5 points on article marketing for beginners

Article directory marketing or article marketing started in the early days of the internet. Internet gurus and other SEO people started pushing the idea of using article marketing as a good way to get visitors and build links for SEO. And a lot of people got in on the act and it became one of the most popular ways to build links and get visitors.

If you want to try your hand at article marketing, I have discussed below what article marketing for beginners is, how it works, its pros and cons, and some tips of the trade.

1. What is article directory marketing?

To put it simply, article marketing is a way by which you write an article and submit it to one or more of the top article directories like Ezinearticles. So when people who stumble upon your articles on those article directories read them and like them, they will click on the links to your site to learn more.

2. How it works

When you post an article on an article directory, you’ll be given a box or area at the end of your articles called the resource box that you can talk about yourself or your products and add links to your website. When people read the articles that you have posted, and find them interesting, they may click on your links to learn more.

On top of that, there is also a chance that other people, who have a site or have an email marketing list, will republish, or copy and paste your article into their sites or an email to their subscribers. They copy it with your links intact so you will get more hits or visitors, especially if the site that your article will be posted on gets a lot of hits.

You first sign up on some of the top article directories and fill in your profile, then start submitting articles. When you submit an article, some article directories approve it right away but others can take up to a week to approve it.

3. Its pros and cons

Pros:

Easy way in

You can easily sign up for an account and submit articles. You can also submit articles that are already posted on your site, so you can get started pretty fast.

Free

You can get started absolutely for free, you don’t need to spend anything to create a site then write articles to promote it, unless you want to hire others to write for you.

Traffic

You can get hits or visitors to your site by writing quality articles and you can also prove yourself as a thought leader.

If you don’t have your own blog and you are stopped because you found installing a blog time-consuming, tedious or confusing I can help you. Follow my simple step by step guide and you’ll learn how building your own blog is so easy.

Cons:

It’s time consuming

Writing articles in article marketing takes a lot of time. On top of that, after you have written the articles, you will also have to wait for your articles to be accepted and published on the article directories. And that can take upto a few days or in a few cases, weeks.

Declining effectiveness

At the outset, it was easy to write an article and get a lot of visitors. But as each year passes by, the effectiveness of article marketing is going to seed. There is an argument that it is no longer very effective, especially with search engines devaluing article marketing links, and with new methods like syndication coming to light.

4. The debate over the effectiveness of article marketing

There has been a lot of debate over the effectiveness of article marketing. A lot of people used to do article marketing for SEO and link building, but links from article directories are being devalued by search engines. Not only for SEO, but it is also getting less and less effective for getting visitors.

Right now, there seems to be a new fad and many people are pushing the idea of syndication, where people post your articles on their sites with your resource box untouched. So you have to try writing good quality articles that people will likely syndicate. Also try contacting ezine publishers on ‘Directory of ezines’ or other ezine directories, to get more mileage from your articles.

Write good quality articles with creative titles and bodies that are useful and easy to read from the introduction to their closing. You also have to write creative resource boxes to get people hooked on your offers and clicking on the links to your site.

5. A few of the top article directors

Here are some of the top article directories you can submit articles to. But there are a lot more. And what is more alluring is that, you can submit one article to several article directories at the same time.

Ezinearticles: is a top article directory that you can submit articles to so people can read them on the directory or republish them on their own sites. When you publish an article as a new member, it takes up to a week for it to be approved, but when you become an ‘Expert’ author, you will get approved much faster. All links are no-follow as of 2014 when the site was hit by a Google penalty.

 

Goarticles: is another article directory to which you can submit articles to get more views.

 

 

Searchwarp: another article directory you can re-submit articles posted on your site or other article directories.

 

 

Sooperarticles: this is a fairly new article directory. Approval is faster than average.

 

So, if you want to submit articles and get visitors every time people click on the links in your resource box, the one thing that counts the most is the quality of the articles that you submit. You should also promote the articles you post on article directories. If your articles become among the most viewed ones on the sites, you will get more views and get syndicated more.

What’s Your Feedback?

What is your take on article marketing for beginners? Have you tried using it as a means of getting visitors to your site? Leave your comments in the box below.