My “latest” project… that’s my “Latest Articles” website… is providing me with some valuable lessons on what people should NOT do when they attempt article marketing.
The main problem I have to cope with there are new article submissions where far too many people over optimise their articles for specific products, brands or locations (or all three) which, in my opinion, effectively wastes their article marketing efforts!
Now while the bulk of the new content for that site is coming in automatically from the Unique Article Wizard service, a large proportion of the manual submissions made have also exhibited this particular problem.
So here’s an article I have just written addressing this article marketing issue…
SEO Can Kill Your Article Marketing
Savvy marketers use article marketing to build multiple, long-term backlinks to their websites. But too much emphasis on integrating “clever” SEO tactics into your article marketing will negate the many positive benefits.
How it is “supposed” to work is simple…
1. You write an informative article about something.
2. Your article contains an “Author’s Resource Box” which includes links back to your site.
3. You submit the article to major article banks for publication.
4. IF it gets published, other interested webmasters can then choose to reprint your article on their site.
The principle is solid… they get good free content to publish, and you get links back to your site.
However the current practice of over optimising for SEO (search engine optimisation) purposes is not so good.
Consider an excellent article on “Lower Back Pain Relief” written by a Chiropractor…
It’s packed full of really useful information on what can cause lower back pain and some simple methods on how to relieve it.
Normally, it would be a great article for many webmasters to syndicate on related sites, except for the trend to over “optimise” the article for SEO purposes.
In other words, the title of the article has now become:
“Lower Back Pain Relief in New York”
And the actual content of the article includes the words “New York” and the initials “NY” scattered throughout.
And because webmasters are not permitted to change the content of any articles they reprint, the article is practically useless to those who may have wanted to syndicate your otherwise useful content!
Why is it useless?
Well most webmasters want “generic” content about their niche… they almost certainly do NOT want it optimised for a specific location like “New York” or anywhere else!
Another one just across my desk… a useful article on “Athletic Injury Safety Tips” which has been ruined for syndication by including multiple references to the city of Pittsburgh and “Pittsburgh Chiropractor” in the title and body of the article.
So BEFORE you go putting any specific location, product or brand in the title of the article you are submitting for publication on the major article distribution networks, ask yourself if it is likely:
1. to be accepted for publication on the article network site, and
2. that others will be less interested in reprinting your article on their site.
In other words…
Keep the SEO to the Author’s Resource Box – that’s where it belongs! Your link in the resource box with the correct anchor text will have much more useful SEO benefit than stuffing the keywords into the body or title of the article.
It will also mean more people are likely to actually reprint your useful information.
Stephen Spry runs an article marketing service called Latest Articles where you can submit your original articles for publication, and find free articles for syndication on your website.
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