Effective Article Marketing for SEO

Article marketing is a popular website promotion method that website owners use to boost their websites link popularity, and it’s still somewhat effective. However, as with nearly all automated or semi-automated link building methods…. the effectiveness has declined, at least in part, due to search engines (seemingly) lowering the value of links obtained from “link hubs” such as general web-directories and article directories.

Now, just because mainstream article marketing is somewhat less effective than it was even a year ago doesn’t mean that variations of the strategy aren’t still supremely beneficial. The link building strategy I am talking about can build one-way links to your website and easily give you backlinks from authority websites. It’s not a viral link building method, but one well-placed link from the right website will far outweigh any benefits you’ll receive from dozens backlinks from low-quality article directories, especially if you’re submitting the same article to multitudes of directories which may lead to lessened effectiveness due to duplicate content.

Getting backlinks from Authority websites….

Can be as simple as asking for them, though with a little bit of incentive for the website owner. Their incentive is a high-quality article written on their topic of choice and your incentive is the backlinks that you are going to ask for which will be placed in the “about the author” bio at the bottom of the article.

Here’s the step-by-step method I use to obtain backlinks from high-ranking and popular authority websites. This “authority site” link building strategy is one of the link-building methods I was referring to in my earlier post about reinforced link building, though the thoughts outlined in that post are merely speculation on my part.

Before you go any further – I should disclose that this link building method is not simple or easy nor can it be automated. If you don’t have the ability to create high-quality content on your own, it can be down-right expensive as well. However, it’s an uber-effective link building method well-worth the benefits if you have the time and/or the money to incorporate it.

Finding websites to link to yours

This is the first step and one of the more-important steps in the process. To find suitable partners I simply hit the search engines. If I were looking to boost the link popularity of this website, I would search for websites focused on website development, website promotion, internet marketing or search engine optimization. Luckily, there are millions of them.

For best results you’ll want to find a (large) group of topically related websites, but filtering out those that are directly competing for your target keywords. No website owner with any sense about them is going to help their direct competition rank higher in the SERPs, though you might run into a couple of situations where it might work out – it’s generally best not to waste your time or their time by trying to get a backlink from a direct competitor.

Keep the blog-to-website ratio low

It’s great to get backlinks from blogs but for this method it will be better for you to get a dedicated page that is no more than 2 clicks from the home page and one that will not get buried over time. Blogs are notorious for their poor internal linking structure and it would be too easy for a blog post to get buried … so it’s really best to have a dedicated page for your article.

That being said, it’s much easier to get a website owner to agree to this strategy when they run a blog because there is less time overhead involved in adding an article to a blog than there is if a website owner has to create a new web-page. If you’re just starting out it may be best to try both routes, and for certain niches you may need to rely on blog-posts almost exclusively. However, as I stated before, I prefer the dedicated web-page method.

Before I even consider sending out emails to website owners I compile a list of 20 or more websites, hopefully differing somewhat in topical (keyword) relevancy. Generally I prefer to choose the highest ranking websites, but I also like to consider whether or not a website likely has a large user-base because it’s always nice to receive traffic directly from the article itself irrespective of whether there is search engine benefit or not. Though ultimately this link building method is used to improve your websites rankings in the SERPs.

Contacting the website owners

This is probably the most important aspect of this linking strategy. When you are looking to exchange a well-written article for a couple of links to your website, you’ve got to come across as professional and be sure that each email you send out is customized; not a uniform, general-purpose email. You especially want to avoid using promotional language in your email or you will likely get flagged as sending spam.

I run quite a few websites, and over the years I’ve had a number of linking requests. If an email even looks to be a general purpose “cut and paste” email or even worse, it’s promotional in nature, I will either just delete it or I’ll respond in a not-so-nice tone explaining that I don’t appreciate the spam-like activity and warn them about the problems of sending unsolicited promotional emails. I hardly think that I’m unique in this area, so you’ll want to customize the email for each individual website.

If at all possible, get a contact name. I wouldn’t rely on the whois records because the domain registrant may not be the person you are contacting, and never, ever start an email with the likes of “website owner” or “link partner” or “potential… (anything)” or “webmaster”… If you don’t have a proper name, then skip the personalized greeting altogether.

Sample email template

Here is an example of an email template I might use to contact a website owner about this link building strategy. This is only an example, feel free to use it in any way you like:

Hi,

I’ve been looking to promote my website and I came across your website in the search engines. My website is about (offers, etc) SOME TOPIC and since you’re website is about SOME RELATED TOPIC I was wondering if we could come to some sort of a mutually-beneficial agreement.

What I can offer is an article for your website on any topic you like and the only thing I am asking for is an “about the author” bio below the article that contains a couple of links to my website. The article will be high-quality and it will not be used anywhere else; it will be for your website only.

If this is of interest to you please let me know.

I do hope that this email does not inconvenience you, and I look forward to your response.

Thank you for your time,

YOUR NAME

This is a loose-example, but you should take note of a couple things:

1. I did not reference my website in the email at all
2. I did not go into too many specifics
3. I tried to come across as humble/sheepish and in a non-promotional way
4. I answered the question “why are you contacting me” right away
5. I provided their benefit right away and casually added my benefit making it seem like a simple request (”…only thing I am asking for…”)
6. The entire email was short, sweet and to the point.

When you’re contacting a website owner out of the blue, especially when you’re essentially asking something of somebody that you do not know, you want to keep it simple. While there is always the potential that you’ll upset a website owner and they’ll report your email as spam, by personalizing the emails (not using a template), keeping a respective tone throughout the email (non-promotional) and not including your website’s URL in the initial email, you’ll be minimizing the number of spam complaints that you get as well as keeping your website “out of the picture” if there happens to be a complaint.

If it’s not obvious, you should not send out a batch of emails to website owners, this step should be performed one-at-a-time.

Setting the terms of the agreement

Once responses start coming in, you’ll want to lay down the terms of the agreement. In some cases the first response from a website owner will include a topic for the article, and that’s a great sign. However, you’ll want to get into specifics as much as possible without hounding the other website owner or causing them to re-think the proposition because it’s become more of a hassle than it’s worth.

In some cases phone communication will be better to pan out the details, but whatever is more convenient for the other website owner is the route to take.

You can setup the terms of your agreement in any way you like, but this is how I try to run every transaction, though there are times that I compromise my position in order to get the links that I am looking for.

Example agreement terms

• The article will be exchanged for placement of 2 or 3 links within the “about the author” section below the article.
• The page that the article is on will be crawlable and indexable by search engines and your website links cannot be redirected dynamically, have the rel=nofollow attached or in any way prevent search engines from crawling them.
• The article will be on a topic of your choice and professionally written.
• The article will not be used, shared with, sold to or otherwise distributed to anybody else except you.
• The article itself will not contain any links to my website nor be written in a way to promote my website.
• You may edit the article to add links to it or slightly modify the content so long as the about the author bio remains intact and unchanged.
• You may keep this article hosted on your website for the lifetime of your website so long as the links to my website remain intact and search engine friendly.
• The article must be placed on your website within 7 days of acceptance of it

The above is merely an example of the terms that would need to be agreed to in order for the transaction to take place, and I would avoid sending a long-list of rules to a potential linking partner…. you can use the above list, but I would try and keep the terms in sentence structure using natural language.

Writing the article

When you’ve agreed to the transaction with terms that you can live with, you’ll want to verify the details of the article. You should get the following information from the website owner:

1. The topic of the article
2. The angle/focus/slant of the article (what they want conveyed through it)
3. An estimated word-count (if they require a minimum number of words)
4. Whether they want keyword-targeting or not (SEO copywriting)
5. If they have any specific keywords or thoughts that should be mentioned

While this is a bit of work in itself, the last thing you want is to write an article (or have one written for you) that doesn’t meet the needs of the other website owner.

When the article is written, you need to be sure that it’s excellent the first time around. You do not want to submit an article to a website owner that is rife with spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes or that is hard to follow-along with. Make it your goal to have zero (0) revision requests on the first submission.

Follow up with and thank the website owner

People like to be appreciated, and after the article has been added to the other website according to the terms you’ve set, you should send a letter of thanks to the website owner. You’ll find that in some situations, especially when the article has proven beneficial for the website owner, that you’ll get an invitation to for another transaction, and that’s really a time-saver considering the amount of time that it takes to obtain these types of backlinks.

Special Offer

As a professional content writer I have the ability to create the type of web-content that is suitable for this link building method. If you would like a “hands-off” approach to this effective link building method, I can help you out.

For a limited time I am offering to perform this link building service to help you obtain backlinks from 5, 10 or 20 high-ranking websites. You can order directly from this page, but please send me an email after payment so that we can sort things out.

Each article will allow 2 or 3 links to your website using varied, but keyword-focused, anchor text. It is recommended to link to internal pages of your website as well as the home page – but ultimately that’s up to you.

Guaranteed links from 5 websites

10-15 different URLs allowed
Placement within 30 days
Total: $200 – $40 per website

Guaranteed links from 10 websites

20-30 different URLs allowed
Placement within 35 days
Total: $350 – $35 per website

Guaranteed links from 20 websites

40-60 different URLs allowed
Placement within 45 days
Total: $600 – $30 per website

I hope you’ve found this article useful, and if you have any questions, feel free to let me know.