There is a very interesting thing about content marketing and sharing contents – the more you share knowledge among the masses, the faster it spreads and increases, and the more knowledge you gain back as a result. And this is one repetitive cycle. It is often heard or said to not share content or ideas in order to safeguard it from thousands of people so that they do not get to know the specific content or take ideas from them but in reality, this actually helps a great deal in getting enlightened with information or content that many might have no idea about or have never thought of. It is very commonly heard that ‘sharing is caring, and it becomes a lot more fruitful and efficient when the matter is about a variety of contents which will be helpful to the users.
Usually, in idle times people tend to surf through the internet to pass their leisure time or even to gain knowledge about recent trends be it fashion, business or in general facts. While surfing, users come across various articles online on various topics such as about a newly released sports car or a review of a high-end vacation getaway or reviews on various films. Sometimes they scroll through certain blog posts regarding a topic of a new and promising diet ensuring to melt away extra calories if it is followed in the same way. There are many articles and blogs on numerous business topics and trends in the digital marketing world, or on topics of fashion trends, and then there are the food and travel bloggers to give out a plethora of experiences about various dishes or destinations with just their words. All of these articles and blogs are considerably a part of a massive campaign which is known as ‘article marketing’.
What exactly is Article Marketing?
In the field of marketing, article marketing is considered to be one of the oldest types of strategies extensively utilized by the online marketers in order to obtain new visitors or customers and increase their sales and benefits on the respective websites. This implementation commonly includes publishers and writers as their predominant contributors, with the article marketing services serving as the intermediaries or negotiators who help in matching the writers with interested publishers and contrariwise. In more simple words, article marketing is a part of content marketing. It is that procedure of advertising which helps the companies in writing and distributing perfunctory articles to a series of outlets like article banks, message boards, and e-newsletter publishers.
The foundational motive behind the strategy of article marketing campaigns is to fascinate a wider range of online audiences and increase the number of sales and scope for benefits for products or services offered on the websites. Articles that are the most popular ones, surely support a writer’s or a publishing company’s influence and position as an expert in a specific field, and help create a loyal audience for themselves. Article marketing helps in magnifying the website traffic where their web pages rank in the search engine results, which results in more people coming across the site and having the chance to purchase whatever the author is selling.
Aim of Article Marketing
As already mentioned above, the fundamental objective of article marketing is to gain an array of new online audiences. There is another important motive behind this strategy and that is to magnify the sales and leads of the products and services which the website offers to its customers or visitors. It is very much crucial to acquire brilliant and practical content to sustain the audience on the sites and balance the numerical. The benefit of having more traffic boosts and leads is that as the traffic on the web pages increases, the rating of the page gets better on the search platforms. As a consequence of this increasing demand, people will come across the websites on their own search platforms frequently.
The Vital Steps for a Successful Article Marketing
A great article or content can have many lives flowing across the platforms and websites and this way can generate traffic for months or even years. But it is equally important to write down articles in a way that would not only drive organic traffic boosts but also enlarges the reach of the article marketers across an array of various channels or mediums. Article marketing is one of the fastest and comparatively reasonable methods, which will act as a helping hand in promoting online content and captivating new visitors to the sites. From inventing and deciding on creative topics to content writing, all of these play a crucial role in creating some spectacular sharing strategies. This makes article marketing a commanding art. Even with all the negative dealings, raps and derogatory comments from some users, content or article marketing is still a feasible and useful strategy in the market.
Suppose there is a new start up business and for the business to reach the heights of success, the only thing the entrepreneur has in his/her hands is full-fledged promotion. Promotion of the business can be done by any process, either by paying for the advertising campaigns or receiving the same attention and viewership through the strategy of article marketing.
There are various important factors behind a successful article marketing campaign, and among them the four most vital ones are:
- Keyword Search Optimization
The foremost task in setting up a successful article marketing campaign is to run a thorough search mission of feasible keywords which meet the needs of the selected plots. Marketers must find out keywords or phrases having 3-5 unique keywords, and the kind of keywords that their competitors utilize. All of this ensures that the keywords being used are of some value. The marketers must use catchy titles with unique keywords to promote their business, and also to raise the level of curiosity in the viewers who would be eager to know more about the article just by looking at the title. Keywords are helpful for the users while they are typing for an article. Articles with proper usage of keywords are of huge benefit to the site customers.
- Developing Content for Article.
The second factor is to make sure that the article is well organized and well developed which addresses the personalities and needs of the usual market consumers. Articles can be evolved and developed internally or expanded outwards to freelancers for free of cost. In both cases, relevant and authentic content is the primary element. It is better and much more crisp to write down the articles with bullet points or numbers to put emphasis on important parts instead of writing huge paragraphs. The use of bullet points must be maximized in general to make the experience of writing and reading articles frangible and memorable because people will be able to remember them properly.
- Submit the Article.
The articles must be submitted online to the article catalogues with high-rise PageRank scores. While submitting the articles, a resource box with links, description sentences, and their names must also be included. Some of the most popular are:
- Ezinearticles.com
- Helium.com
- ArticleBase.com
- ArticleDashboard.com
- GoArticles.com
The articles must be well informative in nature and not just for the motive of impressing the readers. This can easily be done by using plain and simple words instead of the big and complicated ones. Simple words help an average person in understanding the article he/she is reading. After finishing off the article, it must be read again thoroughly by the writer to see whether he/she is understanding the meaning and motive behind the chosen topic of the article. Another better option is to make someone else read the article for reviews because just sometimes external point of views matter a great deal. In some matters of concern, editing is necessary because what the writer is understanding being an expert, the reader might not comprehend the meaning and to see the reader understands the concept is the main purpose here. Anything new can be added to the articles to make it look more interesting and relevant with the recent talks or trends. This is where variety comes in as there are different ways of stressing a point when the bottom line is to attract people to visit the desired website(s). New information can be gathered by joining and posting in online forums. Snippets can also be put in articles to shape it better.
- Promoting the Article.
Promoting the written articles on the marketer’s own as well as various other websites is the last and the most important footstep so that it can have hundreds of eyes stuck on them. The articles must be promoted on well-known blogs and also to the content accumulators to reach the wide range of audience possible. Some of examples of the sites are as below:
- Digg
- Slashdot
- StumbleUpon
- Google+
Every article has a summary of its own. But the majority of the websites require this summary in just 3 or 5 sentences maximum, to know what the article is all about and whether it is worth spending so much time and reading. In this case, efforts must be made to not lose out on the opportunity of having an interesting appeal in front of the readers and visitors.
Even promotion of the website though article marketing strategy is very easy and simple. These four secrets mentioned are the main tools that are used for the benefit of the marketers and their websites. The bullet points needed to be remembered are – use a captivating title, ensuring that it is well organized, relevant and informative which will encourage the people to visit the website.
Pros and Cons of Article Marketing
Article marketing is a very feasible and gaining strategy and if done properly then, undoubtedly a huge number of traffic will be gained, which is what this form of advertising campaign is exactly all about. There are plenty of factors both in support of and against article marketing strategies. It is equally essential to have appropriate knowledge of them before taking any kind of action.
Here are some of the key advantages and disadvantages of using article marketing strategy which have been explained and pointed out quite well.
Points in Support –
- Increasing Brand Awareness:
The article marketing strategy is a great way to increase the awareness of a brand and also, to brand one’s own self. In fact, any company is free to use this article marketing strategy for establishing a good and effective relationship with their readers and visitors, which will also help them in converting the lot into consumers if the company’s articles are proved to be useful enough for their readers, as and when required.
- Increasing Page Rank & SEO:
The article marketing strategy helps the professionals and marketers in increasing the rank and SEO of their page. This is the most effective advantage of article marketing because if the articles are good enough with relevant, authentic and readable content then the search results will get higher rankings. The higher rank of the search results will also result in the company’s entire website to achieve a higher rank since those very articles have backlinks to the website put up in them.
- Inexpensive Marketing Strategy:
Article marketing is one of the least expensive strategies and the marketers use it to promote their products or services. Once the article is published and put up on the site, it stays there as long as the website is up and running. It also gets arranged in search engines and however, with the apparent and given time and effort they gain to achieve a free advertising tool.
- Articles can go Viral and become Popular:
If any company writes a great article, it is certainly expected to get viral and which will result in them getting a lot of readers and visitors for their websites and their site traffic would face an enlargement as well. Articles becoming viral and popular can create a lot of advantages for the company in the upcoming future.
Points Against –
- Contents can be stolen:
If a company uses the strategy of article marketing, they publish their article to another website. There, some editors might omit or remove the company’s resource box, which makes the whole article marketing strategy useless for the company. This might affect the company and they may not get the due credit and site traffic which they deserve.
- Can be Expensive at times:
A company might need a wordmonger or beginner to help them write great articles which would lead the customers into their website. Hiring a freelancer that too a n expert one, can cost the company some extra money.
- Article Writing and Submitting can be tedious/time-consuming:
The whole procedure of writing down an article and presenting them to the distributors can be really time-consuming. The company needs to plan properly in order to present new articles at regular intervals and make time to write and submit those articles on time.
- Publishers getting more picky with Article Formats:
While writing an article, it must be kept in mind that the format of the article must be properly done to avoid facing little problems while getting approval from the publishers and article directories.
SEO Benefits of Article Marketing
Article marketing offers to the professionals and marketers many benefits when it comes to SEO. They are:
- Enabling the website in such a way that they get to rank for an extensive range of keywords.
- Increasing the supremacy and reliability of the website.
- Gaining more organic traffic from search engines.
- Converting the users into subscribers or customers.
- Providing chances for ranking images or video searches.
- Directing the command to other pages on the website through links internally.
- Gaining accurate backlinks to the website from other sites and blog spots.
Why is Article Marketing Important?
Different webmasters will consider the above question differently and might mean different things. To every webmaster, the importance of marketing depends on how badly it is in demand, how seriously it is needed by them. But no matter how much they need article marketing and for any specific reason, there is one thing that will never change and that is the fact that when it comes to long-term, constructive and cost-effective methods of promotion, article marketing is always going to be at the top of the catalogue. For any administrator, professional or marketer, article marketing is successful in providing their readers information regarding various products and services of their owned brand which is actually very crucial in all kinds of businesses. Along with information about various products, article marketing is a productive source of information for readers for finding out the advantages and disadvantages of the products.
Following are some of the reasons why article marketing is crucial in online marketing and also, why article writing should be considered important:
- Free – Article marketing is free of cost, which means no charges are levied for posting articles online. This can be considered as one of its best features. Countless articles are allowed to be published without the stress of expenses which are quite expected from other marketing campaigns. If in case someone is unable to write their own articles, then for their help freelance article writers are present all the time, with a much feasible rate as this is anyway inexpensive than other marketing methods. Besides, the marketing method is used for long term marketing purposes and exposure because satisfactory contents are expected to stay online for a much longer time, even for tenure of two years without any objections.
- Good Exposure – Another best feature of article writing is that one can reach as many people as they want and even can make out of the place or industry that they do not belong to. Moreover, websites can be promoted by writing press releases and articles for the social bookmarking websites, in order to receive more viewers to read those articles and profit in sales of the firm.
- Long-Term Goal – As already mentioned, article marketing provides long term promotional tenure which is important if any person has a limited budget but also wants their promotion of the website to run smoothly. Unlike other marketing procedures, article marketing is the only procedure that can generate traffic or customers even if posted just once for as long as anyone wants to read the article(s).
- Help Rank in SERP – A compelling, thought evoking and persuasive article is worth reading and can get an amazing analytics of views and click rates, along with traffic.
As it can be seen that the importance of article marketing will always depend on how much the webmaster or marketer wants their website to rank in the SERP and have a profit in their potential sales. Ineffectiveness and success rate, it can be rest assured that quality content will always take the website to the top and this is one of the foremost reasons why article writing is important for online success.
Topmost Myths about Article Marketing
- Myth: Article marketing doesn’t work.
Fact: Article marketing is essential for building a network of incoming links that drives website traffic. - Myth: Distributed articles get indexed as supplemental pages.
Fact: Articles can get top-10 placement in major search engines, depending on submission method. - Myth: You need to submit your article to thousands of sites manually to get a response.
Fact: Articles can be distributed in many ways. The most common include self-publishing on your website, submitting only to sites dedicated to a specific topic, emailing a quality article to high-traffic sites, and submitting to popular article repositories.