If you’re not constantly building backlinks to your website, then you’re not focusing your off-page SEO in the right area.
Backlinks should be occupying the majority of your SEO time and a great way to build them is by getting articles written and submitted to article directories. Below we look at how you can do that effectively.
Article Directory Submission
There are specific sites that are set up to publish your articles and allow you to include a backlink to your site.
A couple of the larger article directories are EzineArticles and Go Articles and both have submission guidelines listed clearly on their sites for writers to follow when uploading their content.
The basic premise is that they exchange your content for a backlink in a win-win relationship.
A good strategy is to choose a few different submission sites and submit at least one article per week, because SEO works best when it is an ongoing effort of organic growth; this tends to be more effective than infrequent bursts of content.
If you don’t have someone in-house who can do this then outsource it; there are plenty of writers like available on contractor sites oDesk and Elance where you can get SEO articles written at affordable rates..
Link To What?
When you insert links into your posts try to mix where you link to: use both the home page and “deep links” to other pages of your website. This demonstrates to the search engines that your site has depth to its relevance – not only the main page.
Do Google Updates Affect The Value of Article Submission?
Some people have argued that the recent Google “Panda updates” have shaken up search engine rankings so much that it’s no longer clear what the value of article writing is.
We disagree. A backlink is a backlink and Google would be silly to abandon the value of backlinks any time soon; it is simply the best way to judge the authority levels of a site at present.
What it has done is penalise some of the actual publishing sites like EzineArticles; but if you are still getting your backlink then how does that really affect you, if your main concern is getting your website to Number 1, not the publisher’s site?
Google always wants to remain one step ahead and provide the most relevant results for search terms; they do want to weed out some of the “junk” on the web and reward sites that provide quality, authority and credibility. Until something changes dramatically, building backlinks is still the best way for you to go about this.
I guess you shouldn’t be surprised that we’re passing on SEO advice! But we do a lot more than that and tackle many aspects of setting up an online business in the Competition Crusher Workshop at www.crusherworkshop.com. Why not head on over there and take a look – it’s completely FREE to watch!
Article submission is still effective even with the Panda update.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It is best to do article marketing if we also keep the quality of the articles that we submit. Months ago, I saw a number of low quality articles being published by Ezine and that’s not keeping with their (supposed to be) standards. Just wondering if there’s different editorial guidelines for paid members. ;P
t is best to do article marketing if we also keep the quality of the articles that we submit. Months ago, I saw a number of low quality articles being published by Ezine and that’s not keeping with their (supposed to be) standards. Just wondering if there’s different editorial guidelines for paid.
EzineArticles is not consistent with their editorial guidelines. Or at least I believe it really depends on the editor who happens to be checking your article. I regularly submit to EzineArticles and there were a number of times when my well-written article (I’m biased
) was rejected due to grammar issues. I disagree. So what do I do? I take out that article and submit it to either GoArticles or ArticlesBase.
I’ve seen so many articles in Ezine which are duplicate and poor grammar and some are just spun articles. I don’t believe they have gone through any editors. I have shown them to my 9th grade son; even he knows these are not right. I wanted to complain, then I thought these people just like me wants to promote a product or service and that’s not their fault.
Hi Asif. You’re right there are a lot of articles in Ezine that don’t follow proper grammar rules. I do believe though that many of these are from the time before Ezine got strict (a long time ago). Now, Ezine has started to clamp down hard on articles with poor grammar. They’ve grown even more vigilant after the first Panda update.