Many people had great articles on Ezine that ranked well and sent visitors to their site. However, a lot of Ezine articles were crap, and many of those were also ranking on the first page of Google. Everybody dropped, good and bad alike.

So now the question is, should you continue to submit to Ezine for article marketing purposes? My answer is yes for a couple of reasons. One is that Ezine Articles was the best article marketing site before the update, and now they have made 5 changes to upgrade the quality of future article submissions:

1. Increased Quality Checks – Articles are spending twice as much time in the review process, and their editors are placing more focus on format, grammar, spelling, and consistency.
2. WordPress Plugin and API – No longer being accepted to avoid content duplication.
3. Dead Links – In the past, if you had a dead link Ezine gave you 5 weeks to fix it, with numerous notifications. Now you have 2 weeks to get it taken care of.
4. Membership Level – I think they’re being a little too strict on this, but now if you haven’t met their quality requirements within the first 10 articles you submit, you not only don’t reach Platinum level but are banned from submitting more articles. They have backpedaled a little though, saying that if you are showing progress they’ll be a bit more lenient.
5. 400 Word Minimum – Before it was 250 words, and a good writer can often get their message across in that short of an article. That said, this makes writers work harder to write worthwhile content.

Life just got a little harder for article marketers, but I think it’s worth it to get high quality information on the Internet and in search results. What’s your opinion of these Ezine Article changes?

You will learn which article marketing directory works best for you, but here’s a rundown of some of my favorites. Except for Zimbio, they give direct links.

Your Blog – The first place you should put your article is on your blog itself. Wait a few days before you submit it to any other site, to give the search engines time to index it.

Ezine Articles – Articles published on Ezine are well respected and may actually rank in and of themselves. This article marketing service has strict guidelines and I strongly suggest you read them prior to submitting an article for approval. If you have first published the article on your blog, use the Ezine plugin (available from their site) to submit it; this avoids rejection because of duplicated content.

Go Articles – If you’re having problems getting articles approved on Ezine, you may want to use Go Articles instead. Their guidelines are not as strict and it’s easier to get articles published. Sometimes articles from this site will rank in search results.

Zimbio – If you’ve got a blog, set up an account on Zimbio and then register your blog so it will feed to Zimbio. I like to make my own “Wikizine” on the site and specify that my blog articles publish to it. Although the links are filtered through the site’s URL, articles can send traffic and rank on Google search results.

Squidoo – I have a soft spot for Squidoo. At one time articles from here would rank right at the top. There was a smackdown when spammers started misusing the site, and now the articles don’t rank as easily, but they still provide links and often some good traffic to your site. Squidoo lenses, as they are called, are fun to create too. For best results be sure to make at least five modules and add pictures.

Update: This Squidoo lens showed up on the first page of Google a couple of days after it was published. This gives the business 3 listings on the first page – always a plus!

Check out this list of the Top 50 Article Directories – gives traffic, pagerank, and whether the directory employs the nofollow tag.

I’d love to know which article syndication sites you prefer to use and that give you the best results.

The algorithms used in today’s search engines are quite sophisticated and can easily figure out what your article is about without you hammering it home. You’ll also alienate your readers if your article reads like it’s meant for search engines instead of human beings.

The two places where you must have your target keyword phrase are in your title and your link. It’s very important to do this the right way:

1. If at all possible, put your keyword at the beginning of your article’s title. For example, “Article Marketing – 3 Days to Success” instead of “3 Days to Successful Article Marketing.”
2. Make your link, whether in your resource box for article syndication sites or in the article itself, your exact keyword phrase: “Read SEO Diva to learn about article marketing and how to…“
3. Don’t neglect to use your keyword phrase in the tags for the article.

It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: make the article relevant to your keywords. I’ve come across articles that are about one thing, such as housebreaking a dog, and then in the resource box the linked keyword phrase is for something like Acai diet products. There’s no relevancy there, and it’s doubtful the link would add anything to the website’s ranking.

Using the Resource Box to Your Advantage

When you submit your article to a syndication site, you are often not allowed to put self-serving links within the article itself. Instead, you’re allowed two links in the resource box at the end of the article.

To make the most of it, write two or more sentences in a custom resource box for each article you submit. Ezine Articles recommends it be around 15% of your article’s word count.

One sentence should be a call to action along with your keyword linked to the most relevant page on your site (not your home page in most cases). For example, when you click on the article marketing link shown in #2 above, you’ll see that the link does not go to my home page but to an interior page of this site.

The second link should be an actual URL; using my example, it would be http://www.seodiva.net/article-marketing-3-days/. The reason is that when others republish your article, sometimes your link will be stripped out. However, by including your URL you have a better chance of 1) getting credit for the article and 2) for the reader to go to your site for more information.

You should also include the name of your business or site in the resource box, again for credit for the article as well as information for the reader.

Don’t forget to complete your author bio. Write a little about yourself, add your business name, a link to your site, and your social networking links.

When Others Publish Your Article

When other websites publish your article, they are supposed to keep the resource box and all links intact. Some do, but others strip out the links. By including your actual URL and business/site name, you are ensuring that the reader knows where the article came from.

Some unscrupulous people will exclude the resource box entirely, but since they are using duplicate content they aren’t getting credit for it from the search engines. Yes, it’s a ripoff, but your time is usually better spent writing more articles than tracking these people down and demanding they remove it.

Next: Article Marketing Part 3: Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles

Part 1: Article Marketing – 3 Days to Success

Writing an article takes a lot of time and effort, and you want to get the most out of your hard work. But if you don’t understand how to use article marketing the right way, your site will not reap all the benefits it should.

During the next three days, I’m going to show you how to write and market your articles so you will get inbound keyword links that are search engine (especially Google) friendly and will help increase the rankings of your website.

Article Marketing = Increasing the Knowledge Base

Are you old enough to remember Encyclopedia Britannica? When I was was growing up pre-World Wide Web, I loved to read articles from our family set, and actually read through every one of the 26 volumes. The Internet is like a massive encyclopedia that contains the combined knowledge of millions of people from all over the world.

To create inbound links to your site that will be considered Google-friendly and that will help increase your site’s search engine rankings, you need to take the time and make the effort to add to this knowledge base.

What makes the Internet so cool is that you get the viewpoints of many different people about any given topic. So yes, whatever you write about has most likely been said before, but you have a unique perspective and way of of explaining or describing your area of expertise that is like no other individual’s. This is what makes your article unique and interesting.

Your Article Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect

Some people have a gift for writing, but you don’t have to be a great writer to share content that will be meaningful to others. After all, you’re the expert!

Unsure of yourself? Just do it – sit down and write out what you want to say. A few tips:

1. Don’t write a sales pitch – who wants to read that? By the same token, don’t use industry jargon – a conversational tone usually works best. I sometimes have to go back and remove  “agency-speak” from my blog articles.
2. Don’t worry about cramming keywords in your article; make it natural. Write it like you’re talking to another person. If you and I were having a conversation, I wouldn’t say “I’d like to help you with your article marketing because article marketing will make your site rank better and I have a lot of experience with article marketing.”
3. Take a different approach and have some fun with it. Instead of rehashing what everyone else has said, go with a unique viewpoint. Throw in your own thoughts, add a quote, give an example, or tell a story.
4. Make sure your article provides value by answering a question or solving a problem for the reader. If you need ideas, ask your friends and family what they’d like to know about your business and then write about that.
5. Make it current – stay on top of what’s happening in your industry and take advantage of it. One of our articles hit #3 on Google and brought hundreds of visitors within a few days because it answered a question about a new law that had just been passed in Arizona.

After you’ve finished hammering out a rough draft you can polish it up – do a little rewriting where it’s needed, move sentences and paragraphs around to make the article more cohesive, but don’t freak out about it. Sometimes “good enough” is fine. Whatever you do though, don’t forget to check grammar and run spell check!

Next:

Article Marketing Part 2: Keywords, Links, and Your Resource Box

Article Marketing Part 3: Best Places to Syndicate Your Articles

It’s a time consuming process though…you have to decide on a topic, research and write the article, create an optimized title that contains your keywords, write an effective resource box that contains keyword links and a call to action, submit it to various online resources, and make any changes they request (EzineArticles.com is particularly picky). Whew! All that for 2 links.

But wait, what if you could write one article, get many variations of it, and get 100 links from relevant sites, instead of only 2? A couple of months ago I wrote an article about SEO LinkVine as a fast, easy and effective method to get inbound links to your site. The site closed its membership shortly after that, but since it’s now open for awhile, I decided to give you an update of my experience with article marketing through them, using spinnable articles.

There are two areas of SEO LinkVine, and I’ll discuss each of them in turn.

Submit Articles and Get Links

This is my favorite part of the service. Yes, you still have to take all the steps listed above, along with the additional step of spinning the article (click the link <– to learn how that’s done). The site has an article spinning function; the last time I checked it didn’t do as good a job as I liked, but I’m very picky, and the spinner on the site is a good way to start out.

Here’s the best part – you choose the categories your article fits in, decide how many times a day it’s available for publishing (I usually choose 2 or 3) and sit back while others post your article to their sites, complete with keyword links that point back to your website. I have found this method to be very effective at building inbound links from relevant sites, and is alone worth the monthly membership fee.

Get Free Content

I’ve had mixed results with this portion of the service. I have several sites listed, but rather than have articles post to them automatically, I review each one. Thank goodness I chose that option from the beginning, because I reject 80-90% of the articles submitted for my sites. Reasons include the articles not being a good fit with the blog topic and/or poor writing (or spinning) ability.

That said, I’ve also received some truly excellent articles that I’ve been happy to publish on my sites. (Let me be clear here – SEO Diva is always written by me or a guest author.) It takes only a few minutes to scan those awaiting approval, and the gems are worth the time spent rejecting the other articles.

Articles on Demand Feature

I haven’t utilized this feature as much as I should. Here’s how it works:

The brand new “articles on demand” feature allows you to add to your existing blog content by telling the SEOLV members the exact articles you would like written. It’s like having your own personal team of article writers at your service, at no cost.

To get started, simply select the blog you would like the article added to. Next, select the category you would like your article assigned to. Next, write in a short explanation of the article you would like written. And finally, write a more detailed description of the article to make sure the article writer knows specifically what to write about. Click the “Request Topic” button and you’re done!

As soon as an article writer selects your topic, writes the article, and submits it, it will be sent directly to you for approval (or if you’ve set your blog to auto-accept, it will be automatically added to your blog).

The few times I’ve requested articles I’ve been happy with them, especially since they’ve improved the process. I learned more specific you are, the better the results.

Conclusion

With many sites to build inbound links for, SEO LinkVine is well worth the expense to me. If nothing else, you may want to consider registering for the free Get Free Content. But if you’re working to build inbound links, you should take a look at what they have to offer. It’s one more tool to get your site ranking well in Google search results…which means more traffic and better conversions.

Article marketing is a great way to build links to your site, but it can be a tedious process to come up with a volume of unique articles.

Enter a fast and relatively easy way to build a lot of links quickly with article marketing.

Build Links to Your Site Quickly

I am a total fan of Alex Krulik’s Magic Article Rewriter and Magic Article Submitter. I’ve been using both for over a week, building links to my sites like mad! Here’s how they work…

Magic Article Rewriter is a dream to use, especially with the added Magic Tokens database, which automates almost the entire process. You just paste an article into the text box, click on Magic Tokens, and you’ve got an article ready to be spun and distributed. The spun articles are not garbage…they make sense, although I do go through and make corrections, since sometimes the synonyms or replacement phrases don’t quite fit the article.

This is the above paragraph with tokens added, which can be spun into many different versions:

Magic Article Rewriter is a {dream|delight|joy|pleasure|marvel} to {use|utilize|make use of}, {especially|particularly} with the {added|supplementary|additional} Magic Tokens database, {which|that} automates {almost|virtually|nearly} {the entire|the whole|the complete} {process|procedure}. You {just|simply} {paste|insert} an article into the text {box|area}, click on Magic Tokens, and you’ve got {an article|a piece of writing} {ready to|able to|able to} be spun and distributed. The spun articles {are not|aren’t} {garbage|trash|rubbish|nonsense|gobbledygook}…{they|the articles} make sense, {although|though} I do go {through|thru} {and|plus} {make|create} {corrections|changes}, {since|because|as} {sometimes|typically|generally} the synonyms or {replacement|substitute|alternate} phrases {don’t|do not} {quite|entirely|totally} {fit|match} the {article|piece}.

Submit Your Articles to Hundreds of Directories

The companion software to this is Magic Article Submitter. You create a Gmail account specifically for your article submissions, then create a profile for the article directories within the Submitter. It automagically signs you up with up to 700 article directories, and then goes into the Gmail account and activates the accounts (I love that part!). Next, using the wizard, you enter your article into the Submitter, complete with tokens, choose your categories, and it then submits spun articles to the article directories.

The number of directories your articles are actually submitted to depends upon your subject matter and the categories. There’s no point in submitting an article on dog training to a wine article site. Before you ask – I don’t worry about getting too many links at one time. Not all the articles will be accepted, and some will take weeks to get accepted. Some will be filtered out by Google, and that’s okay.

For a much better and more complete explanation of these Elite Article Marketing Tools, click on over to Alex’s site and watch his videos. He’s a great guy, and has taken the time to respond to a couple of issues I had.

After raving about these software programs, I want you to know that this is not a paid article! I just think they are great products and I’m sold on them. I do have an affiliate relationship, but I never promote products unless I have used them and believe they are beneficial to your SEO campaign.

They give you highly relevant keyword links back to your site, and often rank in the SERPs on their own merits.

Benefits of Article Marketing

First, articles allow you to provide valuable information to potential customers and clients, including why they need your product or services. But because the information is presented in an informative way, readers are more receptive.

Articles can also help establish your credibility in the field on which you are writing while providing valuable links back to your web site.

What is Article Syndication?

The idea of syndication has been around for decades in traditional publishing. Take a look at your local newspaper, for example, and you’ll find articles written that will have appeared in newspapers all over the country simultaneously. This provides the author with greater exposure and a much easier distribution method.

With online article syndication, the idea is very similar. You submit your article to sites like EzineArticles.com, or you can use services that will distribute your article to a variety of different sources, along with your resource box, which contains keyword links back to your site.

The article appears in these other online publications or directories, where you’ll have greater exposure to a wider audience. Web publishers may decide to use your article on their site for added content; they are required to include your resource paragraph with the article.

When you’re choosing a service to use, make sure you carefully read all of their rules and requirements. Some will allow you to submit your article via multiple services; others will not.

Formatting Your Syndicated Article

Before you can put any article up for syndication, you need to keep a few formatting guidelines in mind.

1. Your article should be a minimum of 250 words. Mine typically range from about 500 to 800.
2. Decide on your keywords. You don’t want to overdo it but do place your keywords in the first paragraph, last paragraph, and a couple of times in the body.
3. Determine which internal pages you want to link to on your web site. You don’t put links within the body of the article, but instead place two or three keyword links in the resource box, which will help you get traffic back to your site as well as count as highly relevant inbound links.
4. You’ll need to prepare a summary of your article. Summaries are commonly required by the directories and publishers working with the syndication services.
5. Don’t leave off your reprint rights information from any of your articles if you use a service to syndicate them. Like your resource box, this should be fairly standard on all of the articles you write. The rights should specify that the content can be used in its entirety for free but only if accompanied by the resource box and used unaltered.

Make Your Article Valuable

One of my main complaints when reading articles submitted for syndication is that often there’s no truly valuable information in them. Instead, they’re strung-together paragraphs containing generic information of no real interest.

When looking for content to add to a web site, it’s great to find a well written, informative piece that my site visitors will enjoy reading and will be able to take away something of value. Those are the articles that get syndicated throughout the webosphere and achieve their own search rank.

If you use your usual email, your real name, or even your online nickname when you sign up, you are missing out on some serious SEO benefits. For best SEO action just follow the guidelines below.

1. Sign up for a new gmail account using your business name or keywords.For example, if you’re a Realtor, make your first name “Phoenix Homes” and your last name “For Sale.” If you’re selling blue striped widgets, make your first name “Blue Striped” and your last name “Widgets.” If you want your business name to be used for branding purposes, the same technique applies.

   When you sign up for Knol, your gmail ID is what is used as your name. So every time you write an article about your area of expertise, the credit will go to the author, whose name will be Phoenix Homes for Sale or Blue Striped Widgets.

   Tip: Use this gmail account for all your social media accounts – you’ll have it all in one place and won’t clutter up your personal inbox. This advice comes from the experience of one who currently has 3,000 unread emails in her inbox!

2. When you sign up for Squidoo and Zimbio, you’re asked for  your desired username. This is when you don’t use your usual nickname of “amysgrandma2007″ but instead either a “keyword name” or business name.
3. The same advice above applies to your username for social media sites. Since they are more “social” you may want to use a somewhat friendlier appellation, like “phoenix realtor” or “blue widget” as your username.

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