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Marketing Your Website with Expert Articles

The buzz is all over the Internet. It's the newest, hottest, easiest marketing strategy. It's fairly simple, doesn't take much time...and it works!

Forget about exchanging links. Write an article.

Get high ranked sites to publish your article with a link to your site that people will click on because they trust, and will follow, links in articles! Search engines will notice and your site will benefit.

What's the real story here? We all know that getting something for nothing won't work. How is this 'submit your article' thing different?

Marketing by submitting articles is not new. When Google and Yahoo! were just some guys with a good idea, Webmasters knew that the 'expert' sites got the most traffic. Expert articles were a great way to let the online world know your site was worth visiting. A guest article published on a well trafficked site meant a real boost in visitors, but that was just the immediate benefit.

Other Webmasters saw the article and recognized your site as worth linking to. With no good search engine around, this was the best way to get a site noticed. This pattern of expert sites getting links is what the Google algorithm was based on.

Article writing diminished as Google grew. Exchanging links became the hot marketing technique. Webmasters drowned in email messages from maniacs with canned programs and awful link pages.

Google realized that the old rule of the best sites having the most links wasn't working. Search engine spiders were programmed to recognize links that were artificial. Link programs worked against sites that did a good job of collecting thousands of exchanged links. Search engines want one way, incoming links to show that the links are 'organic'.

Experienced Webmasters have always used the 'submit an article' strategy. It works. The major search engines all compete to find sites that visitors like. Visitors like good content. Producing quality site content takes time and most editors welcome help. An article is a link back to your site that you don't share with any other sites - on a page of content that matches your topic. Think of the value to your Google ranking from that one link!

But the problems are beginning. SEO experts are pushing article submissions the same way that they pushed link exchange programs with the same results. Webmasters want well written articles that match their site. Mail boxes are being flooded by hundreds of awful submissions. An article written in two minutes, with awful grammar and worse spelling, that does nothing but sell your product is not going to get published by a good site.

Duplicate content is not a good thing for any site. Submitting the same article - or basically the same article - to multiple sites hurts the sites that publish your article and the value of the link is diminished. Keep your submissions limited to a few sites if you want to be welcomed with additional articles.

Your article will produce good links for your site if you take time before you submit it ad use common sense when offering it to sites for publication..

Answer these questions before you submit. Is it on target? Is it something your visitors would like to read? Will it present your site as an expert worth visiting for more information on your topic? Think about what your reaction would be to getting it. Have you run a spell check and asked someone to check your grammar? Articles around 500 words are best. Is yours too long or too short? Is your article search engine optimized?

If you get published, add the site to a list where you will submit on a regular basis - an article written for that site, and only that site, every other week... until the Webmaster requests more.

Submitting articles is a great way to get links, visitors and boost your popularity with other Webmasters, Internet surfers and search engines…if you do it right!

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