Article Marketing Success

Is Article Marketing Worth Your Time?

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"All of us learned to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things."

That quote is from former basketball coach Bobby Knight who is renowned for his disdain for sports reporters. Many website owners may agree, thinking that the look of the website and quality of the product will suffice. But, just as positive press helped Knight recruit talented players, article marketing can help you recruit quality traffic to your website. 

First, let's start by defining "quality traffic." While the exact definition will naturally differ depending on your type of website and products, there are a few terms that every site owner needs to know:

• Bounce Rate - the percentage of times a person visits a web page and then leaves the site without visiting any other pages

• Page Views Per Session - this is more in-depth and measures how many pages on the site the visitor views

• Conversions - the visitors who turn into customers

Bounce rates will vary from one site to the next but, if the number is larger than 50 percent, your website is probably not drawing quality traffic. In the past, site owners have been told that any traffic is good but high bounce rates mean the visitors are not even staying on your site long enough to notice your products.

Page views per session have an inverse relationship to bounce rates. While low bounce rates are a good sign, the higher the page views per session, the better. If your site has many interesting pages, users will spend more time clicking around your website.

And when they buy a product, that is a conversion. Good conversion rates will also vary depending on the website but understand that most online businesses have conversion rates under one percent. Typically, this happens because website owners hire search engine optimization (SEO) companies who get paid for drawing traffic, regardless of whether the visitors turn into customers.

So how do you generate quality traffic?

As another author once put it, "Article marketing is vital to the success of your business in 2011 and beyond." The reason is, marketing your website through quality content and well-placed keywords will maximize your ability to draw users who have searched for those terms.

These visitors are obviously interested in topics directly related to your website. And the more specific the search, the more likely the user is to be a potential buyer.

Consider a hotel booking website. If the website draws 20,000 visitors who searched, "San Diego," those visitors may have been looking for images of San Diego beaches, the temperature or the San Diego Padres. Needless to say, they are probably not going to rent a hotel room. However, if the same site gets 10,000 visitors who searched, "affordable hotel rooms in San Diego," they are much more likely to book a hotel.

The wonderful thing about article marketing is that it finds that coveted traffic while taking absolutely nothing away from the 20,000 users who searched, "San Diego." It's a win, win.

So how does article marketing work?

In the past, the preferred method for building traffic was to throw up a large quantity of low-quality content and draw traffic by the sheer mass of material. Google's New Panda Algorithm has changed all of that. 

"Content farms" that duplicate content with minor changes (spins) are now being treated as spam. The new Panda algorithm rewards websites with high-quality, original content by writers who understand search engines:

• Keyword Density

• Social Media Utilization      

Keyword density is the most important factor in article marketing. Depending on the search term, the optimal density can range from half-a-percent to four percent of the entire text of the article. It sounds simple but it takes a good amount of research to figure out what relevant terms are trending and how to word your title.

Social media utilization is also important because Panda is able to differentiate quality links from "spammy" links. Basically, if people are purposefully sharing your article, Google will reward your page with a high rating.

This piece was just an introduction to the benefits of article marketing. Please click the links throughout the text and read more in-depth. But, if you still agree with Mr. Knight that "all of us learned to write in the second grade," keep this more recent quote in mind:

"And I would be the first to admit... indulging my own sense of humor at press conferences has not been greatly to my benefit."

Maybe he was a fan of quality writing after all.