subject: Article Marketing Strategy: Which Is More Effective-a Blog Or Article Marketing? [print this page] Article marketing and having a blog work extremely well together as part of a comprehensive online marketing campaign.
Recently someone asked me which was better--an article marketing strategy that generates links to your website containing your keywords, or a blog that builds the content on your own website?
Both are great, but if I had to pick one or the other I would advise starting with an article marketing campaign. Let's look at the benefits of having a blog and submitting articles.
The Benefits of Article Marketing:
Submitting articles can help your website (including your blog) get a higher search engine ranking for specific keyword terms associated with your site.
The articles can also turn up in search engine searches, in ezines that are sent to a list of subscribers who are interested in your topic, or on article directories and other online publishing websites.
When people find your article online or through an ezine (email newsletter), they can click the link in your resource box and be taken to your website. So, you can get more visitors to your website in two ways with article marketing:
1- Directly through the articles themselves (via the link to your site in the resource box).
2 - More significantly, through Google searches and getting a higher ranking for your website.
The articles also help establish you as a knowledgeable and trustworthy person in your niche, and they can be a great way to help your potential customers get to know you and feel comfortable with you before purchasing your product.
The Benefits of Having a Blog:
Let's take a look at a few...
*A blog has the benefit of frequently updated content, which gives readers a reason to return.
*A blog helps you to build a community around your site. If your blog is marketed well and is drawing in readers on a regular basis, it could be that people will subscribe to your RSS feed or just visit your site on a regular basis to see what's new.
*A blog produces the ability to connect with your readers and potential customers through interaction in the comments.
*A blog helps with SEO, because of the continual fresh content. It's often easier for a blog to get a higher ranking than a traditional website that stays the same all the time.
A blog can be especially useful if you have a traditional static website--the blog can help boost the search engine ranking of your traditional static website (through links going from the blog to your main site).
It can also bring more traffic to your static website, because the blog brings in traffic and then people visit your main website through the links in your blog.
Which is best?
Blogs and article marketing are apples and oranges, albeit in the same fruit basket, but different just the same, each with its own merits.
It's worth noting that a blog still needs to be marketed--it will not automatically get a high ranking in Google or have visitors coming to it to read your content. People with blogs will often submit articles to market their blogs.
So, if you have a blog, you will still benefit from doing article marketing--you must do some form of marketing for the blog.
But, you do not have to have a blog in order to do article marketing--all you need is any sort of website. You can use article marketing for a traditional website, a sales oriented website, a business website, a blog--really any website at all.
If you have a traditional website and you can only choose one of these marketing tools, then go with article marketing. If you can do both, then do that, as the blog can help your website in ways that article marketing doesn't, and article marketing will help your blog to be a more powerful ally for your website, as well as helping your website to get a higher Google ranking.
