When it comes to generating traffic towards your CB-ridden landing pages, how importantly do you perceive the quality of your content? Do you suppose you'd make a lot more money from your Internet Marketing endeavors if you were a skilled, efficient and seasoned writer? Is your success as a marketist mostly dependent on your promotionial skills, or do you reckon that content is very much indeed king of all that matters to generate solid traffic and entice sales? I'm very curious about these issues, mostly because I've been working for other people for over two years, writing all kinds of content. Just recently it occurred to me that I could possibly profit by the ten-fold by writing articles for myself, and putting into practice all the tidbits of knowledge I've absorbed from all my customers (I've had a whole bunch on these forums alone, as you most likely can see from inspecting the right upper hand corner of my post box). Times like these - of utter epiphany - I cannot help but recall what my mother used to say concerning my intelligence, that I was always clever regarding some things while foolishly disregarding other things. Oh well, having had this sudden reality check (which I'm sure you'll recognize falls in character with my username here), I'm just about to get started working on my first batch of articles (10-20) for my first set of keywords, and I'm planning to promote then mostly with free methods, as inspired by Mr. Pete. This may sound for some like a foolish rant, while others may perceive something shimmering beneath the ruckus; my own excuse is that I'm just shaking my fingers at the keyboard chattering, that's by the way a great way to get in the mood to write articles like a Mozart composing a melody. I'm feeling quite confident that in a few weeks or months I may find myself in a position where I have to hold my temper to keep from bragging. What do you think? Am I up to something here? Do you feel as though I'll be getting very happy with my decision in just a few days/weeks/months? Anyone curious how long it would take to score the first deal? Would you be interested in following this thread, if I planned on keeping posted? This whole whole will probably go by unnoticed, but then again... /post why not? Just a thought, anyway.
Everyone says quality over quantity, but I don't really agree, at least for search engine purposes. Google can't tell if an article is well written or not.
But the consumers will definately know if the article isn't written well. You might get the same conversion from 100 poor articles in comparison to 10 good ones.
Not an article marketing myself, but from what I've heard from some experienced article marketers is that they don't focus on top-notch content, but they write a smart 250-300 word article, giving away some information, getting the customer curious and interested, and forcing the customer to click the landing page link in order to get more information.
Ripped, this is spot on in my opinion! I do lots of article marketing and I think the key is with the points above half and half. You do not want to write a 800 word article that is very well written and reads like the latest best selling novel. Yes it will be a good article, but if you want to make money with article marketing in my experience you need speed as well. So don't just churn out crap but as Ripped says above, make sure you give a few good tips and a knockout resource box at the bottom and remeber keyword optimization as well. Then keep writing till your fingers bleed...(OK, maybe stop before then!) It works! Just my 2 pence. Chris
While content is still the king,it's never a wise strategy to give away too much information in your articles.Otherwise the reader is not going to clickthru to your landing page. In my opinion 350-400 words articles work best.The articles should work as a curiosity raiser and prompt your reader to click on the link in your resource box.
Hello everyone, That's indeed a whole bunch of good advice; except for the first person who replied, who came across like one of my cheapest-skate customers who care about nothing but getting the most words for the least price. Luckily though - If all goes well in this little experience here, I'll no longer have to put up with such customers anymore - so cheers to that! Concerning the others, I'll make sure to be mindful of the all good advice, while writing the first batch of articles aimed at promoting the first product. I concur in that 200-300 word articles should be ideal as article bait - I mean articles woven with the sole purpose of sending links to the landing page: which in turn will benefit from a lengthier article (800-1000) words that rounds up the ideas in all the separate articles pointing there. I've been laying out some keyword research today, and I have located 2 appropriate products to start my tests. By tomorrow, I've ordered myself to write a series of 5 x 200-300 word articles, each using 3 long tail keywords from the list of 15 I retrieved while researching (I gave myself a standard 48 hour deadline, in case you're wondering). Then I'll be re-writing each article 4-5 times over, so I can submit an alternate copy of each to EZA, Goarticles, Articlesbase, and my own personal blogs. That should be about 30 targeted links or so back to the landing page, which I'll progressively (steadily) reinforce during the week with 30-60 more from social bookmants - which will hopefully make the landing page as well as some of the articles soar through the SERPS and hopefully generate a couple hundred highly targeted daily visitors and our much expected KA-CHING: a steady bunch of daily sales. If I've been the least lucky picking the first product I'm promoting, I'll have made my first affiliate sale in no longer than a full week. Opinions? (1) Additionally, I'll write the 800-1000 word round-up article for the landing page; this piece is very important, so I'll set my service for the premium rates - I'll want to put out my very best effort here: spin the reader's mind around and push him just the right amount: too little and I don't get his attention, too much and I get his suspicion. When a reader comes to my landing page, I want him to engage seamlessly in the information he'd just read from the article bait. Speaking of which, anybody can show me some good landing pages you've come across? They don't have to be your own, of course: I just want a frame of reference from where to conceive my own landing page to test the first product. (2) Anyone who's up to show their wits and skills, kindly post your perspective on matters (1) and (2). Rest assured, I look closely into every minute detail, and I take nothing for absolute, except for the importance of taking nothing for absolute. But I digress! I might as well turn the juices over to the actual word processor. Keep posting, good people of the Internet; I have a feeling this thread might be mutually entertaining and advantageous, if only we stick around! All the best, P.
Ok, just in case anybody was wondering about this riot - here's a status report. Also, I'm proud to announce I've decided to go all-out in divulging what I'm doing. For my first campaign ever, which I started last Sunday I'm going to report EVERY little thing I do. Not only am I telling the product and keywords, I'll actually be showing my landing pages and ask you to review my articles. With that in mind, Let's get to the action! And hopefully soon enough, I'll be getting to the money. Day 1 (Sunday 20Sept) Created landing page A. Decided to establish the landing page within a post in my main blog, Slices of Life. This is a 3 year old blog with over 1000 posts and a bunch ranked keywords, some with good traffic; alexa 800k range, PR0. Chosen Keyword was "natural scar removal", which according to google keywords tool shows a monthly traffic of 1-2k queries. -Started writing some articles, started creating new accounts in goarticles, ezine, articlesbase, etc. Will post all links soon enough. - Landing Page A was retrieved by google bot and catalogued within minutes of publication, and originally ranked on page 8 of google SERPS - Did some essential social bookmarking on landing page A: digg, stumble, mixx, reddit, delicious, etc. - Posted some articles from fist batch of half dozen articles in my own blogs (3XPR4 and 1XPR2), all with the same anchor "natural scar removal". Published remaining articles to goarticles, hoping they'll get approved by tomorrow. - Started collecting some links to LPA by making comments in blog posts related with the keyword, done my best to keep from spamming. Tried to engage ongoing conversations seemessly, and pass the anchor as smoothly as possible through "name" field. Day 2 - Wrote second half dozen batch of articles, and submitted them goarticles, articlesbase and a few at EZA . Some articles have been approved already, others were rejected for simple reason to fix "wrong category" :-/. Will update soon with live links to ALL these articles, just as soon as they get published. I'm looking forward for some reviews that help me send further batches of articles to higher levels of effectiveness. - Aimed for getting half dozen extraneous links to LPA during my coffee breaks; blog comments, forums, etc. - Landing Page A ranked page 2-3 on Google SERPS during the day Day 3 (which leads us to present time - I'm about to go get some of that what's-it-called?sleep before Day 4) - Wrote third half dozen batch of articles. Some of the articles were rewritten versions of previous articles, I'll elaborate on my writing process if anyone asks about it. - Decided I'd resume this thread and fully divulge what I'm doing, to the minutest detail. Despite realizing that's definitely going against the most fundamental adage in IM : "thou shall not divulge the flip side of your campaigns", my intuition does tell me this will likely get a lot more interesting AND useful for everyone involved if I just stick to a fully transparent stance, for the time being. - So far, Landing Page A: ranks on top page 2 for "natural scar removal", most of the links from articles haven't kicked in. 46 hops so far. - update: First batch of articlesbase submissions just approved: your opinions on these articles are very much welcome. - Hoping I'll make it to top 3 SERPS (hopefully #1 for ) in next few days, and maybe get the first sale before the weekend. Do you think I'll make it? That's it folks! It's all probably a little garbled since I've had a rough day and I'm weary as a rock in a dry riverbead. Which goes to say, I'll probably do a little bit of clean-up to this thread in the morning. And I also got to make a little touch-up on landing page A, and start thinking about Landing Page B for tomorrow - that will be on an .info domain, and it will focus same keyword as LPA, plus an additional couple of keywords I'll be choosing in the meanwhile. Any suggestions on which keywords I'd better pick?
Wow! Very detailed log you have here. I don't think you'll have any problem getting top 3 for this phrase. I believe I'm currently in position 7 with just an ArticlesBase.com article. Although I thought I should alert you that when I checked the phrase "natural scar removal" in the google keyword tool I'm only seeing 320 monthly queries for the exact match. I'm sure you'll rank for several other related phrases though. Overall this looks awesome. Good luck!
Informative thread! .......... Here's my opinion. I think content is very important but marketing that content is equally important. Most people do agree with the cliche "content is king" but like a post I just recently read at carlocab.com there are many good informational blogs/sites that don't get near the same amount of exposure like for instance"problogger.net" so they don't ever reach the audience or traffic that would benefit from it. To me Quality Content and Proper Marketing is crucial for success online. For the person who stated "search engines don't know the difference between well written articles" I totally disagree with you. Search engine spiders "love" High Quality and Original content. @smitten - I think you'll be very pleased with your choice of writing articles for yourself. You have the experience and knowledge of article and content creation so why not capitalize on it. P.S. of course people would be interested in reading your updates. Good Luck!
Thanks for the kind words, guys! @knight1: Sounds like a great way of putting things; I'm only emphasizing that content is king cliche because I'm tired of being exploited by cheap customers. I very much prefer creating content that publicizing it, but for the time being I'm playing by ear in a one man band. Anyway, here's to... Day 4 - Feeling a bit disillusioned because I haven't succeeded in getting the 1 page in google SERPS for the first keyword. Striving to keep positive, this kind of thing is only natural. Maybe SERPS don't update as swiftly as I imagined? - Finished setting up Landing Page B, using a different approach from LPA both in form and content; Created a blog from scratch in a brand new .info domain, did a little in-site SEO and tried to come up with some compelling copy. Let me know what you guys think? - Wrote a couple of articles focusing 3 new keyphrases, uploaded to articlesbase with two links each - hoping that tomorrow LPB is at least showing up for some of those phrases. - hops so far: 47; sales: 0
Your hoplink for the scar solution landing page isn't correct. www.sitename.com/?hop=username isn't how you set up a hoplink. This doesn't work, and you won't get credited for the sale. Always use the following format: clickbankid.vendorid.hop.clickbank.net Make sure to fix that
@ripped: thanks for the heads-up, I appreciate that! Lol, I've fixed the affiliate links in LPB by pasting the hoplinks I'd used in LPA... Not good for stats, but I'm such a CB noob I can't even seem to relocate the product I'm selling within the marketplace >_< I'll deal with that tomorow, it shouldn't be a problem for the time being. Good night, everyone! Hopefully day 5 will bring us some positive results at last. edit: even though I updated LPB to fix those links, I can't publish the updated version on account of a bizarre bug in WP (the "publish" button just seems to have collapsed into its own sub-menu and refuses to come back). Will deal with this issue first thing in the morning.
@Smitten I am a bit confused on what keywords you are promoting and what you are promoting. Are you trying to promote your landing pages up the serps or are you trying to promote your articles up the serps. If you are trying to promote your articles I think you are going about it the wrong way. I have just had a look at your first articles and can spot a few things that could be hindering your serp listings for your articles. If you are trying to promote your landing page then there is also a few other things you need to do. Let me know what you are trying to promote and I can give you a few pointers to look at. Thanks Pete
@Pete: I'm trying to promote the landing pages up the SERPS, by setting up targeted links from articles, blog posts, as well as blog comments / social bookmarks. So far: For LPA I put out 8 articles and 4 blog posts, all linking back through anchor text "natural scar removal". For LPB I decided to target keywords "getting rid of scars", "get rid of my scars", "treating scars", and I'm just beginning the same process I've used in LPA; earlier this evening I submitted 2 articles with 2 links each to landing page using these keywords. Tomorrow I'm planning to write about a dozen articles to keep promoting LPB. So far, I'm thinking about leaving LPA to rest for a few days. I'll very much appreciate your directions, since indeed I get the impression I'm doing something wrong. All the best, P.
@smitten I would suggest changing plans. I fyou target the articles to get high rankings in the SERPS then the landing page will follow. In order to get quick traffic to the landing page you need the listings on google. It will take a lot longer to get your LP page 1 for your targetted keyword. You should try and get your articles listed on page 1 first, this is what will bring the traffic to the LP. If you are targetting natural scar removal you should target it in your first article. For that search term you should easily be able to get a page 1 listing without much effort. After that you just need to keep it there. If you need any help with this let me know. thanks Pete
In Hindi, there is a popular saying " Jo Jeeta Vohi Sikandar", 'the one who wins is the ultimate king'. So, as i see it, everyone should try their own way, the best thing to do is to try what you know best. So if you are into writing then stick to it; some junk content site making money shouldnt bother you. Life has a lot of scope, scope in everything, so keep going, all the best
Some very good points have been made here. Articles can get to page 1 much faster than a landing page can. If you're looking for immediate traffic, then you should be building links to your articles and keywording them up to get them to page 1. If you're looking for long lasting traffic then you should be writing lots of articles and doing blog commenting, forum posting, etc all linking to your landing page with your anchor text. Also be sure to use that same keyword on your landing page as often as possible. Also note that not all article directories are dofollow. For instance, ArticlesBase.com links are nofollow so they will not count towards your landing page link popularity.
content is everything google like good content human like good content bcause u sell to human not search engine
Day 5 Rearranged the plan according to good advice from all the older boys. Consequently, the first trial test will focus the phrase "getting rid of scars", and first step involved writing the article I just linked. Second step involved submitting said article to about 40 social bookmarks, through http://socialmarker.com. Third step involved a whole bunch of blog commenting (maybe 30-40 blogs or so). Fourth step, I linked all my other articles to the main article on "getting rid of scars" (which in turn leads to Landing Page B) -On account of a little disagreement with my hosting provider, my blog is temorarily down, and so is Landing Page A. I decided I'll put LPA in the bech, and focus my efforts on LPB , I've already changed all the links in some articles. Not sure if google will pickup up on the link re-adressment, though. LPA was ranked consistently on page 2 for a few days, then vanished altogether from SERPS within 24 hours of my hosting service was suspended. I suppose Google is doing one heck of a job in cleaning up dead links from SERPS nowdays, wouldn't you agree? Anyway... -I'm already coming up with ideas for LPC, and it should be out in the next few days. For this one I'll get a .com or .org domain (as you recall LPB is a .info domain), to try and understand it the TLD makes any difference in the landing page. This page will be similar with LPB, but focused on methods of scar removal that DON'T work. Day 6 - Felling somewhat annoyed because my main article on getting rid of scars isn't quite showing up anywhere in google SERPS. Actually, it's showing up in page 2, indented to an older articlesbase some someone else, on acne scar removal. also, 2 of the social bookmarks I did for the articles are showing up in page 3. I'm thinking maybe I pumped those links too fast, I should have paced my submissions for better effect I suppose. That's all I can think of for now, I'll edit this comment if something else comes to mind. I'm beggining to suspect that while content is King, promotion is Queen. If you succeed in pairing both of them, you'll somewhat easily get yourself a niche type of kingdom. ;-)