Article Marketing - 7 Inconvenient Truths
Saturday, November 23, 2013
This essay discusses seven inconvenient truths facing authors doing article marketing. Even successful expert authors needs to take heed if they are to remain at the top of their game and not see their article marketing careers wither and die.
These are the inconvenient truths facing authors doing article marketing:
# 1. Ezines don’t take many articles
One of the reasons for submitting your articles to directories is the hope that they will be published by ezines and third party webmasters and thus:
reach a wider audience; and
gain yet another back link.
Article directories sell their authors' work to ezines and third party webmasters. It is one way in which they make money. In truth, ezine editors would prefer not to pay for the articles, but until a few years ago, the directories were the only reliable source of fresh content for their publications. That has changed.
Few authors, however, know that ezine editors now get the majority of their content direct from trusted authors without having to pay for it. Ezines still get some content from directories, but it is almost exclusively:
from the leading directories and specialist directories; and
from authors who have built a reputation for writing high quality content and whose work they have been following for some time.
Most authors have little chance of having one of their articles published by an ezine or third party webmaster.
# 2. Article marketing to get back links has changed
Submitting your work to article directories is the traditional way of doing article marketing. Once your work is published on the website you will get a link back to your landing page. That is, if you included such a link in your resource box. Few authors realize that some back links are worth more than others. Back links from many small general directories have practicably no value.
Authors have and some still do:
submit the same article to hundreds of directories;
resubmit substantially the same article to the same directory multiple times;
create highly derived content, which they submit to multiple directories.
This is all done to create back links. The search engine optimization (SEO) mantra being:
more articles = more back links = higher search engine listing = more website visitors = more sales.
This is the traditional way of doing article marketing. It is dead. It was laid to rest by Google’s recent Penguin and Panda algorithm updates which reward quality and penalizes the traditional way of doing article marketing set out above.
It is still possible to get back links from unique, good quality articles, but authors must work with the directories and search engines not against them.
# 3. Quality not quantity
To use an old tailor’s joke, the new SEO mantra could be “never mind the width, feel the qualityâ€.
Google is the dominant search engine and it now gives greater rewards to good quality, unique content than it used to.
The importance of this change should not be underestimated for it is having a great impact on article marketing. It is doing more than ushering in a new method of getting back links. It will also reduce the number of authors doing article marketing as many who are now using the traditional method will not put in the extra work required for the new method of getting back links
# 4. Google Authorship is vital to your future article marketing success
This initiative by Google is in its infancy. The idea behind it is simple: improve the quality of content by rewarding good authors. It also enables an author’s work to be attributed to him or her and their work can be tracked across the Internet.
The meta description of your article, that is the part of the search engine listing below the article title, will have a link to your Google + profile and show the photo of yourself that you uploaded to your profile.
Google say this will improve quality and engender greater trust between the public and the content creator. As an author, you should expect that in the future Google will give prominence only to those who have registered for Google Authorship.
# 5. Good authors are held back by article directories
This is the corollary of # 1. above. While a good author is good for an article directory’s business, the reality is that the best authors do not need article directories and the directories know it. These are the authors who can submit their work direct to ezines in their niche.
If your objective for doing article marketing is to attract visitors to your website, article directories are no longer the dominant way of achieving your goal.
# 6. Article marketing is evolving into content marketing
Nothing stays the same forever and that is true of article marketing. When I started out doing article marketing, there were only three ways of publishing your work on the Internet:
submitting articles to an online directory;
creating an eBook in PDF form; and
writing content for your website.
Few authors had their own websites and uploading content was not as easy as it is today. There were not many places to publish an eBook either. How times have changed. Successful authors doing article marketing are embracing, or at least experimenting with turning their articles into:
videos
slideshows
PDF files
eBooks
computer programs
podcasts
webinars
website content
press releases
linking them to picture and image sites such as Pinterest
Each article can now be repurposed into 11 different media to reach the widest possible audience. Article directories are just one medium that authors can use.
The future of article marketing is in multi-media. To remain successful, authors are going to have to learn new skills. Not all authors will use all of the above media, but they will use those that work best for them. The future is less rosy for those authors who stick to traditional article marketing.
# 7. You must promote your work
Back in the days when article directories were the only place to publish your work, an author only had to concern him or herself with writing. The directories promoted the author’s work by including the article in a daily list of new content. Search engines "crawled" the leading directories frequently to index new content. They still do it, but less prominence is now given to the articles than used to be the case.
The rise and rise of social media has been recognized by the search engines, who now give prominence to social media sites. If your goal for doing article marketing is to attract visitors to your website, you must promote your article using a variety of social media and bookmarking sites. Some are free, others are paid services.
The truth of modern article marketing, in all of its forms, is that an author will spend more time promoting his or her work than they did in creating it.
Conclusion
The lesson to be drawn from these 7 truths is that article marketing, in all of its aspects, continues to evolve. Authors doing article marketing must also evolve or risk becoming as dead as the Dodo.
Tags:
Article Marketing, Marketing
These are the inconvenient truths facing authors doing article marketing:
# 1. Ezines don’t take many articles
One of the reasons for submitting your articles to directories is the hope that they will be published by ezines and third party webmasters and thus:
reach a wider audience; and
gain yet another back link.
Article directories sell their authors' work to ezines and third party webmasters. It is one way in which they make money. In truth, ezine editors would prefer not to pay for the articles, but until a few years ago, the directories were the only reliable source of fresh content for their publications. That has changed.
Few authors, however, know that ezine editors now get the majority of their content direct from trusted authors without having to pay for it. Ezines still get some content from directories, but it is almost exclusively:
from the leading directories and specialist directories; and
from authors who have built a reputation for writing high quality content and whose work they have been following for some time.
Most authors have little chance of having one of their articles published by an ezine or third party webmaster.
# 2. Article marketing to get back links has changed
Submitting your work to article directories is the traditional way of doing article marketing. Once your work is published on the website you will get a link back to your landing page. That is, if you included such a link in your resource box. Few authors realize that some back links are worth more than others. Back links from many small general directories have practicably no value.
Authors have and some still do:
submit the same article to hundreds of directories;
resubmit substantially the same article to the same directory multiple times;
create highly derived content, which they submit to multiple directories.
This is all done to create back links. The search engine optimization (SEO) mantra being:
more articles = more back links = higher search engine listing = more website visitors = more sales.
This is the traditional way of doing article marketing. It is dead. It was laid to rest by Google’s recent Penguin and Panda algorithm updates which reward quality and penalizes the traditional way of doing article marketing set out above.
It is still possible to get back links from unique, good quality articles, but authors must work with the directories and search engines not against them.
# 3. Quality not quantity
To use an old tailor’s joke, the new SEO mantra could be “never mind the width, feel the qualityâ€.
Google is the dominant search engine and it now gives greater rewards to good quality, unique content than it used to.
The importance of this change should not be underestimated for it is having a great impact on article marketing. It is doing more than ushering in a new method of getting back links. It will also reduce the number of authors doing article marketing as many who are now using the traditional method will not put in the extra work required for the new method of getting back links
# 4. Google Authorship is vital to your future article marketing success
This initiative by Google is in its infancy. The idea behind it is simple: improve the quality of content by rewarding good authors. It also enables an author’s work to be attributed to him or her and their work can be tracked across the Internet.
The meta description of your article, that is the part of the search engine listing below the article title, will have a link to your Google + profile and show the photo of yourself that you uploaded to your profile.
Google say this will improve quality and engender greater trust between the public and the content creator. As an author, you should expect that in the future Google will give prominence only to those who have registered for Google Authorship.
# 5. Good authors are held back by article directories
This is the corollary of # 1. above. While a good author is good for an article directory’s business, the reality is that the best authors do not need article directories and the directories know it. These are the authors who can submit their work direct to ezines in their niche.
If your objective for doing article marketing is to attract visitors to your website, article directories are no longer the dominant way of achieving your goal.
# 6. Article marketing is evolving into content marketing
Nothing stays the same forever and that is true of article marketing. When I started out doing article marketing, there were only three ways of publishing your work on the Internet:
submitting articles to an online directory;
creating an eBook in PDF form; and
writing content for your website.
Few authors had their own websites and uploading content was not as easy as it is today. There were not many places to publish an eBook either. How times have changed. Successful authors doing article marketing are embracing, or at least experimenting with turning their articles into:
videos
slideshows
PDF files
eBooks
computer programs
podcasts
webinars
website content
press releases
linking them to picture and image sites such as Pinterest
Each article can now be repurposed into 11 different media to reach the widest possible audience. Article directories are just one medium that authors can use.
The future of article marketing is in multi-media. To remain successful, authors are going to have to learn new skills. Not all authors will use all of the above media, but they will use those that work best for them. The future is less rosy for those authors who stick to traditional article marketing.
# 7. You must promote your work
Back in the days when article directories were the only place to publish your work, an author only had to concern him or herself with writing. The directories promoted the author’s work by including the article in a daily list of new content. Search engines "crawled" the leading directories frequently to index new content. They still do it, but less prominence is now given to the articles than used to be the case.
The rise and rise of social media has been recognized by the search engines, who now give prominence to social media sites. If your goal for doing article marketing is to attract visitors to your website, you must promote your article using a variety of social media and bookmarking sites. Some are free, others are paid services.
The truth of modern article marketing, in all of its forms, is that an author will spend more time promoting his or her work than they did in creating it.
Conclusion
The lesson to be drawn from these 7 truths is that article marketing, in all of its aspects, continues to evolve. Authors doing article marketing must also evolve or risk becoming as dead as the Dodo.
