There are numerous ways to market your business online, from simple PPC marketing to ultra-dedicated SEO efforts. No matter which path you take, your strategy will inevitably be shaped by the nature, and size of your business. Small service businesses will take a different strategy from an affiliate-based business, and will aim for a different audience. In online marketing, tactics are often shared across multiple fields, however strategies differ greatly.
The one factor that is almost always the same is frugality. Online businesses are remarkably frugal. It is partly a result of the nature of online commerce; start-up costs are incredibly low, overheads are tiny, and as a result there’s massive growth potential from virtually nothing. Another part of it is the fact that most online businesses simply don’t have a lot of money to play with. Outside of secure advertising channels, time is a much more secure currency than cash for online companies.
That is why article marketing is such a great free SEO activity. Before you sink day after day into a dedicated article marketing campaign, put these five tips into practice and craft a campaign that is 100% dedicated to your business’ goals:
#1: Group your articles, and assign a leader.
For every ten articles you write, one should lead the pack. From a leading idea to an overall concept, grouping your articles according to the content and philosophy of one is a great way to create dedicated SEO pathways. From there, it is best to link your supporting articles to the primary article, further boosting it up the search engine results.
#2: Try to control your content.
An article on the front page of Google is great, especially when it is pointing back to your website. However, there are so many distractions that it is often difficult for visitors to know exactly where to click. On a standard article directory, visitors are hit with large blocks of ads, hundreds of sidebar links, and ‘suggested content’ recommendations. You have got two links on a page; whereas on your own you could control the entire display.
#3: Don’t cut corners.
Random SEO gibberish will bring in a few visitors, and maybe even create a few customers. However, it is utterly useless for creating any real long-term value through your articles. When you assign a dual purpose to your SEO articles — human conversions and search engine food — you dramatically increase the number of people that are going to click through and turn into buyers, clients, or customers.
#4: Diversify your traffic sources.
When all of the links to your website are from a single traffic source, you will find your rankings quickly become unstable. Spread your links across multiple websites — from article directories to dedicated blogs and forums — and you will end up with a much more powerful SEO backbone. This could be as simple as contributing articles to many different directories, submitting to blogs rather than aggregators, and using social bookmarking services to add new link trails.
#5: Try to fail cheap.
PPC mistakes can cost a lot. Major SEO errors can cost a lot too. What is great about article marketing is that it costs virtually nothing, other than your time. When you bootstrap your SEO campaign through article and content marketing, all you have to lose is invested time. Instead of risking company cash with PPC, use article marketing to examine a market before diving in headfirst.