subject: Article Marketing Strategies: Seeing Results In One Month? [print this page] I know that it can be hard when you are first staring to submit articles. You have done your work in writing and submitting your first few articles, and now you are eagerly looking for the first fruits of your labors.
I received this question from a reader recently, and I thought it might help other beginners who are interested to see when their article marketing strategies will start paying off:
Reader question: "I submitted my first 3 articles this month, and I can see them showing up in Google when I search for the title. Yet my website's ranking for the keyword phrase I'm targeting has dropped. What am I doing wrong?"
Please let me set your mind at ease--you are not doing anything wrong.
Why then has your website ranking dropped?
To understand this, it will help to know a few facts about how search engines work:
1 - Whatever marketing tool that you are using (whether it is article marketing or something else), it will usually take 3 to 6 months of consistent effort before you will see your first results. You see, Google re-evaluates website rankings every 3 to 4 months, rather than every day or every week (as we would prefer them to!). If your are marketing a brand new website it can take even longer.
2 - Website marketing is more of a marathon than a sprint. You need to consistently submit articles on a monthly basis over the long term. I recommend submitting 8 articles per website if you are using an automatic article submission service.
3 - You will see your best results on influencing your search engine ranking for your keyword term when you target your main keyword phrase in your HTML resource box. You should have a list of competitive 2 to 3 word keyword phrases that you are targeting for your site, and you would alternate using each term in your HTML resource box. Use your keyword term as anchor text to form the link going back to your website.
Let's summarize: You have just started doing article marketing and you have submitted 3 articles so far--why did your website ranking slip?
You have not been article marketing long enough to see any results from it. What is happening to your website now is the result of the marketing that you have done (or not done) over the past 6 months.
I know, we would all like to see immediate results! Unfortunately that is just not how things work, and patience and consistency will be your best assets in marketing your site.
As you get further along and have been submitting articles consistently for several months, you will start to notice positive changes in your rankings.
Be careful not to invest too much emotional energy into the rankings or to watch them too closely--they do tend to go up and down, sometimes even within the day or the hour.
What you are aiming for is an average position for a certain keyword term over a length of time, rather than trying to sit steadily in one spot on the chart. So, even as you get more advanced in your campaign, you will always see some fluctuation, but in general your website will be much better off than it was before you started marketing it.
If your website is truly about what you are trying to rank highly for, if your website offers valuable content for people interested in that topic, and you are consistently submitting articles to help Google and the other search engines know what your site is about, then you are on the right track.
