Article Marketing – What’s the Difference?

Unfortunately, with so much hype about article marketing it’s easy to become confused about how it really works and what you can do to create a successful article marketing campaign.

Search engine technology has improved tremendously, which means that link farms, link exchanges, Meta tags (not as important as they once were, but are still recommended), and cheating are quickly becoming a thing of the past. For instance, when Google’s robots crawl the Internet they are no longer simply considering the amount of links pointing to your website, they are getting smart enough to read what is actually on your website. So if you have your link on thousands of websites, but don’t have any real content on your website, then you may not achieve the desired results you once did.

However, the good news is that articles can change all that. Using articles that are related to your business and incorporating your keywords into them, will certainly increase your chances of being noticed by Google and the other popular search engines.

There are four ways to get articles onto your website, but what’s the difference and how do they really measure up?

Writing Your Own Articles: This is the best way to get the SEO results you are looking for. You can write about things that relate to your business, use your keywords, claim authorship, and submit your articles elsewhere to get incoming links. However, it can be time-consuming especially if you have a business to run, or you dislike writing.

Ghostwritten Articles: Hiring someone to do all your writing for you is also a great way to get the job done. It allows you the freedom to focus on your business, while allowing a professional to handle your article writing task.

You get all the same advantages as writing for yourself like claiming authorship, the ability to submit your articles wherever you want, you can sell them, and even compile them into e-books or special reports to give away to your mailing list. But going this route also means you have to take the time to find a good writer, and then pay their fees.

Private Label Rights Articles: These are incredibly convenient and for the most part, inexpensive. Purchasing PLR articles usually means you get access to a bundle of articles that you can use on your website, in your newsletter, and in e-books or reports, and they do not have the author’s name on them. You can re-write them, and add your keywords and links. Unfortunately, some PLR sites send out whatever kind of articles they want to so you never know what you’re going to get. You could end up with a lot of articles that you’ll never use.

Keep in mind though that most PLR sites do have restrictions. The most common ones are, you cannot claim authorship, you cannot submit them to article directories or websites, and you cannot resell or give them away to other webmasters to use on their websites.

Using PLR articles also means that a lot of other people are using the exact same articles on their websites too, so the content isn’t unique. This can really limit you when you are looking to achieve one way links and increase your Google page rank, but they are perfect for when you’re strapped for time and need to send out a newsletter to your mailing list, or just to add something new to website.

Article Directories: Found in abundance, you have a wealth of information at your fingertips. There are articles to be found in these directories on every topic imaginable, so you can be sure you will find something that is related to your business. Best of all, they’re free to use as long as you include the author’s bio where ever you use it. But that’s the downside, you have to include someone else’s links and business information, other people will be using their articles on their websites too, and you will have to read the entire article carefully to ensure that it is of high-quality and not riddled with errors.

Articles are one of the most sought after forms of marketing for business owners because of their potential to reach a wide audience, increase their website’s page rank, establish them as an expert in their field, and the low cost is easy on any advertising budget.

The best way to use articles in marketing your business is to ensure that you write some for use on your website only, with your keywords of course, so that you won’t have duplicate content issues. Then, write others to submit to article directories and fellow webmasters with your author bio and business information, so that you can build quality, incoming links.