Cracking The Article Marketing Puzzle

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Bill Platt


Article marketing is one of those topics that always seems to generate a lot of conversation in forums and marketing discussions... Online marketers are generally split into three camps, when it comes to arguing the effectiveness of article marketing as a promotional method...

Camp One swears by article marketing, as an integral and essential part of their online marketing activities... They suggest that the benefits of article marketing are twofold: direct click-through (CTR) traffic from the article that may deliver immediate sales; and improved search rankings that will drive additional search traffic...

Camp Two insists that the only real value of article marketing is for building links and creating link popularity for a website, enabling the website to rank well in Google and other search engines...

Camp Three accuses the first two camps of telling stories and selling a sham...

I am in the first camp... I have made a lot of money online, in the last 10 years, because I use article marketing to promote ALL of my websites...

Some people insist that I have only made money online, because I sell article marketing services... But, the truth is that I have made a lot of money in a variety of niches that are "not related" to online marketing... And, I have made that money in those niches, because I have used article marketing as the primary promotion method for all of my niche websites too...

Measuring The Success Of An Article Marketing Campaign

Those folks in Camp Two measure the success of their article marketing campaigns by the number of back links and Google page one search results that they can achieve...

Those of us, who are in camp One, measure our success by the dollar value of the sales that an individual article can deliver to our businesses... We count our search engine traffic to be only a BONUS benefit of article marketing...

There are four reasons why Camp One should make more sense...

1. Direct click-through traffic from articles is often from people who are pre-qualified to purchase what we are selling... In turn, this ensures a better conversion-rate on the traffic that we do receive directly from an article...

2. While search engine traffic is good, the people finding our websites in the search engines are not always as strongly targeted, nor pre-qualified to purchase what we are selling...

3. There can only be 10 websites on page one of Google and the other search engines... Depending on how competitive a niche may be, it could take weeks or years to reach page one of Google for your targeted keywords... It could take a single article, with its links to your website, or it could take 500 articles to get your website to page one...

4. If you can get direct click-through traffic to your websites, from your articles, you stand a good chance of generating sales at your website -- NOW, instead of later...

In Camp One, we utilize article marketing to generate actual sales, rather than search engine rankings...

We understand that "a bird in hand is more valuable than two in the bush", and in other words, "a dollar in hand is more valuable than a page-one listing in Google..."

The beauty of putting sales ahead of search engine rankings is that we can make money today, rather than to have to pray for good search engine rankings, so that we might be able to make money tomorrow...

Where Do You Want Your Articles To Take You?

The success that you will achieve with your articles will be determined before you put your very first word into your favorite word processing software...

What are you trying to achieve with your articles?

This is very important, because your goals will determine your outcome...

Article marketers in Camp One seek to write articles that will appeal to their target audience... Every word that they put into an article is designed to appeal to its human audience...

Article marketers in Camp Two are only interested in getting back links...

It really is that simple...

Are you writing your articles for a human audience, or are you writing your articles for the search engines?

If you are only concerned with getting the back link, then that is all you will receive...

However, if you are concerned with getting the attention of the people most likely to buy your products and services, then that is what you will more likely receive, and you may even discover that you are getting attention from the search engines as well...

Sharing A Secret

I am going to share a secret with you right here and now...

Search engines value articles that have managed to attract their own inbound links...

In other words, the articles of yours that are published on third-party websites that will send real link popularity to your website are those articles that other people have deemed valuable enough to link from their own websites...

People do not link to junk, unless they are paid to do so...

If people do not link to your articles on third-party websites, you should not be surprised if Google and the other search engines do not value the links that you have pointing to your website from your articles...

So, if you want your articles to pass real link popularity to your website, then you need to write your articles in such a way that other people will find value in them and want to link to them...

This is the primary reason why so many people fail with article marketing... They write crap, then get mad when they get crap results...

People who leave Camp One for Camp Two, then leap to Camp Three are people who have never attempted to follow any of the article marketing principles, described in this article...

Opening The Door To Article Marketing Success

There are many online publishers who will share your target audience with you...

When your articles focus on the wants and needs of people in your target audience, it will also appeal to the publisher who has an audience you want to reach...

There are five essential steps to creating articles that will produce good results for your business...

Step One: Write an article that people in your target audience will want to read...

Step Two: Make sure that your article carries a title that will get your article opened... No matter how good your article is, publishers and readers make the decision to read your article, in less than 10 seconds, using your article title to determine if your article might be worth the time they will sacrifice to read it...

Step Three: Make sure that the article is good enough to keep the attention of your reader to its conclusion, so they will see your Authors' Resource Box at the end of the article...

Step Four: Construct your Authors' Resource Box with the goal of getting the reader to your website, where you can make a comprehensive case for your offer...

Step Five: Distribute articles to the online publishers, who are most likely to publish them...

There is an art and a science to developing articles that will produce the desired results for your business...

The science is understanding what is required to make your articles attractive to readers and publishers...

The art of article marketing is being able to put an article together in such a way that people actually want to read it and are thankful for having read it...

Final Thoughts...

It may be easier to write articles only for the search engines... Impressing the search engines can be as easy as impressing my three-year-old... "I'm gonna eat your ear..."

But if you are willing to invest a few more minutes to make sure your article will appeal to publishers and readers too, you might just find that article marketing has a value beyond the search engines... And in my book, that spells M-o-r-e R-e-v-e-n-u-e...

p.s. If you liked this article, please give it value by linking to it...


About the Author:
We do not utilize a cookie-cutter approach for our article distribution service. Instead, we strive to deliver the articles we distribute directly to the publishers who are most likely to publish them... Let us distribute your good-quality articles to our publishers, who already have access to the audiences you want to reach... Get started today at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/ Written by Bill Platt. Also get Bill's free article marketing ebook.


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