Contact

"Article Marketing and Why It Reigns Supreme for Promoting Your Own Products and Others You are Selling as an Affiliate"

Many times I’ve suggested that article marketing is a wonderful way to promote your websites and blogs, also specific products you’re selling at eBay and Amazon.  And just as many times I’ve had marketing gurus tell me I’m wrong, and insisting Google no longer lists promotional articles high in search engine returns. 

They say it’s all to do with the same article being listed on several different websites and so contravening Google’s ‘No Duplicate Content’ ruling. 

And guess what, I agree! 

And at the same time I don’t agree! 

Let me tell you why, based on research I carried out over six weeks before and during the 2011 Christmas period. 

I Agree …..

…..  that countless identical articles have no place in search engine rankings, mainly because allowing those articles to respond to search queries can mean returning dozens of search pages packed with identical articles and nothing else.

Additionally, articles placed on article directories allowing other publishers to copy and paste them into their own websites and blogs can lead to mistakes and irregularities in transit and some republished articles giving inaccurate information on important matters.  That being so, search engines are right to view them as potentially unsuitable for people searching online.

I Agree Too …..

….. that most articles on directories are intentionally sub-substandard and designed to grow backlinks to superior content on writers’ own websites and blogs.  Well, think about it, you’re not going to spend hours researching and writing articles for other people’s websites, on the promise of a backlink that will be just as strong for a poor article as for an award winning alternative. 

And that is why many contributions to article directories are basic and quickly go out of date.  Which in turn is another reason they’re not hot favourites with search engines.

But think about it awhile and you’ll realise the only reason those articles are out of favour with search engines is the very fact they are available for all and sundry to reproduce. 

It’s a problem, but one that’s very easy to solve.

How?

Simply you place your promotional article on websites that don’t allow reproduction by others, such as HubPages (www.hubpages.com), for example, and Squidoo (www.squidoo.com), and hundreds of other content and social networking sites. 

Apart from maintaining copyright for your work, the best places to upload your articles have what’s called ‘High PageRank’, meaning Google and other search engines like them and give them high placement in search engine returns.

So the message remains that article marketing is a very effective promotional tool, it’s just the place you upload them to that makes any real difference to how many people read your articles and how much money you make.

As proof, in the six weeks run up to Christmas I wrote more than one hundred articles, some placed on article directories, some on HubPages and Squidoo. 

The end result is article directories still help my articles and websites they promote rank high in search engine returns, but nowhere near as effectively as articles placed on sites that don’t allow copying!  Such as HubPages and Squidoo and others alongside.