Article Marketing

[shandaman]

Hey Guys,

I am currently doing article marketing for one of my terms on my dads site (I will not publicly post the url).

We have been working to rank for this term for several years and are on the second page near the top, we want to be in the top 5 for the term and we are willing to spend any ammount of money it takes to learn this thing!

We were introduced to article marketing not to long ago so we have hired content writers to write articles on our niche and then we are manually (I MYSELF) am going into article sites and listing the articles with a link back to our site with the anchored keyword txt (1 link per article).

We have been doing 10 articles per keyword (there is several keywords we want to rank for) so we are spreading it out slowly building these article links.

Is this the correct process or are we missing something?

These are real UNIQUE articles only being put on 1 article site never being posted anywhere else.

[shandaman]

Hey Keri,

I tested article marketing a lot. Submitted over 200 HAND written articles (no dupes at all) to over 100 different directories.

The rankings did not go up or down so I have stopped article marketing because it all seems to be in vain at this point. I wish it wasnt because I was literally hand writing these articles of 500+ words myself with 1 outgoing link on them to my site with the correct anchor text.

Its really sad.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Shannon,

I'm following up on old, unanswered questions. Can you give us an update about how you and your rankings are doing, and any insights you have into the article marketing you were doing? Do you have any follow-on questions, or is this question answered?

Thanks!

[shandaman]

Oh really? Wow... Thats kind of a bummer. As to tapping out this niche the term we are after there are virtually no blogs created for it (we own about 10 of our own to kind of get the industry going).

[TellThemEverything]

I doubt that you have tapped out this avenue. focus on the customer - what else are they interested in? then find blogs for that.

for example; are they interested in ballroom dancing, thirties/forties/fifties themes, cold war, vietnam war, etc, etc. Interview some real customers and find out what they like - then target that niche.

The aim is to find those customers, wherever they are.

[TellThemEverything]

In my opinion you are wasting your time with article directories now. They all got hit big time recently, and google are very open about saying it's a waste of your time and money. Stick to using those articles in better ways - guest blogging, adding to your own blog/site, ebook creation, etc.

We saw Matt Cutts yesterday at SXSW and he was very plain about this. Even EzineArticles (the least spammy in my opinion) is almost pointless now.

[shandaman]

No we have done all types of SEO including blog posts as you said but unfortunately we have already tapped out the top sources for our niche which is automotive restoration.

I doubt automobile insurance websites would really feature our content so the actual selection of closely related sites is about 50 good SITES not even blogs.

Ideas?

[DavidKonigsberg]

Your better off contacting related blogs and having them feature your quality content with anchor links back to you -You might need to pay a bit for this placement

Also is article marketing the only seo you do?