Publish Articles Online to Generate Buzz and Traffic
Even before blogging became extremely popular for businesses (and there’s still work to be done in that regard!) people were publishing articles online in article directories.
This is one of Ron’s buzz challenges from his book and part my 3-Week Buzz Marketing Challenge.
Ron points out that you can get some amazing buzz by publishing content in newspapers or magazines. But that’s still pretty much a “black box” for most of us, and few of us have the right connections to do it. Still, I’d encourage this wholeheartedly and would love to do some writing for prominent magazines/newspapers (hint, hint.)
Publishing articles online is much easier.
Lots of individual websites are looking for content, and there are some very well known article directories as well, including EzineArticles.com.
A contact of mine had recommended that I publish some articles there, because it was generating a lot of traffic to his website. I gave it a try in mid-December, re-purposing two blog posts into articles. You can find them here:
I tried two different topics to see what the results would be. Both articles have received similar traffic numbers - about 180 views each. Neither resulted in much traffic to my blog though.
Today, I submitted a third article. It takes 7-10 days for articles to be approved, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
If you want to give this a try, here are some suggestions:
- Do your research. Take a look at what some of the regulars are doing at the article directories. What type of content are they publishing? How long? How are they embedding links? What do their bios look like? With a bit of research you can start to figure out how best to tackle article publishing.
- Don’t re-publish content verbatim. If you have time to write original content, even better, but I think most of the articles found on those directories are exact copies of previously published material or re-purposed material. My recommendation is to re-purpose some blog posts; maybe blend a couple blog posts together, or expand on an idea you’ve already posted on.
- Link wisely. In my first two articles I didn’t put any outbound links to my blog (or elsewhere.) And the link I did include basically said, “Please visit my blog at Instigator Blog.” Not only is that not terribly compelling, it doesn’t do much for SEO purposes.
In the 3rd article I’ve just submitted, I included more embedded links to blog posts and added two more relevant links to my own sites - with anchor text emphasizing more interesting/important keywords.
- Keep submitting. Like any buzz effort it takes time and work. Submitting a couple articles won’t generate a lot of results but start publishing regularly and you could build up an audience as well as some recognition from the article directories. It may result in being featured or highlighted in some way. Lance Winslow has written over 10,000 articles at EzineArticles — it’s gotta be doing something for him!
Article publishing on a regular basis can be time consuming, especially if you’re writing original content (alongside your own blog!) or re-purposing material (without making it crap.) My recommendation would be to give it a try and start doing an article per month, so you can see if it generates results for your target market.
Ben,
I’ve been planning on writing articles for a while. Thanks for the info. I wish I had more time for my writing. Maybe when my blog generates more revenue I can find more time to write.
How long does it take you to re-vamp a post into an article?
Steve - the one about sales took about an hour or so, which I felt was long. The WordPress one took less time - the information was simpler to re-structure nicely.
The one I submitted today took about 20 minutes. Perhaps not my best writing ever, but functional nonetheless (I hope) for generating traffic, linkbacks and some buzz.
[…] Yoskovitz from Instigator blog wrote a post titled “Publish Articles Online to Generate Buzz and Traffic” and I was going to comment on his blog but decided to trackback instead due to length, […]
Very good comments Ben.
I have not pursued this one as much as some others, but it does not hurt. I have also talked to people that buy the submission software so that the article gets posted to 100’s of directories. I know one person that uses this technique along with word of mouth and speaking to generate all of her business.
For a good, second opinion on publishing content on other sites, and the risks involved, please check out the trackback above to Greg Balanko-Dickson’s post.
Ron - thanks for the feedback. I would be hesitant about the submission software, only based on concerns of Google duplication content, feeling like it’s a bit “black hat”, etc. Somehow it doesn’t sit that well with me, but it might just be that it’s new for me so I’m hesitant.
Your example is a great one - if you can generate business through an approach like that, why not, right?
Anyone else?
Testing to make sure comments work after mucking with a plugin.
For a conflicting perspective, pop over to me. I go to the other extreme and spread my content as wide as possible.
Every time you ping your blog, you spread duplicate content all over the web.
As I mentioned in my recent mammoth blog post on this issue, as long as you link back to the source article on your blog (where you should post it first), you have nothing to worry about.
I believe Lance knocks out between 3 and 5 articles per hour, but in a recent comment on the Ezine Articles blog recommends writing from scratch on the same topic, rather than trying to rewrite your content.
You might think he has been writing lots of articles for years, but 8000 of those articles were written in the last 15 months.
Just think, Wordpress already creates 4 or 5 copies of each post, plus maybe multiple excerpts - with my tagging system there is often 15 or more copies of the same post, though the pages they are on are different.
Even Matt Cutts doesn’t worry about the duplicate content in his Wordpress installation.
I agree it is a bit black hat. Yet if you think of it as just wanting to publish your article in multiple directories, I do not think it is unethical. However, it is not about what you think, it is about how search engines see it. They rule the world.
Ron - search engines rule the world…kinda scary…so does Google penalize duplicate content?
Anyone?
Maybe they do but it doesn’t matter if you get an article in 100 directories it might not make a difference how it impacts organic search…
OK Ben, you asked…
Absolutely, Yes, Google penalizes duplicate content.
Let me share a personal story. In 2005, I switched from a custom built CMS to Wordpress. I spent a lot of time moving content over by hand. Unknown to me, I had left a path open for Google to still get my content via the old CMS.
I dropped totally out of the search engines. I was getting 700-800 visits per day, traffic plumeted to under 100. After 4 years in the top 5 results in Google for my site I was nowhere to be found.
At that time I was running Google Adwords on my site and I went from paying my mortgage, taxes, and groceries with my Google check to $50.
I was shell shocked. Spent hours, days, and weeks getting to the bottom of it. IN the end I discovered two issues.
First, after auditing my old CMS and pages I discovered an open path that Google was spidering and much of this was content I had moved to my new wordpress blog.
Second, at the time Google had left open a back door for hackers to exploit the 302 Error that Google uses to spoof Google into thinking that the scraper site was my site and that the content on my site (which was the originator and owner) was the offending site in Googles eyes plus the offending site got my Google PR.
The rub was the offending URL was also using Google Adwords.
I consulted many SEO experts, forums, and blogs trying to get to the bottom of the 302 Error problem no one could really give me a real answer and their solution was always the same. Eliminate all duplicate content find the scraper URL in your server logs and report them to Google and wait.
So watched my server logs like a hawk, closed my unintentional open path to the old CMS and then I reported everything I discovered to Google.
I also tracked down the Hosting Co. of the offending URL and claimed DMCA Safe Harbor provisions (copyright violations) and requested that the offending URL’s services be suspended.
Suffice it to say, it cost me cold hard cash, days of wasted time, and woke me up to the realities of the Internet.
I never got anything but an automated reply from Google but reading between the lines and speaking with much more experienced White Hat and Black Hat SEO’s they all felt I got Google’s attention. Now I just had to sit an wait.
It took about 7-8 months for traffic to return to previous levels but after 3-4 months I noticed my server logs were not showing the offending URL as a referrer and my traffic started to grow slowly, ever so slowly.
I made a business decision at that time to never rely on business income from advertising online because of all the variables and the impact of my own innocent mistake and a scraper theif.
So, I removed all advertising from my site, rebuilt it with a new design and focus, I have never looked back.
For me, not watching and tweaking site design and layout based on what was happening to my click through ratios was a relief. I also felt more congruent and I was free to focus on serving my readers with quality content, not tweaking for clicks.
All I can say is be careful. These gray and black hat techniques all work, for awhile.
As a business professional I have learned the hard way not take the easy and fast route to riches - any so called success is temporary and fleeting.
This is just my real life experience story and I am sticking to it…
Greg - it’s a great story to tell, and I appreciate that you shared it here.
I’m strongly considering going after some of the scrapers now.
It’s worthwhile sharing experiences - positive or negative - to help others around us. So I do appreciate it.
And I understand completely what you mean regarding advertising, and the frustrations of constantly tweaking things to try and maximize revenue, relying on it, etc…
That is a very good illustration.
1st, I want to say that I do not suggest people use the software. It is never mentioned in the book and it is definitely better if you submit them one at a time, and varied content. I have never used the software myself. I have talked to people that have used it successfully, but I am not sure of all the details.
2nd, Duplicate content on your own site is very dangerous. Duplicate content in different article repositories is unlikely to cause the same ban on your website. However, it is still a risk you have to assess.
3rd, the best way to get results if find actual portals, magazines or other resources that want your content because it is a good fit for their readers. You could let someone publish your article on their blog as a guest writer, and it could be more effective than the article repository.
Duplicate content is all about links to the orginal document. Even Matt Cutts blog has duplicate content and supplemental results.
Greg your blog currently has duplicate content too - categories - date archives - sequential next pages, etc etc. My blogs normally have more with tag pages.
If you are moving, do your best with 301 redirects or even meta redirects help.
Also note that just because robot.txt prevents indexing, it also flags content as being there.
Ron - thanks for the continued feedback.
It’s funny - I’m going to post here soon about having my content published elsewhere (with my acceptance) as part of a buzz challenge (re-shaping the blog challenge because I already blog) — but I never looked at how else they might use the content — so now I’m going to ask!
I didn’t agree to let them reuse it or own it in any other way, but I still should have asked. Lessons learned all around.
Andy - I’m sorry your comments got caught in Akismet somehow, and I’m just going through it now! Thanks for the alternative viewpoint on duplicate content and it’s potential concerns.
Hi Ben
No worries
I wasn’t sure whether maybe I had included a link to the related article in the posts.
Maybe it is because I didn’t include a root domain name, and instead in the clickable link used a link to a related post.
[…] Yoskovitz presents Publish Articles Online to Generate Buzz and Traffic posted at Instigator Blog, saying, “Looking for ways to generate buzz, I’m attempting […]
With reference to submission software and duplicate content. Don’t forget, search engines are looking at the whole site, and most article directories have other content (such as adsense and other advertising) on article pages, so the article is not the whole page. If the submission software was not doing it’s job, no one would buy it.
Greg - it’s a great story to tell, and I appreciate that you shared it here.
I’m skeptical of the duplicate content theory, in that Google will penalize you for it. If that were true, wouldn’t all the thousands of Article Directories that exist across the web fall victim to that very theory?
Art
Art - I’m no expert, but from what I understand duplicate content ACROSS sites isn’t the issue, it’s duplicate content on the SAME site that Google doesn’t like.