Hi Everybody, I have been following dyadvisor around for quite some time now. Though my own personal hassles have severely stunted my growth and it is not as good as dy would like it to be, still when you hang around with good people, it sure does rub off you. A case in point is one article I recently did for one of my clients. He was a new client and was availing my low-priced end article marketing services and just needed an article in niche to be put up on EzineArticles.com - no major SEO requirements whatsoever except of course inclusion of the keyword here and there. I did an article and on whim practiced some of the most basic SEO tricks (taught by dyadvisor) to the article. The client was pleasantly surprised to see the article on Page 1 and happily ordered more articles at a much higher rate. He pushed some low quality links to help keep my article on the first page(absolutely unnecessary imo). Today I got a mail from the client and it had me in chuckles. I would like to share it here and help you see what a well written but optimized article can do for a business (or ruin other's business LOL). He was so impressed ( and being a really good person), he offered to show me ways of building back links and more such stuff when I was ready - also because he saw that I was valuable enough to spend time teaching stuff while he could get quality work from me at discounted rates. Here is the email verbatim(except that I have removed the client's company/product names and keywords). "this is kind of a strange request but is there any way that that ______ _______ _____ article can be taken down? You are too good!!! the article is outranking me for a couple words that I was seeing sales from but now I'm getting less traffic on them. took tons of copy tests to get them converting though because it's a fickle customer base for some reason. It really makes me see the power of article marketing in low competition areas. I think the backlinks I threw at it gave it it's boost over me so just let me know when you want me to put some at yours to test it out and I'll show you a couple linking things. we should bounce ideas for making money with article marketing off eachother, I think it can make some money." This is what a single article did for him (or rather undid ). Please note that there was no special SEO power words and any of the advanced stuff and all I did was use some of the most basic and easy SEO tactics which didn't take me more than 2 minutes to put into place. This also goes to prove how the client needs to be educated about article marketing and the influence it can have it used properly. I would also like to mention the stats here : Article published on 26 July. Garnered 97 views by the date 3 August (just 7 days !) and 15.5%click through = 15 clicks to URL. I hate to take the article down, but I guess I will have to I rest my case.
Honestly, that is the client site and I could have evaluated it only if I had a full view of the sales he is doing. The point here is not limited to a sale. The point here is driving a lead to the site. This is an article, not a sales copy. The lead may or may not convert since that may depends largely on how effective the client's site/copy is. My job as an article marketer was to drive a qualified, informed and hot lead to them - somebody who is actually looking for the product/info and not just some teenager who clicked on an ad out of curiosity and cost some adsense dollars to the client for nothing at all. A single article (one time cost) if written in an effective manner can do more than what expensive adword campaigns may not be able to do.
Yeah I have to say that as a writer you can't worry too much about conversion following click through. You will never be privy to the information and it's too hard to tell whether conversion is or isn't happening due to the content on the actual site and the service offered. If you're getting a 15.5% click through you are doing great and you should leave it at that!
I think a little of the point here is severely missed. The average article has a typical 4 to 5% click through rate. This is because the article is often too boring, and never read from start to finish. However, that read count, as false as it may be, is recorded as a true read. This same article is NOT drawing in traffic on its own. Even gray to "black hat" techniques cannot help it. The exceptionally well written article gets the normal shelf response, but draws high quality search engine traffic of sincere readers. That in turn produces conversion rate returns in the 10% to 17% range. So there are more readers and more then convert. Many professional to good writers use the power of article directory PR to gain search term positioning, not a bad concept. Most article directories, except antique EZA, did not exist before 2004 (see Alexa to verify.) I wrote articles well before 2004, and had to rely on not easy to learn methods to still get front page listings. In May, 2010 the boom by Google threw a lot o previous methodology out. I was forced to adapt to the new structuring, and managed to do so. Two days ago, I retested. Using a PR 0 site (too new) I placed an article going for competitive terms. I was rewarded in 7 key top 10 placements from the article. Within 24 hours, I felt the positive impact. To answer the conversion to website, and then sale. Anyone offering a decent product, getting a very warm prospective client, should sell a one in five minimum. Thanks confused freelancer, your writing skills are in the top 5% of not only India, but elsewhere. All because you dedicated some time, at your own pace, to acknowledge and prove that most writers out there are only limiting their abilities.