Marbella SEO

A frequently employed method for article marketing is to post an article on an article directory.  A top tier directory will make these posted articles available to webmasters for publication, if those webmasters a) happen to use that directory, b) search for one of your keywords and c) don’t find your article to pose a competitive threat.  Nearly all of the best ranked directories will allow you to include one or more links back to your website, but those links are typically restricted to the author’s resource box, most often at the end of the article.  That is a time honored and reasonably effective way to promote your site.  However, there is another approach to article syndication that you should use as well.

If you submit articles directly to sites in your marketing niche, you will find certain additional benefits beyond those that come from only submitting to article directories.  One additional benefit is that you will be able to exercise some control over who publishes your article.  You should select sites that have targeted, highly valuable traffic–that is, visitors similar to those that you want to reach in your marketing message.  You can make sure that you have longer lasting search engine optimization (SEO) benefits by providing each website with unique content.  You can determine that each site’s content is unique by writing a different article for each site or (more efficiently) thoroughly spinning the articles to get more benefit from the same article topic and basic treatment.  Perhaps most importantly, your links back to your own website can be placed within the article with carefully crafted (and spun) anchor text.  Contextual links are reputed to have even greater SEO benefits than those within an author’s resource box.

In the usual method of direct distribution to websites, you would attempt to contact the individual webmasters by email, or, if you can locate a number, by phone in order to convince whomever reaches the publishing decisions at that website can be convinced of the mutual benefit of uploading your article.  If your article is high quality, and if it is not too competitive with the site that you are approaching, you should find that this approach is sometimes successful.  On many of your attempts, though, you will either be unsuccessful at reaching anyone or else they will not bother to reply.  When they do reply, more often than you wish, they will decline your offer.

Another option for article syndication directly with websites is through an automated distribution system that distributes spun versions of your articles directly to niche specific sites who have expressed a positive interest in receiving free content.  Such is the foundation of a relatively new service called My Article Network, which I have reviewed elsewhere.

In this unique cooperative, webmasters can enroll their sites without any charge.  This assures that the network will always have a growing number of willing and ready websites available in almost any niche with which you would probably want to be associated 

Whatever method of direct-to-site distribution you choose, I strongly urge all article syndicators to broaden distribution beyond the usual top ranked directories.  I know from my own experiences that the benefits far outweigh the costs of the additional required effort.