algorithms are constantly changing, it’s better to play it safe and do a little rewriting.

Make the Most of Your Article Marketing Program

I’m a strong advocate of article marketing. However, too much of a good thing can be counterproductive. To make the most of your article marketing program, I recommend the following.

1. Do not use article marketing software. While it can be tempting to use software that submits to hundreds of article marketing sites, the search engines can penalize you if you start building links very quickly. In addition, the quality of submissions can be quite poor. Your much better off to maintain control over your article distribution.

2. Select 5-7 quality article submission sites and stick with them. You may submit the same exact article to each article site as long as it differs enough from the original article on your own website.

3. Make sure you link back to your site in your author bio area. Most article submission sites will allow 2-3 links back to your website. Take advantage of this! This is one of the main reasons to submit quality articles.

4. Be consistent in submitting articles. There’s no need to submit more than one quality article a week. If you have the time, you can certainly submit more. But remember, article marketing should be only one strategy in an overall comprehensive marketing program.

5. Submit quality articles. If your article devolves into a few short low-quality paragraphs, you’ll end up hurting your reputation in the long run. In addition, you may find that article sites start flagging your articles and refusing to publish them. Always submit quality material with the intent to help your target audience.

Following these strategies will provide you with additional web traffic and help increase your search engine rankings by building quality inbound links. Don’t delay – start your own article marketing program today!