Article Marketing Traffic – Part Four

Duplicate Content: The Truth

You’ll likely hear Internet Marketers warn you against the downfalls of recycling articles or submitting the same article content into multiple directories.

From personal experience of being involved in article marketing for the last three years, this has never been an issue for me. I will say however, that recycling article content across multiple topics can hurt you.

Here is what I mean:

Let’s say that I create an article titled “Ten Ways To Repair Your Credit in California”, and then I use the same article, renaming it to “Ten Ways To Repair Credit in New York”, and I do this 50 more times covering every State, moving into Canadian provinces, territories, perhaps even going over to the United Kingdom and beyond.

This kind of activity has wreaked havoc on my rankings, and in some cases, it’s been said that Google will penalize you quickly, for doing this by slapping any sites that feature Adsense along with these types of articles, so I suggest that you avoid doing it.

That being said, I have used PLR (Private Label Rights) content successfully, without making any modifications to the content, but I do recommend, whenever possible, that you outsource your article content to affordable freelancers so that you are able to showcase original content on the directory and entirely different content on your website itself.

When it comes to integrating keywords into your articles, you might find that the primary keyword phrases are too competitive, and that it’s difficult to rank for them. Instead, focus on longtail keywords, even in highly competitive niches.

Here’s an example using the weight loss market:

Keyword: Weight Loss

Too competitive, difficult if not absolutely impossible to rank for.

Weight Loss System

Still too competitive of a keyword phrase.

Weight Loss After Pregnancy

Still a popular niche market, but drilled down so that the competition will be less intensive.

The objective is to stay within popular niche markets, because you know they are profitable, active markets, however you want to go beyond the most competitive phrases until you find long-tail keywords that are still consistently being used, but that fewer competitors are targeting.

Run your keyword phrases into Google’s Keyword Tool until you have a solid listing of at least 20 keywords for your articles.

When it comes to creating your articles, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Article Title

You want to plug in your primary keyword phrase into your title whenever possible, but be careful to keep the title strong, motivating people to read your article and of course, visit your website.

Since the title is the very first thing that people see when they visit article directories, you need it to be relevant and capture their attention quickly.

Stick with direct titles, or if you know your target audience (and you should) consider group centric titles (ex: “Top Ten Tips For Internet Newbies” or “Five Critical Steps In Getting Your Ex Girlfriend Back”.

Article Summary:

This is basically a short description of your article and is what people see when they are searching for articles using the article directories built-in search utility. Usually the summary is only a few lines long so be sure to get right to the point, highlighting the most important aspects of your content.

Note: Some article directories don’t allow you to enter in a specific summary, but rather pull the first few lines from your article’s body, so make sure that you craft your article accordingly if you are using directories that do this.

Article Content/Body:

Keep it interesting and on topic. Use short paragraphs rather than lengthy ones and limit your article body content to 400 characters in total. You want to get them interested enough to click on the link within your resource box without giving too much away.

Story telling is a very smart method that successful article marketers have used to bring a reader from start to finish. The last paragraph in your article needs to be as compelling as the first because this is ultimately your very last chance to encourage your reader to click on the resource box and learn more about you, or the topic you are focusing on.

We’ll take a look at the resource box in our next installment.

POSTED BY Rick on Apr 23 under Article Tools