Don’t Omit Article Distribution Directly to Sites
Jan 29th, 2010 by Reading and Writing
A frequently employed method for article marketing is to post the content on an article directory. A top tier directory will make these posted articles available to webmasters for publication, if those webmasters a) happen to use that directory, b) search for one of your keywords and c) don’t find your article to pose a competitive threat. Most article directories allow your articles to contain links to your own site only in the author’s box or resource box that the directories allow you to include. This use of article directories has proven an effective marketing technique for years, and you should certainly continue using it. However, there is another approach to article syndication that you should use as well.
If, in addition to using article directories, you offer your valuable content directly to other websites who happen to be in your niche or a closely related marketing area, you will find important additional benefits beyond those that come from only submitting to article directories. One additional benefit is that you will be able to exercise some control over who publishes your article. You can select websites that recieve targeted traffic from which you might profit. You will find that your search engine optimization (SEO) benefits that accrue from your article marketing efforts will be improved and, especially, longer lasting if you provide each website with a unique piece of content. You can determine that each site’s content is unique by writing a different article for each site or (more efficiently) carefully spinning the articles to get more benefit from the same article topic and basic treatment. Perhaps most importantly, your links back to your own website can be placed within the article with carefully crafted (and spun) anchor text. That placement has definite SEO advantages.
Under the typical method of applying this direct approach, you must contact individual websites, hope that the webmasters will actually read your email (or answer your phone call, if you are lucky enough to locate a phone number) and persuade the decision makers that it is to their advantage to accept the free content that you are offering. If your content is well written, informative and not too self-serving, you will be lucky sometimes. However, far too often, you will get no response at all from the webmasters that you attempt to contact. When they do reply, more often than you wish, they will decline your offer.
Another way in which you can directly distribute to individual sites is by means of a somewhat automated system, which distributes uniquely spun versions of your content directly to sites within your niche–sites which have already expressed interest in receiving articles such as those you offer. Such is the foundation of a relatively new service called My Article Network, which I have described in detail elsewhere.
Webmaster can register their sites for free in this consortium. This assures that the network will always have a growing number of willing and ready websites available in almost any niche with which you would probably want to be associated
Whichever method of direct-to-site distribution you choose, I recommend that all article marketers make use of the benefits of expanding your syndication plan beyond only the top tier article directories. I know from experience that the benefits far outweigh the costs of the additional required effort.
