Article Marketing

UPDATE:  In the comments, niche marketing blogger Andy Beard recommended the Article Marketer service as a viable method for article distribution. They even have a free service available, so if you're interested in trying your hand at article marketing, it's worth a try.
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I just happened across a post by Matt Jones, who's asking if Article Marketing is a Waste of Time. Matt submitted 20 articles to a couple of popular article directories and was less than impressed with the results (2 incoming links from low trust sites). Submitting to free article sites is one of the most commonly mentioned ways of building links and traffic for your web site, and I've even heard it touted as a means of search engine optimization. I think it's a complete waste of time.

Who Republishes Articles?

Think about the type of links you're going to get by submitting to article directories. Do any of the reputable sites you read post this type of content? The reality is that sites republishing free articles are generally of very low quality. Sites that regularly publish quality, original content aren't going to water down their pages with this sort of duplicate content. Instead, your article is going to end up on Made for Adsense sites with a lot of other republished content. Those aren't the links you want, and they're unlikely to drive much traffic either.

If you must submit to article directories, make sure you're writing new content to submit, and don't publish those same articles on your own site. At least that way you won't be hurting yourself with duplicate content. But if you're going to go through the trouble to write fresh content, there are better uses for those articles that can garner links from quality sites. Like most things worth doing, though, it does require a bit of work.

An Alternative - Guest Blogging

Instead of writing up your article for the free directories, consider writing it for a particular site as a guest author.

Find a few blogs that write on similar topics and contact the authors. Let them know that you're trying to get more exposure for your blog and you'd like to write an article for their site. You'll find many authors who are open to the idea if you make it clear that you're going to provide them with a quality article, meaning:

• Provide original content that will be published only on their blog (nothing you're going to publish yourself or submit to directories).
• Your writing should meet the site's editorial standards. Think of this like an audition, and a chance to attract new readers. Make it some of your best work.
• Solicit feedback on the article's topic. Be flexible (within reason).
• Show some links to your best blog posts to demonstrate that you can write a good post. Once you've done this a few times, show links to the other site's where you've written guest posts.
• No blatant self-promotion. No affiliate links.

Publishing on other blogs in this fashion is definitely more work. You have to write an original, quality article for each site, and you have to do the legwork to set up these guest blogging opportunities. The payoff, though, is that you can obtain quality links from trusted web sites. If you enjoy writing articles and want to be read by a wider audience, all while building quality links, you might find this method well worth the effort.