Hi everyone, I'm new to this, but I thought I would give it a shot and try to get some feedback. I recently launched an entertainment article directory and was looking for some good ways to promote the site and get high quality writers to want to come and post. I have read in various locations to ask friends and even pay some professionals to at least get some articles on there. The only problem is that I really want every article to be of the highest quality, so I'm not sure I would just trust my friends to that, and although I plan on paying a few writers to get come initial articles up there, I am not sure having just 10 or 15 articles will help much. So right now I guess I plan to also create a facebook page, maybe start posting my own articles on other article directories and seeing if some of my friends can actually write. Any other suggestions that I am missing here? I'm not sure what the protocol is for posting links here, but here is the site just in case you want to look at it: www(dot)entertainmentscribe(dot)com. It is still a work in progress and obviously does not have any articles yet, but I plan on having at least ten by the end of the week. But where do I go after that? Thanks for the help! Joe
Using traditional traffic generating methods is a good start. As you mentioned, posting your own articles (about the value of using article directories for SEO and traffic) to other article directories and then linking to your own is a good way to start. A Facebook page is another good option, but you will have to put some work into generating interest and traffic to it, just creating the page isn't going to be a "magic button". I would recommend that a Facebook page be more for staying in touch with your current writers and keeping them updated on what is happening with your site. Get the news out there by doing Press Releases, Social Bookmarking, and commenting on high traffic blogs that are likely to have some readers who run websites. Posting to forums like this one is also a great way to try and get some interest. Get your links out there and build up PR. Having a high PR site will, by itself, attract quite a few interested parties. Add a blog to your site where you post things like tips for article writing, how to take full advantage of article directories, the value of submitting articles to niche focused directories, how to write a SEO-friendly article, etc. This will provide something that some of your writers will find useful and give your site some relevant content to help in SERPs. Having good features is a good way to attract writers. Implement some features and then make sure anyone coming to your directory will see them. They are "sales" points that can help convert a visitor to a contributor. Features such as bulk submission, featured front page posts for really good articles, RSS feeds that you have made sure will appear all over, shared ad revenue options, and plenty more features you can use to increase interest. People posting to article sites usually want two things, a DoFollow link and traffic (exposure), so focus your features around those things. The advice you read about getting some articles on there is good advice. You will have trouble building up your PR and converting visitors to be writers if you just have an empty site. Get those 10-15 articles up and then do that again every week until you start seeing some traffic. For an entertainment article directory, you can quickly make your own articles, easily doing 10-15 per week (in a single day really, but spread the posting out over a week), by just writing on current entertainment news.
Thanks for the feedback! I started off a little slow, but I'm planning on having at least 10 articles up in a few days. I like the idea of offering benefits for writers such as bulk upload and shared revenues. Is it a terrible idea to directly contact blog writers in my directories niche and ask them to write for the directory? Thanks!
As long as it is done in a professional way, I see no problem with it. Just contact them once and, if you don't hear from them again, contact them once more as a followup about a week later (use a different message for followup, don't just spam them the same email twice). Don't try to sell them anything (like a premium membership) when you contact them since this is just a cold contact, not a newsletter mailing that you have double opt-in subscribers for. Just let them know that your site is looking for contributors, that you have read some of their blog, and think that they would be a great contributor. Be clear about what they would get out of posting articles to your site. Ideally to make things easy for them to take a look at, give them three links in the email, one that goes to your main URL, one that has an FAQ for contributors, and one that points directly to the page where they either signup or can submit (depending on how you have your site set up).
Once again thank you for the great response mhovingh. One more question. When posting to article directories to get back links is it customary to post the same article on multiple directories? I've heard some things about Google Panda trying to remove the clutter of poorly written articles, but is it also wrong to post the exact same article again and again, just on a different site? Or can you take an article and just change it a little? Thanks!
You're welcome. I am glad you have found what I wrote so far to be informative/helpful. The Panda update was more about penalizing low quality than duplicate content. Is it wrong to post the same article again and again? The basic answer would be no (unless the article directory has their own rule about it). What happens then however is your duplicate articles are competing for the same SERP. Panda or no Panda, there is only one instance of every spot in search results for each keyword. You will see much better results if you vary the articles that you post to article directories. For example, write one article on "Getting Backlinks from Article Directories" and then write another on "Getting Targeted Traffic from Article Directories". They both hit audiences that you want to see come to your website, while not being redundant in SERPs. Just brainstorm it a bit and try to get a good list of all the reasons that someone would want to post an article to an article directory. Then, brainstorm how to break those down, such as "Getting Targeted Traffic To Your Blog" and "Getting Informed Buyers To Your Online Store". Finally, think of different ways you can say the same thing, such as "Get More Search Engine Visitors For Your Site", "Increase Exposure For Your Site In Google", and "Boost Traffic To Your Website From Bing". As you narrow things down and come up with different ways to really be saying the same thing, the writing process will become much faster while you are creating unique articles that won't compete for the same keywords. You won't have to spend time researching different things for each article, just thinking about how to write the same basic information in different ways to bring in a wider range of keywords which, for someone who has a high school level English reading level, should be a fairly quick process.