Authors often complain to me about the use of the “nofollow” tag in their articles submitted to article content king.  I decided to write this article to explain why we do this and how rather than hurting your search engine optimization efforts, it actually helps them!

Yes, that’s right… the fact that we add rel=”nofollow” to the links in your articles actually helps you get stronger back links from our site.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s why. It’s quite simple really.

If you know anything about SEO, you will know the importance of getting links from IP addresses in different C Classes. Some of the “Article Directory Lists” you will find while browsing the Internet will include the directories IP address with the listing and they will not list 2 directories that share the same C Class IP address. This is because getting links from different servers is important for SEO. It is thought that this is one of the ways that big search engines like Google determine whether link growth to a site is natural.

It is also thought that getting too many links from the same IP addresses can even be harmful to your web site’s search engine rankings . It can look like you are trying to manipulate your rankings and the search engines do not like that.

I have often read that any particular site can only “vote” for your web site once, any subsequent links you get from the site don’t really have much, if any benefit in terms of search engine optimization. Some would say that the search engines could discount all your links from a site if you get too many from the same places, if all your links come from the same source or sources.

Using this logic, it seems wise to focus all the traffic and link reputation that your articles generate onto one link to your site… the link on your profile page.  The links you add on your profile page do not have the “nofollow” tag in the links. Every article you submit links to this page which means that all the “link juice” of all the articles you submit is focused on this page. This makes the one vote that this site can give you count as much as possible.

If we didn’t do this, then which one link would be the one that counted? Would it be as good a link as this one?

So what about linking keyword phrases in your articles to get better optimization for those words?

Am I telling you that everything you have learned about article marketing is false and it’s not a good search engine optimization technique at all? If you can only get one link that counts from any article directory, what is the point of submitting more than one article? Is it all just to help that one back link I get have more value?

If you are asking that question (and I know that some of you are) then I am afraid that somewhere along the line you have misunderstood what article directories are for.

Article Marketing is something that has existed since soon after the invention of the printing press, perhaps even before that, long before the Internet existed. There have always been “content repositories” available to publishers and authors; places where publishers can find content to publish to their readers, without having to write it themselves and where writers can submit their articles to get recognition of their work. The Internet has made this a lot more accessible and mainstream because there are a lot more publishers now, but the concept of article marketing was born long before the Internet!

Article Content King is a content repository. A place where you can submit your articles in the hope that a publisher in your niche will pick them up and publish them. It’s a place where you can use your content to make contacts in the industry if you use your profile page correctly.

It is our job to put your articles in front of people who are interested in publishing what you are writing about. We present your article in an easy to publish format through the publisher page (linked in all your articles). You’ll notice that the links here do not contain the “rel=”nofollow” tag. That’s because when someone naturally publishes your article from our site, you have naturally earned a back link to your site. This is not manipulative at all and you deserve credit for that link. The search engines would agree.

Article directories are fantastic places to build back links to your site, but it’s not the back links you get from the article directories themselves that count, it’s the back links you get from people publishing your articles, on different web sites and servers across the Internet that really helps your SEO. The more articles you submit, the more chance there is of this happening.

So as you can see, our intention when adding rel=”nofollow” to your site links on the article pages is actually intended to help you get stronger back links from our site.

You can create an many profile pages as you like, and add as many links to each profile page as you like. We add a link to the appropriate profile page inside every article you submit. All your efforts focus the reputation on the ONE vote that this site can pass to any one of your sites and if your article is naturally published from our site, you get a natural back link.

Is this really something to complain about?

Respectfully

Dan Blackburn

Click here to submit your articles to article-content-king.com

Now that we have lifted the submission restrictions for approved authors, you may be wondering if it is better to submit all your articles at once, or to submit them consistently over time. This is a good topic for the next Article Marketing Tip… it’s a good one. Click here for article marketing tips #1 & #2 and subscribe to the article marketing tips feed.

The answer to the questions of whether it is better to submit all your articles at once or over time  is without a doubt, it is better to submit them over time. The reason why it is better to submit your articles over time rather than all at once is down to the “recently published” article feeds.

Lets imagine you have 50 articles about article marketing. If you submit all these articles together, then they will likely be published all together. i.e. all on the same day. This may result in a huge influx of traffic from the article directory as your articles dominate the recently approved pages, but the next day all the traffic is gone. Your articles have slipped down the queue in one big block and are now harder for the visitors to find. (Unless they made it into the popular articles list, which is doubtful, not in a day.

So when you submit all your articles together, you really only leverage traffic from the article directory on the day that your articles are approved. You’re really taking your chances of that being a good day to have your articles published.

Publishers look at the recently approved articles first, because they are looking for fresh content to publish. They also notice people who submit articles consistently because this is  the mark of an expert.

What is flooding the feed with all your articles the mark of? You pop up, they have never seen you before, then you disappear. What do they think of you? Good things or bad things?

The more times your name is seen in the recently approved feed the more likely it is for a publisher to pick up your articles. Professional publishers are looking for authors that they can trust, not necessarily an article on a particular topic. Consistency brings trust. Trust brings sales.

That is what you are really looking for when you submit your articles. Not the link and traffic from the article directory, but to leverage traffic from trusted publishers to endorse your product and your name.

Submit articles free at article content king

There are many benefits to article marketing, so to say that is it ALL about conversion is not really true, but because this is the most misunderstood and under explained benefit of article marketing, I thought it appropriate to begin this article marketing tip with that title.

Of course it is not ALL about conversion. Article marketing is a great way of building links and traffic and increasing your search engine ranking, but the increased traffic and search engine rankings mean nothing if your web site does not convert.

So what does article marketing have to do with web site conversion?

Quiet frankly, everything!

You may not realise this but the most important aspect of sales conversion, is not your headline, your graphics, your design, your sales copy or your logo. It fact it is nothing on your web site at all. The most effective thing you can do to increase your sales conversion is to influence what people see / read right before they visit your web site.

It’s the “frame”. The frame of mind that your visitor is in when they click through to your web page. That is what really influences sales conversion. Big businesses know this, that is why they spend millions per year on “brand recognition”.

Brand recognition builds trust and trust drives sales. Brand recognition is ALL about building trust. The things that we see consitantly are the things that we trust to be reliable.

It would be stupid, and very expensive for any small Internet business to blow their advertising budget on “brand recognition” advertising, but with article marketing what you have is the ability to tap into the same marketing principles that drive big businesses like Coca Cola and Mc Donalds to spend millions on advertising.

You can use your articles to build trust and to leverage trust from others.

In the moment, your article can be just as affective as 10 years of billboard advertising… especially if the visitor is referred by a source that they trust.

If you realise this, you will likely find a lot more success from your article marketing efforts, you will naturally write better articles, your articles will naturally get more traffic and more of the visitors who visit your web site will buy the product you are positioning through the article.

If you write your articles with the intention and purpose of “framing” the reader, you’ll not only get higher conversions from the traffic coming from the article directories. You’ll also likely get more traffic to your articles because your work will become more attractive to publishers. This can make a HUGE difference to your sales conversion. When this happens you leverage the trust that the publisher has already built in the market place.

When a trusted publisher publishes your articles you leverage traffic from readers are already willing to follow the publishers recommendations. That means that they are predisposed to “buy into” the frame of your article.

Can you see how it all ties together nicely here?

You see it’s a lot better to approach your article marketing as a relationship building exercise, rather than an SEO exercise and if you approach your article marketing as a relationship building exercise, you will likely get better search engine rankings too… natuarally!

At Article Content King, we syndicate all your articles to targeted publishers. Click here to submit your articles.

Most article marketers begin writing an article with a keyword phrase or set of keyword phrases in mind. Their motivation for writing the article is getting their site ranked for that keyword phrase on Google and other search Engines like Yahoo & MSN.

They will try to use the particular keyword phrase or phrases as often as they can in the article body, or perhaps they will go to great lengths to make sure that the keyword density in the article is exactly 4.9% or 3.7% or 6.8% or what ever percentage keyword density they read was the best to use when optimising articles for the search engines.

They will use bolding, italics, even BLOCK CAPS when they use the keyword phrase in the article in the belief that doing this will help their site (not the article) rank better for the keyword phrases that they want to rank for.

This is the WRONG approach to article marketing!

The problem is, that people with this mentality often care little for the quality of the articles that they submit. It’s stupid! Yes, stupid. The value of a well written article is worth infinitely more than a link in a junk article approved on an unmoderated article directory!

Article directories are not fantastic places to get SEO back links from anymore, they were back in 2007 but the Internet changes.

What they are fantastic places from which you can “spawn” back links, and great places to get highly targeted traffic and followers / subscribers. The links you get on article directories are fantastic, but it’s not because they are the foundation of your #1 rankings on Google, it’s because interested people are finding and reading your articles, then clicking through to your site or perhaps because someone is frequently using your articles in their newsletter and broadcasting them to their 10,000+ subscribers or twitter followers.

Even if you are getting #1 ranking for your web site solely because of your article marketing efforts, I’d bet my house that you are getting more traffic from well ranked pages that you displaying your articles on other web sites (like article directories, and the blogs and newsletters who have published your article from an article directory).

Google may be your top traffic provider, but when you add up all the traffic you are getting from other places publishing your article, I bet it’s a lot more.

If not, then you are definitely doing article marketing wrong. What? You think you can generate more traffic from Google to your 52 page web site than all the tens of thousands of web site pages that contain links to your site combined?

When you search Google, how often do you find links to articles on article directories or blogs? That is some of the best traffic you can get! Targeted by Google and framed by your article before they visit your site, ready to buy.

Above all, the quality of your article is paramount. If it is junk, even if the you are achieving the top rankings you desire (doubtful), you are sure to be missing out on a lot of traffic, no publisher worth their salt is ever going to publish a junk article.

Sure, your articles may get published on some of the lower quality the article directories, but it will never be picked up… and frankly, if an article directory does not moderate their content well enough, then the links you get from those sites are unlikely to have any affect at all on your traffic or rankings. Links from junk sites could even hurt you.

With this in mind, the first thing you should think about before writing an article is not which keyword phrase you want to rank for, but how you can write something that people will want to read and publishers will want to publish. Only then will you unlock the real power of article marketing.

Don’t disregard keyword optimisation completely, just make sure your focus is more on providing quality information and portraying yourself as an expert.

If you do that, people will want to follow you, they will trust you and they will buy from you… if they want what you are offering.

At article content king moderate every article submitted to make sure it is worthy of publishing on other sites, before we publish it ourselves. Then we automatically promote each article to an opt-in targeted audience. If your articles are consistantly good enough, frequent enough and as you get ranked on the top author pages, your articles will get published and promoted by others more frequently.  More so as people begin to recognise article content king as a great place to find articles.

Is your article unique to Article Content King?

At Article Content King, we understand and accept that the majority of authors who submit articles to our article directory, submit their articles to other article directories as well. Almost every article marketer will submit their articles to a number of article directories, not just one.

Like I said, this is something we have to accept, our focus has been (is) on getting Article Content King positioned in the minds of article marketers as one of the sites that they submit their articles to first! Once an article has been submitted, we work fast to moderate and approve it so we can become of the of the first web sites to publish the article.

If we can be first to publish the article, we stand a better chance of securing top rankings for the article from keyword phrases related to the article content.

All article directories are designed to be browsed, which means that the more traffic we get into a single article, the more traffic articles related to that article will receive. The average visitor reads 3-4 articles before leaving the site. If all those articles were your articles, and the visitor came from a highly targeted traffic resource, like a specific search on a search engine, then you stand a much better chance of ultimately getting the visitor to your site, in a “ready to buy” frame of mind.

To get the most out of your article marketing efforts, you should actually rotate the sites that you submit to first and give each one a chance to claim your article as “unique”. When they have published it, and Google has cached the page, go ahead and submit the article to all the other article directories you submit to.

If you do this, you will get more traffic and stronger back links from every article site that you submit articles to. The unique content you have at each site will drive more traffic into the related articles that you also have at that site.

This is really powerful stuff… Like I said, article directories are designed to be browsed, if the second article that the visitor browses is also your article, you stand a much better chance of getting the visitor to finally click through to your site. And boy, when they do, will they be ready to listen to you!

By focusing on getting single articles ranked in at individual article directories, so each site you submit to has some unique content from you, you will find that you not only get a lot more traffic from each article directory that you submit to, you’ll find that the traffic that comes from each article directory buys a lot more stuff from you too.

Rotate your “uniqueness” at each article site and increase you the value of every article directory you submit articles to. That’s the tip for today.