Article Marketing - The Way I See It

By: Rudy Freeman - Internet Marketing Expert

Since you're reading this, chances are high that you already know what article marketing is all about. But in case you haven't known, article marketing just means using articles to promote a business, whether it's a website, brand name, product, or anything that need to be exposed. While it's not certain when this marketing technique was first employed, its widespread uses among online marketers have been witnessed everywhere. You must have seen article directories growing like mushrooms in the wild, making ones wonder whether the technique would still be effective and worthwhile as it used to be.

While its effectiveness level is still under dispute, we must recognize that online businesses simply can't bypass article marketing. The recent technical revamp at Google(TM) put an end to link farms and even the concept of link exchange. On the basis of search result quality, intentional exchanges of links among web sites in no way indicate the importance of the web sites in questions. In other words, the links in link exchange activities don't mean any "votes" as they are supposed to be. Therefore, any inbound links to a website that are determined to be related to link exchange activities would carry no weight in terms of PageRank(r) and search engine ranking (in theory, of course). On the other hand, the importance of a web site in the eyes of search engines is still determined in part by inbound links. So for web site promoters, there're no longer many choices beside posting their articles in article directories and writing their blogs, in order to create more inbound links from other web sites.

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The concept of article marketing is indeed a great one. Posting articles with the author's signature links to major article directories, in theory, would generate massive in-bound links from other web sites if the articles are used by many. However, in practice the effect can't be any further from theory. As everyone writes articles these days, the quality of most of them just goes way down. Most article writers get too occupied spamming the system that they seem to care nothing about quality. If you go to any article directory, you'll find that many of them are riddled with embedded links. Every sentence is aimed at advertising instead of conveying any useful information. To make it worse, some writers don't even seem to understand the English language. Many articles are stuffs with grammatical errors, and the ideas don't connect with each other. It is increasingly difficult for readers to figure out what the writers really mean. You may feel like the authors simply translated the articles from another language using some cheap software, and never bothered to proof-read them.

Whatever the reasons might be, low quality articles just destroy the only purpose of article marketing, that is to get more exposure to the writer's business. If you're the author, you may still wonder why in the world you would care about quality. Well, think about it. The success of a business is never about short-term gains. Let's take an example, if a toy manufacturer tries to cut costs by reducing product quality, like using lead-paint instead of more expensive types of paint, what will happen? You know the answer. As soon as consumers find out (and trust me, they're very good at things like that), the company may be forced to close their business. Similarly, if your articles don't carry any value as they're supposed to do, no one would want to publish them in the first place. So why waste your time to write and post your articles knowing that there's little chance they'll be used?

While these idiot article writers litter the otherwise beautiful article marketing arena, there are certain guidelines that can help those bona-fide authors to excel and thrive. The following are just a few, but very important to your success as an article marketer:

1. The first basic concept you need to understand is the difference between web addresses and links. A web address is something like www.TheWebSiteName.com, while a link is structured in HTML codes that begins with <a ... > and ends with </a>. Software programs such as MS Words usually turn a web address into a link automatically, so that they look similar except the color and maybe underline. But in a pure text editor such as NotePad or TextPad, links look a lot messier with all the HTML codes around them. If you're already into article marketing, then you must have known what links are and how they're created. So why do I have to explain all this? Well, the reason is that many article writers nowadays can simply ignore the link structuring basics thanks to the widespread use of HTML editors, WYSIWYG, point-and-click, you name it. The result is that these writers see nothing bad with embedded links all over their article's body. However, the article users, those who publish them, are not that stupid. They have the articles displayed in plain text editors, and those links sure look like hell. The problem is, if they play by the rules, they can't modify it. Even if they dare to modify the articles, it will waste too much time. So the only reasonable option is to trash them altogether!
2. Why are links bad to an article? Well, there are many reasons, but the most obvious one is that it reduces the importance of the webpage. Most webpages already carry many links. Adding more links in the article body will make it look less important in the eyes of search engines. Furthermore, web sites that those links point to don't last forever (especially for those affiliate links). So the article pages may end up linking to dead sites, or non-existing pages. Ask any SEO experts and they'll tell you the same thing: dead links will reduce the importance of the page. Another reason is that links embedded within an article will reduce its value in the viewpoint of readers. Most readers feel that they are more respected if the article is kept clean, without anything distractful effects. So instead of embedding a link in the body text, the writer should write down the web address instead. If readers are interested enough in the subject, they'll know how to copy and paste it into their web browser. The writer should leave any links at the About the author part of the article.
3. To extend the explanation in part 2 above, a good writer should never use excessive HTML codes in the article either. A few effects such as bold or italic would help better conveying the ideas, but too much effect will practically turn the article into a sales page, and therefore devalue the article.
4. When it comes to the value of your articles, be conservative. Beside using standard English and proof-reading your articles, apply all the common writing rules you can think of. For example, writing in ALL CAP will only tells readers that you're an uneducated fool, if any readers really care to read it at all. It's a good idea to use simple text editor instead of fancy kind such as MS Words. The reason is that those text programs by default use some special characters that can't be read by standard web browsers, making your articles look bad. Examples of those special characters are quotation marks, apostrophes, and dashes. If you have to start from Words, try copy and paste your article into NotePad and see how it looks. If it can't read those special characters, then chances are web browsers can't read them either.
5. Most article directories provide separate fields for article's title, author's name, and "about the author." Don't be greedy. The title really means the article's title, not an advertising line. And the author's name means first name and last name, not a stupid web address! Finally, the about the author field is where you can talk about yourself, your business, any advertising or putting links there if you want. If a directory doesn't provide this field, you can generally create one at the bottom of your article. I notice that many writers simply ignore this part. Some instead put links and introduction about the author within the article body. That's obviously a wrong choice. We all know that greed often brings disaster, nothing good will come out of it.

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