Article Marketing is Alive and Well

Article and article submission is a great way to drive traffic to your site and at the same time, establish yourself as an expert in your field.  However, like everything else in SEO,  there is a right way and a wrong way to accomplish the mission in this constantly changing landscape.

Quality Articles = Good SEO

You may have recently read about the  depreciation of article sites in Google’s last “Panda” Algorithm update.  EzineArticles, eHow, Hubpages, ArticleBase, Yahoo contributor network and many, many more got hit hard and lost big market share in the search engine results pages.   Does this mean that it’s no longer worth submitting to these sites?  Absolutely not.  However, the rules have changed and you must follow some guidelines to make it worth you while.
We have customers with submitted articles that are still ranking very high and continue to drive traffic to their sites.

Guidelines for Article Success

• Do not submit an articles that is already on your site or you plan on publishing on your site.
• Articles that you submit should be original and developed specifically for the Article site.
• The article content must be compelling, comprehensive and again original, not regurgitated or reworded.  The key here is quality over quantity.  Google will give more relevance to a comprehensive, quality article than something that is poorly written and thrown together.
• Do not be overly concerned with keyword phrase optimization.  This looks unnatural and if Google sees it as unnatural, you are wasting your time.  Write with the end user in mind, not SEO.
• Strike a balance so you have an equal number of quality, comprehensive articles on site and off site.   It’s hard to give a great article away but it will pay you back in dividends if done correctly.

Benefits of Submitted Articles

You may be thinking, why not just publish all of our articles on site.  There are several reasons why you should diversify.

• Link Building.  Every offsite article you publish should have anchor text optimized back-links to your site.  Follow the guidelines at the article submission site concerning this as they are all different.  If back-links are not allowed, a link to your profile will be and you can publish your links there along with a short bio.
• Establish Credibility/Expert Authority.  Anyone can publish on their own site but when a user see an article offsite, they tend to give it a little more credibility.  There is something about reading and article on the Yahoo network that seems more authoritative.  This eventually leads to the authors Website and the ultimate goal of sales/conversions.

Getting the Word Out

Weather you are publishing on site or off site, you want to let the world know that you just created a new article the they must read.  A great way to get the word out is using social media channels.  Send a link out to all of the social media outlets that you subscribe to.  If it’s a really great news worthy article, consider taking it a step further doing a press release.  We’ll take more about press releases soon.   Articles may be the gas but Press Releases are the rocket Fuel of SEO.

Keith Hickman
khickman@awsp.com
Director, Web Marketing

Video and video optimization are an excellent way to increase the visibility of a brand to customers and potential customers so that they become aware of the products, services, or content that a site has to offer.

The potential of video and video optimization is growing every day. A study conducted by Nielsen found that in January of 2011, users spent 45 percent more time viewing videos online than during January of 2010. This presents a fantastic opportunity for all markets.  People are not only searching for video, it now appears organically (naturally) in Google search results for many queries.

In addition to the organic search results, it is now possible for users to search specifically for video content. Of course, Google is not the only one who is doing this. Bing and Yahoo have implemented video search well.

Currently, YouTube is the most popular way for people to discover video on the web. Estimates suggest that there are between three and four billion searches of YouTube every month. This means more people search YouTube than Bing.  Proper video marketing can put you ahead of your competition so the time to act is now.

Another way to take advantage of video marketing is through the use of social media. Twitter and Facebook give you the opportunity to push content to all of your subscribers or “Friends”.  They in turn can share content with their friends.  Since the video is being recommended by a friend, users are often more willing to pay attention to it.
More on the how this all ties in with Social Media later.

Onsite and Offsite Optimization
In order for users to find the video easily, you will need to implement proper video optimization which includes onsite and offsite techniques.  Onsite being the video section of your website and offsite being YouTube, a Social Media site or where ever else your video resides.

When optimizing both onsite and offsite elements, some important factors include:

1)  Keyword rich file name and sub-directories ( if applicable)

2)  Video name and title should be keyword phrase targeted

3)  Page content that describes what the video is about.  Again, keyword phrase rich copy.

4)  Keyword phrases and descriptions in meta tags

5)  Be sure to include your video in your sitemap and XML sitemap

Google is working on an algorithm that will actually interpret your videos.  Until then,  Google can’t analyze the content of a video without the proper optimization.

Establishing a YouTube Channel

YouTube is another important social media channel so establishing your own business YouTube site  is essential.  Like any other social media site, you will need to create an account and enter your business description, URL and keyword phrases that will help Google Search, YouTube search, subscribers and customers find you.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “The only constant is Change”.   This could not be more true than in the field of Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and online marketing in general.
Gone are the days of just adding meta tags, title tags and optimized copy. Google is now looking for much more to determine how relevant your site is in comparison to your competition.
Furthermore, search doesn’t stop at Google, Bing and Yahoo. We must now factor in searches performed at other high traffic sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Flickr, etc.

Important aspects of modern SEO include:

• Video & Video Optimization
• Articles & Article Submission
• Onsite Blogging
• Syndicated Press releases
• Social networking

Still, you must have:

• Properly optimized pages
• Internal linking
• Search engine friendly site structure
• XML sitemap
• High quality inbound links with correct anchor text

I won’t go into every aspect of SEO here, however, it’s time to ask yourself if you are doing all you can do to drive qualified traffic to your Web site. If not, the repercussions can be a site eventually lost in a sea of millions of results.

According to statistics, online video is exploding.  YouTube serves approximately1 billion videos per day, Facebook users upload 20 million videos each month, 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video in June.  What is this trend telling you?  If you are selling anything online, you better start making, producing and publishing videos!

With that being said, you will need some kind of editing tools after your video is shot.  Windows 7 no longer comes with native video editing capability.

Editing suites such a Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere can be cost prohibitive if your just starting out.
No worries.  With new online video editing tools, editing your own video is becoming much easier and cheaper.  All you need is your footage, a web browser, a broadband connection plus some time and imagination.
Here are some free online video editing tools you can start using today.

1) Jaycut – Edit your own videos on JayCut’s community.

2) Movie Masher – A set of Adobe Flash applets that provide front-end tools for common video editing tasks.

3) Kaltura – Open source online video platform

4) YouTube Remixer- YouTube now offers basic editing features.

These tools can get you started down the right track when you are looking at video post production work.   If you need more powerful, professional grade tools, you will need to go with Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro (Mac).

SEO Crushes SMO

Are you in a rush to jump into Social Media?   Have you signed up for Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Linkedin, etc?  That’s good because Social Media is another channel that can help sell your products/services and drive traffic to your site.  Social Media also plays a role in Search Engine Optimization.  However, Social Media does not replace Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  Abandoning SEO in favor of Social Media Optimization (SMO) or Social Media Marketing (SMM) will lead down the path of diminishing  returns and traffic.

While Social Media is recommended and makes a great complement to business sites, they are not first line sites.  Being easily found in the search engines will be the primary point of exposure for the majority of your customers.

Have you ever searched Facebook or Twitter for a product or a service before you searched Google, Bing or Yahoo?
After you found the site on Google, have you visited the businesses Twitter or Facebook page   Probably.

Therefore, as it stands today, SEO and SEM rules in terms of driving targeted traffic to the average business website leaving social media to play a supporting role.

Is social media important? Absolutely!  Does it replace SEO and SEM.  Not today my friends, not today.

Keith Hickman, “Social Media does not replace Search Engine Optimization”

Update:  8-14-11   Study Says Social Media Sucks at Driving Traffic

Microsoft’s Bing.com has finally expanded it search to encompass Yahoo! organic results in the US and Canada.  This increased Bings search market share to approximately28% overnight (depending on the statistics you look at).  Starting in September 2010, Yahoo sponsor links will be transitioned to Bing adCenter.

Bing delivers more relevant results than than the ailing Yahoo engine and has a better Ad Center interface.

This is certainly a cause of concern for Google.

We have just completed development of our new XML Sitemap Ping Tool.  It’s a free and easy way to alert the search engines that you have uploaded a new XML Sitemap and are ready for the crawlers to index your site.  If you are a multiple site owner, you can submit up to 5 unique domains at one time.    For more information, please see http://www.awsp.com/artman/publish/article_53.html

If you encounter any issues with the application, please contact support@awsp.com