subject: The Proper Use Of Article Marketing Backlinks (so You Dont Waste Your Time And Money!) [print this page] A lot of webmasters spend their time writing an article in order to get one backlink! From a strategic backlinking point of view, this is an absurd waste of time and energy. This article will explain why its a waste and how you can turn it into a profitable, worthwhile activity.
The reason many webmasters go after backlinks from article directories is because some of the domains for these directories (EZA, GoArticles, etc.) have high PageRank (usually around PR5-6). In a way, a link from these sites can be valuable. However, spending time to write an article, even if it is only 250 words long is a big waste of time for one link, even if it is from a high PR domain.
In fact, it is much easier and cost efficient to get a link from a publicly viewable profile on a forum site, for example. Additionally, finding higher PR domains than PR5 or 6 is much easier with these kinds of sites. So you can actually go after links from PR 7-9 quite easily and not have to write any articles.
Having said that, there is a certain virtue to article marketing, if you maximize it correctly. First off, you need to make sure that the link that youre placing on the directory is a do-follow link. If its a no-follow link, you will not be maximizing the value of the link and its possible that the link will not have any value at all.
Next, its important that you do correct keyword research. And this should not be any extra work because if youre writing an article for the sake of getting a link back to a page on your site, you should have already done the research for your target term. So you can just target the same term within your article as well. This gives you a chance to have multiple properties ranking for one term, which can be quite powerful.
Then youre going to want do the same kind of backlinking to your article as youre doing to your website page, to try to get it ranking high in the SERPS. A method that used to be very powerful was doing a link wheel. These are not as valuable as they were before because Google has learned to detect a footprint. Similar but new methods have come out that are just as powerful but leave less of a footprint, such as Sean Donohoes Link Magnet you can look into it if youre interested. Just like the link wheel, it involves using other Web 2.0 properties and linking back and forth in a specific way between the sites, allowing you to borrow authority. No matter what kind of links you send to your article, be it a Link Magnet or just more PVP links, you need to try to get it ranked for maximum benefit.
Additionally, if youre using EZA, you should try to get your article into the most viewed and most published categories. Look up Mario Browns Underground Article Marketing to learn how to do this. This will further maximize the visits to your article and ultimately to your site.
In conclusion, dont just write an article for one backlink. Do it for the backlink AND to rank the site for your target term. This will make your article marketing efforts worthwhile in the long run.
