Best Keywords for Blog Posts via KeywordCorralSocial Marketing and the Lack of Content with Purpose
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Do you use article marketing at all?
What we mean is do you submit content to places like ezinearticles.com?
About 4 years ago, this strategy of using what are called “article directories” became extremely popular. What was so appealing about it was the search engines seemed to absolutely love these directories and since you could put a “resource box” at the end of the article, you were able to promote your website on these popular sites.
Due to the popularity of this strategy, thousands of directories started popping up all over the place and so did services for both submitting content and also creating it.
The problem was however, that people where creating content that was completely useless and they were also using resource boxes that only had a keyword anchor text link.
The strategy that people focused on was simply getting a backlink and that was it.
Talk About Missing the Big Picture
One of the terms that we use a bit is “purpose” and we are extremly big believers in the practice that you need to clearly understand the purpose of what it is you are doing and always ask yourself…
“is what you are doing right now serving the most effective purpose possible for your business?”
We are also big believers in testing and tracking and one of the things we discovered pretty early on was a lot of these article directories that we were using where very popular with not only the search engines but also with real people looking for help on that topic. Now this is a small percentage of the total but sites like ezinearticles.com gets a HUGE amount of traffic from real people.
So why then were we just giving them garbage for their readers, which more likely then not encouraged the readers to want to avoid our website rather then visit it?
So we started to focus our content on the reader rather then the search engines, we started to create…
Content with PURPOSE!
This does not mean we did not keyword optimize the content, but with every article we submitted we wanted to ensure that the content…
- Had a title that got the readers attention
- Related to the reader to engage their interest
- Gave part of the answer but left them wanting more
- Gave them the exact steps to get the rest of the story
By doing this we found that the traffic from sites like ezinearticles.com, skyrocketed!
With social Marketing this strategy is probably more improtant then ever. We are going to be sharing with you a few differnt social sites and services that we use and get pretty good results with by submitting content to and you are going to be faced with a decision to make… and we guarantee you it is very tempting to take the easy way.
What we mean is you are going to find that posting semi unique content on all these different sites is a lot of work and you are going to be tempted to take shortcuts and just copy and paste snippets of text from articles you wrote or PLR and pass that off for good content.
Do NOT fall into that trap!
Remember these social sites have massive amounts of real people surfing their pages and you want to ensure that you provide value to them. Make sure your content has a purpose and it is not just to get a back link. Focus on traffic not just links!
Well, my eyes are going crossed… bad cold going around these pastures and so our hope is this post makes good sense and is not a nyquil induced ramble 
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Really , many of us did submit our articles that time. Even I submitted some of my articles and yes , I did have article directories which I sold when time came. Even now a days when I have something to write I do write for article directories as well.
Johny Cows last blog post..John Cow Milk It Theme For Free - Not Again
Cow Man, you are right on the money. Backlinks from the article sites are one thing, but if you want the other critical things — syndication and click-thrus, you must submit quality.
In this day and age of spam on the internet, almost anything of quality stands out (like this blog).
Mark
(friend of Conn, fan of Cow)
Mark Masons last blog post..Niche Adsense Themes Lessons Learned (Part 1)
Thanks Mark… and nice to see your fan :)
I agree with you 100%. It takes about 2 seconds to browse through an article directory to find ‘pulp’ that is there just for the link. I write informative articles but also use directories to research information too. Articles can be a great research to use as part of your personal development. As the previous comment says good content stands out a mile.
Steves last blog post..Internet Marketing for crafts - learn from John Reese
Excellent point about the research… you are bang on!
Excellent post! Besides people submitting crap for the backlink, many “gurus” are also giving the advice on how to whip up crap articles in 3 minutes for said backlink.
And, I also agree with Mark, that these days “quality” really seems to stand out.
Cheers!
Jay
Going Greens last blog post..Vinyl Records Recycled Into Great Gift Ideas
I have never thought of using these article sites. I see how they can be problematic for your site as opposed to beneficial if you do not submit decent content, but with rich, purposeful content surely only good things can happen!
I may well give this ago…
The Dudes last blog post..The Dude Game - Week 3
Ugh… I know that this is supposed to unleash the waterfall of traffic, but when I look at these directories I can’t imagine anyone actually clicking through 99% of that junk. That has been my mistake I guess, because I just can’t get past thinking the only benefit is the link. That’s it… today is the day I start posting to the directories “with purposeful content”. Thanks for drilling in the :idea:
Trents last blog post..Easy Transition from Mainstream to Adult Affiliate Marketing
There are only about two dozen directories i actually focus on.. they are the ones that get traffic. What i recommend you do is submit to a bunch and then watch which ones give you results and then focus on only those.
Question - Does the duplicate content issue come up when you are using article marketing?
If you have an article syndicated on an array of websites/directories can this possibly hurt your efforts in the eyes of Google Vader….
Robert
It comes back to do you want one result in google or multiple results. This is why we modify the content and the titles a bit to make it so more then one article will show up in google.
As for hurting your site.. linking to your site with articles that are the same will not hurt it… that is not how the duplicate content issue works.
Yeah, I used to submit everything I made to directories, as well as digg and other social networks. Laziness took over… especially after I realized it really did nothing.
I realized that quality articles are what brought the traffic in. I wrote, and still do write, great informative topics about random subjects (my niche allows me to do that) and you’d be surprised where the keyword hits come from… it’s great.
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Could you provide a bit more details on *how* you implement your strategy. Perhaps in another post? Do you just put half the article in the directory and tell the reader to get the rest at your site? Or, do you write a complete article and leave out important points that will naturally draw the reader in (which would be very tricky for the average writer, like me, to accomplish) Are there other, better strategies?
Sure :)
A future post? Or are you going to just keep me in suspense :)
Colds are lousy to endure - hope you feel better soon. Lots of chicken soup with chili peppers (habaneros are a favorite of my family) can help too.
Feel better, Barbara
Thanks… a little better today but not great.
I write because I love to write. I do not want junk associated with my name. Writing just for the sake of a link, what a waste of time. Give the reader quality and they will come back for more. Thank you, for this post. :lol:
Thanks for the comment :)
I have always been a big believer in writing quality content whether on your blog or in submitted articles. People need to be fully aware that a blog is not a business and writing crap, in the long run will come back to bite them!
Nice Post
Tims last blog post..How To Get Traffic - The Basics
I absolutely agree with Debra. There are some very good points in your post. keep it up:)
browsing a website like digg you can easily identify spam Vs. quality but then most of them are link baits :lol:
jack7s last blog post..Nintendo Announces WiiSpeak
It’s just too few quality content articles roaming around the social networking system. The vast majority of articles is just link bait and “X ways to do Y” type of posts.
Too bad!
Chips last blog post..Response Times And Deadlines
you are right on the money with the post.
being the owner of BlogVibrations.com, you have no idea how much junk i see being submitted. however their are also alot of great posts i see being sumbmitted.
i know what we are both talking about are two different kinds of sites, but their kinda related. i think…. lol
would love to see more posts by you about how to make the most of article directories and article submissions.
Cheers,
Christopher Clayton
(friend of Milk, fan of Cow) - stolen from manson and edited by me
=]
Christopher Claytons last blog post..How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?: 3 Necessary Tools for the High Rolling Affiliate Marketer