So, You Wrote an Article - But Nobody Read It!

The internet is crawling with people who will tell you that articles are a great way to promote your business, that content is king, and that search engine nirvana lies with the click of a button on some article submission software.

What if they were wrong?

What if what they told you was only part of the truth?

What if getting loads of sites to take your articles was only a part of the answer?

Then: What is the truth?

Okay, so we agree that getting links to your site is good. That people reading your articles can be presold on your product or service. That articles can be a relatively cheap form of advertising.

So what is wrong with that picture?

In this article, we will look at what happens AFTER you press the button on your article submission software or send the report to your article syndication service, and we start at the beginning. Right at the beginning. Before you even write the outline for the article that will make you the expert in your field.

We are going to start by asking a question. The answer will tell us how everything else is done.

The question is this: What is my purpose in writing this article?
There are many possible answers, but perhaps we might summarise them as follows:
1) To increase the popularity of my site with search engines by building backlinks.
2) To get many visitors to my site very fast so I can sell them something.
3) To build the readership and credibility of my site.
4) To get lots of visitors to my site.
5) To become recognized as an authority in my field.

I think we can split the results into three groups with these answers. The first group is those who want, for one reason or another, to get a quick and possibly short-term result. The second group is probably more interested in a longer-term goal. Of course, some people want everything - fast AND longer-term results. This is the internet, anything is possible, and we will be looking at strategies to meet the needs of all three groups. But the critical point is that there is not one magic bullet to address the needs of all article marketers!

First Past The Post!

For article marketers seeking a fast result, the priority has to be maximum exposure in the shortest amount of time. How can this be done?
For you guys, I suggest writing several articles on a related theme, using keywords appropriate to your topic, and that you make sure that all links are anchored and linked to pages deep in your website, not just to your home page. When you have your content ready, you want to blast it out to the world as fast as possible. For this, you might want to use a submissions service such as ArticleMarketer.com, which has many directories and groups to whom you can submit your work.

When you use Article Marketer, you have to send the article, and they will do the rest. You can spend the rest of the time preparing for the onslaught of visitors to your site! Another option is to use software for the job. Here the best, in terms of the number of outlets, is possibly ArticleAnnouncer, a brilliant piece of software that can be used to automate your submission to many hundreds of Article directories and syndication groups. The process is semi-automated but still requires some user input at most sites, so it is still a little time-consuming, but it is much faster than manual submission.

A significant benefit of an Article Announcer is that one can customize the article with different bio boxes and formats appropriate to each source. For example, one can have three other bio boxes and choose to submit them in HTML or text. I like this product very much. Also, make use of blogs for your articles. This is a little outside the scope of this article but setting up an RSS feed from your website and making sure it is syndicated using products such as RSSAnouncer is a valuable strategy. Blogging is a whole 'nother area and subject, though, albeit that articles still play a large part.

The bottom line is that maximum output to as many outlets as possible makes sense for short-term results. But given how search engines work, this is not the best strategy for long-term success in rankings and, thus, probably, traffic. It may well be that the search engine will penalize you for generating too many links too fast, which may affect your rankings, but having had a tremendous amount of exposure and hopefully rapid growth of non-search engine traffic through your new connections, you will have achieved your goals.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race!

A different course of action is required for those seeking to build long-term traffic and authority in their chosen fields. A more nuanced approach is best for the slow and steady guys. Here the trick is to use submission software and services to provide a gradual flow of articles and a slower spread across the available outlets. We are not trying to build hundreds of backlinks over a weekend, but instead to make 4 or 5 per week, week after week, month after month. Here, software submission is probably your best choice because you have control of distribution.

Use Article Announcer or ArticlePost Robot to place content with perhaps ten directories per week and introduce one new article per week. In this way, the growth of links and the spread of your attic will wil be more organ and ic, will seem more natural to the search engines, which will reward you with registered backlinks and credibility. These links, because they seem realistic and 'human-like,' will stay in the search engines for a long time and, if your articles are well written, will be picked up for many months from the article directories you are using.

The difference in strategy might be compared to mushrooms and trees after rain. After a rain shower, we often see a flood of mushrooms on the ground; they spring up but go for a short time. The trees, though, were there before and will be there afterward, grown taller and more muscular. Group one is the mushrooms; the second group is the trees. The forest needs both mushrooms and trees to survive and flourish.

A Little of What You Fancy!

The third strategy is simple—combining the above but using articles submitted to various submission sites. Again, because we are spreading our submissions over time, it is best to use a software solution to do the work. It will take longer, but the real work is making all the original registrations. Once that has been done, the submission process is much easier, and, of course, if you are doing well, you can always pay somebody else to do the work. At the same time, you are busy writing the following article or building the following website.

There is no single best' choice when using article submission software or a submission service. It depends upon your needs. But for the long-term building of links, one must always seek to make the growth look natural and consider how that goal can be achieved.