Internet Article Marketing Strategy – Unleashing the True Power of Article Directories

Internet Article Submission is the Stairway to Success

Most businesses working online have heard of article directories, such as Ezine, and are aware that a good internet article marketing strategy must incorporate the potential of these sites. The idea behind article directories is elegant in its simplicity; you submit articles, and others are free to use them and distribute them around the internet, on the condition that they include backlinks to your site.

Article directories are well known by webmasters and marketers, who understand that a high-quality article site gives good quality backlinks and instant kudos with Google. Many of these flood the sites with spun content, hoping to gain an advantage in the search engine rankings.

Internet Article Marketing Strategy and Backlinks – An Unhealthy Fixation

Many of these marketers outsource work, use article-spinning software, or hire cheap freelance writers to generate content. This attitude is fine if you are chasing Adsense and affiliate sales, where you might get away with broken English and stilted, non-natural writing. However, this paradigm has leached over into mainstream marketing, and there is now a prevailing attitude that it is not worth paying a professional writer to submit quality content to article sites.

I have seen many articles, on Ezine, where the business owner has tried to hack some copy together, or has outsourced the work to the notorious article mills. They then sit back, waiting for the clients to roll in, and are surprised when this approach fails. The problem with this plan is that they became fixated on one aspect of article marketing, backlinking, and failed to understand the true power of using article directories as part of an internet article marketing strategy.

Basing Your Internet Article Marketing Strategy around Quality

Stepping away from online marketing for a while, think about what type of strategy you use in the real world. Most businesses, if they want to generate good business, focus their efforts on producing high-quality brochures and postcards, and delivering them to targeted areas.

Moving back online, that is the same type of approach that you should adopt with your internet article marketing campaign and you should see your articles as more than a cheap source of backlinks. Articles can actually form the backbone of your marketing strategy and drive high-quality traffic to your website. Using article submission directories as glorified link-farms misses the potential of two other marketing methods; direct referrals and organic growth.

The Power of Direct Referrals and your Internet Article Marketing Strategy

Sites such as Ezine, with its very stringent quality controls and human editors, are loved by the search engines. As a result, an SEO optimized Ezine article will often appear higher on search-engine rankings than your actual site. If you use them alongside informational sites, such as Hubpages, you will be able to dominate Google search results for targeted keywords.

As a result of this search engine impact, potential clients are likely to land there first and, if your articles are filled with empty-content, they are not going to click on the link. If you want to use article to their fullest potential, you need to treat them as if they were content on your own site; they are often the point of first contact and you must make an instant  impression.

Making the Internet Work for You – Organic Links Keep on Giving

If you do your keyword research and manage to get your Ezine article onto the front pages of the search engines, then there is one other benefit of using a professionally written article. If the article is well written, then others are likely to pick it up and use it, which will include the carefully embedded links to your site. Apart from giving you a little more Google love, through organic backlink growth, this also increases your reach and the chance of direct referrals.

With a powerfully written, informative article, others are going to do the marketing for you, by distributing your links around the internet. This is the true power of article marketing sites, not the vague idea of building a few backlinks. There are other ways of building Google backlink love, and using article-marketing sites purely for this purpose is missing out on their true power. With a good, high-quality article, the backlinks will multiply, without any extra effort or expense.

Using a Professional Writer as the Foundation of your Internet Marketing Strategy

If you look at many of the article sites, you will see that many of the articles are merely sales pitches, consisting of two or three hundred words of clumsy language. Most people do not understand the art of writing web content and articles, which requires the careful touch of a master craftsman.

if you intend to sell something online, then going for the cheap option is a non-starter; you might think that you have a great deal by finding a reasonably competent writer, who will throw out articles at $5 a time. If this does not increase sales conversions, or the articles migrate into the Google sandbox, then you have thrown that money away.

A professional writer has the ability to write an article, seemingly about an unrelated subject, but use layered content and language to guide the reader gently down to the link at the bottom. Article sites invariably include your link at the bottom of the page, so you have to make sure that the content is well written and informative, enticing the reader down to the final paragraph and the all-important link.