Article Marketing 101 - The Art of Using Articles to Build Backlinks

Article Marketing 101 - The Art of Using Articles to Build Backlinks​

Article marketing is a method used to build backlinks to a website. The process is quite simple; you write an article that is posted on a third party website. Inside the body or bottom of the article you insert a link to your website. Sounds simple, but yet there is so much more behind article marketing to make it a successful method for building quality backlinks to your website. Many internet marketers and even reputable search engine optimization companies improperly use this excellent method for building backlinks.

The most important phrase you need to remember with article marketing is “unique, relevant content”. I strongly believe that spinning articles and content is a waste of time. Search engines like unique content and it’s currently very easy for search engines to detect if content has been rewritten or spun. Your articles should always have unique content and as you grow into this type of backlink building you’ll learn over time how to constantly write more and more articles that are unique and related to the same subject.

Relevancy is also very important when it comes to article marketing. The article should always be directly related to the web page(s) you are going to link to inside of the article. Relevancy plays a vital role in search engine’s algorithms and is used to tell if backlinks are spam. If you look at top ranked sites for competitive keywords you’ll notice a majority of their backlinks are directly related (relevant) to that sites topic and the keyword you searched.

You also need to make sure that you properly link to your website via your articles. First, never used multiple anchor texts for the same URL being consistent throughout the entire article will ensure you get credit for one anchor text for that link. If you’re allowed more than one link in your article I suggest you always point to a secondary internal web page for the same website; try to be more detailed with the anchor text for the internal link. Make sure the article directory doesn’t append the nofollow attribute (it’s an attribute, NOT a tag) to their outbound links.

Don’t always use the same article directory, in fact you should try and use at least 6 to 10 different article directories. Remember, we don’t post the same articles on all of them; we simply just cycle through them when posting our unique content. I would try and use established article directories and avoid using the newly launched ones. The longer the directory has been operating the better.

You should also build backlinks to your articles. You don’t need to build a massive amount, just a few via social bookmarking or by commenting in some relevant blog posts related to your article. This will help make sure the article gets indexed by search engines and stays indexed. There is no point in writing unique content just to never have it indexed!

So we’ve covered some key things when it comes to article marketing. While something’s might be missing this is still an excellent primer on how to properly use article marketing to build backlinks. You may have heard that article marketing is an old method for backlink building and that it’s useless. I through my own research and work know that article marketing is still a power tool when it comes to search engine optimization; especially when added to your entire backlink building campaign.

Key Things to Remember with Article Marketing

• Article’s content should always be unique; never spin content.
• Article’s content should be relevant to the website it’s linking to.
• Follow proper anchor text rules when linking to your website via your article.
• Use multiple article directories; remember unique content in all articles.
• Build backlinks directly to your articles to keep them indexed and build more relevancy.

Useful Resources on Article Marketing

1. Article Marketing on Wikipedia
2. The New Age Of Article Marketing on Search Engine Land
3. Article Marketing 101 on Search Engine Watch