Using Article Submission To Create Publicity - Part One

Article submission is a great way to create publicity and to attract traffic to your website. If you can write (and write well, as will be assumed here) this is one of the more popular 'free' marketing techniques that might just work for you.

The General Idea

Here is how article submission works. You write an article covering a specific area of a broader general interest category. You then submit your article to any number of the hundreds of websites that accept these articles. The goal here is two-fold:

a. to create backlinks to your website, raising your 'popularity ranking' in the eyes of the search engine robots AND

b. to position yourself as an expert in your field of expertise.

Let's look briefly at each . . .

Site Ranking

Your website will be ranked by a number of ever-changing factors in relationship to a search term entered by an Internet surfer. Search engine optimization is a subject that will be covered in later posts. However, article submission can have some effect on your search engine ranking. I have been working with a number of life coaches for some time so I will use this as our example.

Typing in the word 'coach' as the search term on Google brings 10,500,000 hits. Yahoo does one better on this one, bringing in 173,000,000 hits. That is one hundred seventy three MILLION hits. In neither case does either engine bring up a life coach at all on that all-important first page.

Now think about it. When YOU surf the Internet, do you look much farther than maybe the first page or two? Most likely not. There are many life coaches who use this article submission as a component of their marketing strategy. So, why aren't any life coaches appearing on that first page? Over and over I hear comments like "Gee, I spent hours and hours posting articles and nothing has happened." Why is this so?

Let's change the search term. Type in the words "life coach". Google now brings 21,800,000 hits. No life coaches on the first page. Type in the search term life coach on Yahoo and you will get 55,600,000 hits. One life coach's website will appear. One single site on the first page. Now, do you know why this ONE person's website appears on this all-important first page? The answer is simple. And it may surprise you . . .

The Article Submission Process

To submit articles you must first find the article submission sites. You then register with the individual article sites. You will be required to fill out a form for each site. Most sites will then send you back a confirmation link, which you must visit to activate your account. After this has been accomplished, you may submit articles, subject to the submission guidelines of the particular site. Depending on the number of sites you register with, this can take from several hours to several days.

Once registered, you will need to visit each site and submit your article. This is where it gets really time intensive, as you will need to fill out a form for each article, paste the article, provide keywords, author information and bio, links and submit the article.

This is AS time consuming, if not MORE time consuming than registering for these sites.

Once the article is submitted it is 'up for review'. Most sites review each and every article submitted. Depending on the relative size of the site, getting your article approved can take from a day to months or even longer.

The Advantages

Submitting articles, as mentioned, has two advantages; it creates back-links to your site and helps to position you as an expert in your field.

The back-link is one of the criteria in determining how well your web site is ranked in relation to all the other sites out there. You will be competing with, in the example above, perhaps 10's of millions of other sites for that coveted high ranking. But of course back-links are not the only criteria in ranking your site. There are many other factors, (again, far too many to list here) which will contribute to the optimization of your site for the search engines.

Time constraints notwithstanding, you will most likely want to use the article submission idea, but don't expect too much in the way of quick results. The article submission process is a bit like dropping pebbles into a bucket of water. At first, it seems as though nothing is happening. After a time though, the pebbles begin to replace the water in the bucket. Eventually, the bucket will be filled with pebbles and no water will remain. Think of this as a process, but it is certainly not as the be-all and end all to search engine Nirvana. Time and effort not withstanding, it is an extremely effective tool in the free marketing arsenal.

Positioning yourself as an expert in your field should be the PRIMARY goal here. Article sites go to great lengths to get the top rankings and keep abreast of changes in search engine criteria. Rely on them to get the ranking for your ARTICLES. You should concentrate on constant submission and on the content of the articles submitted.

The Content

I could write a book on this subject. Someday I may.

Let us use websites to illustrate my next point regarding content. Take a few moments and sit down and just look at your competitor's websites. Get a feel for the content. Notice anything?

Too much information! Plain and simple. I preach and preach and continually preach this to my clients. If you get nothing from these words, please understand this: Every single word, every single sentence, every single paragraph gives your potential customer or client the opportunity to say "No". Every single word, every single sentence and every single paragraph should be carefully designed to do just one thing:

Create curiosity. For it is curiosity that will lead to ACTION.

Yes, yes I know. We want to tell our potential customers all about ourselves. We want them to know what our business, practice or book can do for them. We want them to fully understand why they should consider us as opposed to the competition. And so we give them everything. And when we give them everything, they make a decision BASED on that information. No, no, no. . . WRONG!

Web site designers are not marketers. They are web site designers. They are wonderful people and many of my personal friends design websites for a living. But they are not marketers.

An effective site or article will create curiosity. Period.

This curiosity will lead to action on the part of the potential buyer, client or editor who may be looking at your article or web site. The action should be to request more information or to sign up for a newsletter or any other action you desire. In this case, the article links to your web site. The 'closing' should be done in person. Unless you are marketing a $9.95 booklet or a very low priced product or service, don't try to get potential buyers to take action immediately based on the information on the site or in your article! A $9.95 booklet is an impulse buy. It is an impulsive, hedonic response. If you are marketing a larger ticket item it will not be an impulse buy. The action component of the sales process should always be accomplished IN CYBERSPACE-PERSON!

A Quick Word About Pictures

Please, please be careful with this! Believe it or not, a picture is one of the primary reasons people will make the dreaded snap NO decision.

Real estate agents, for example, especially insist on using a picture in their marketing materials. But if you happen to look like Aunt Bessie who used to smother the client with unwanted kisses years ago, you could lose a potential buyer solely for this reason. You may look too professional. You may look too homespun. The older client may perceive you to be too inexperienced. The younger client may see you as an old fogy. You have no control over this but, either way, you COULD lose. When in doubt, do not use a picture, unless you have a very good reason for doing so.

I could go on and on about this, but I will stop before I get carried away. I am getting off topic.

Information

Your article should provide great information. This is how you position yourself as an expert. But it should not give ALL the information in regards to the topic. Again, it should be carefully crafted to create enough curiosity to get them to click on the link to your site. The article must contain SUBTLE prompts to action. But, remember this: The article may be perfectly written to cause that person to follow up and click through to your site.

The site provides further information. However, again, your site MUST also 'leave them hanging'. This creates further curious ACTION. That action should be to pick up the phone. Sign up for a class. Buy a product or service.

The Viral Factor

There is another factor here that must be considered. When you submit an article to an article site, you must agree to allow others to pick the article from the site and use YOUR article in THEIR publications. This is another primary purpose of these types of sites - to provide content.

This end user might be someone’s website. It could be someone’s newsletter. It may end up in an ezine or magazine. Now, anyone who uses your article (theoretically) CANNOT edit it and must also PRINT YOUR BIO AND THE LINK BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE. This means that the end user is effectively advertising for YOU!

If your article appears in a large company newsletter, ezine or magazine, think of all the free press you will gain! If your article ends up on another entity's website, and that website is highly ranked and gets tons of traffic, you will ride along on THEIR coattails!

Be aware of this when penning your articles. You are potentially writing for many different markets when submitting articles to Internet sites. This presents a wonderful opportunity that, until recent years, has never existed before in history. In years gone by, you would need to seek out a newspaper or a magazine or a publisher of some physical product if you wished to present your articles to the world. This is no longer necessary, as the Internet can now serve as your publishing platform.

The Specifics

There is a tremendous amount of misinformation floating around out there in regards to using article submission as a marketing tool. How many sites? How many articles? Keyword optimization - duplication penalties - categories - site ranking - submission software - timing, on and on and on. Rather than attempt to answer all these questions in a this single post, (which is getting quite long) I will provide the specific answers to all these questions in the next installment of this series.