Article Marketing Beats Out Link Exchanges For High Quality Links

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, July 15, 2007 Comments (7)

I’m continually amazed at the amount of misinformation out there. The more people go online to shop and build websites, the more likely you are to find inaccurate or outdated information.

I respect SiteProNews, but they have recently started publishing more and more fluff. Articles from new upstarts who read a book and think they know what is going on in Dodge. You’ll do yourself well to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism and pick your sources of information well.

This article showed some promise, but I stumbled when I read the following sentence:

Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available.

That’s simply not true. Link exchanges is one of the least effective SEO techniques available. The article’s author is correct in stating that SEO is the best free method of online marketing. However, it is getting more competitive. The author is also correct in stating that blogs are one of the best Internet marketing tools available. He even goes on to make some good points on high quality inbound links, making a point to encourage links from high PR sites. That’s a definite plus. But I wouldn’t say that link exchanges are the best way to go.

If you really want to know the best method for obtaining off site SEO benefits you should turn to article marketing. One article has the potential to deliver many high quality links to your site over the life of your website. Submit one article to ten directories and if each directory results in your article being picked up by ten publishers that will result in 100 back links. The majority of those back links should be from sites relevant to yours from across the spectrum of PageRank values. Two or three of those from PR7 or PR8 sites will go a long way for you.

Can you approach webmasters directly? Yes, and you should. You should ask them if you can write an article just for their website. Tell them they will have an exclusive right to your article for a certain period of time. Be sure that you include a bio with a link back to your website. The other webmaster benefits because he gets fresh, unique content for his website. You benefit because you get a one-way link back to yours. No reciprocal link needed. This method works great for websites that have a high PageRank.

Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.

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Comments (7) Category: Link Building

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7 Comments

Made Monday, 16 of July , 2007 at 9:27 am

I totally agree. Article marketing is central to my SEO strategy. But of course, it’s still only one of multiple methods I use.

Comment by namecritic

Made Monday, 16 of July , 2007 at 10:06 am

Good point Adam. I tell people all the time to use a combination of thiongs to promote their website. Blogging, Article Marketing, other link building strategies, directory submissions, press releases, etc.

It’s the combination that is effective.

Comment by Daniele

Made Tuesday, 17 of July , 2007 at 8:33 am

Interesting post. I agree, as I’ve seen results since I wrote articles and reviews for my web sites. My sites are getting a good positioning in Google and Yahoo.
And, last but not least, I enjoy writing articles

Comment by Neil Street

Made Thursday, 19 of July , 2007 at 1:00 pm

Overall, I agree. And if you can persuade other sites to publish your articles, great. But submitting to article directories has been of limited use, in my experience. Too often, articles that are well-written and original (I know, I wrote them) don’t get picked up by good sites, just by other, smaller, article directories. The link back value from these is questionable, to say the least. Only rarely has one of my articles been picked up and published by a major website. I have better luck getting my blog posts picked up by good sites.

Comment by namecritic

Made Thursday, 19 of July , 2007 at 5:32 pm

Neil, how have you been doing your submissions? By that I mean auto-submitting or manually submitting and where.

The reason I ask is that articles submitted through article directories have been doing me and my clients a lot of good. Some have been picked up by sites like SEONews.com and other major sites and a lot of blogs.

I could take a look at your approach and offer you some advice for free if you want.

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Made Friday, 20 of July , 2007 at 3:52 pm

[...] Article Marketing Beats Out Link Exchanges For High Quality Links [...]

Comment by Rob Woods

Made Monday, 23 of July , 2007 at 11:28 am

Great post today. I agree that the link building aspect of an SEO campaign can have a great impact for sites, but link exchanges are out of date.

I work with clients that consistently send me emails asking my thought on link exchanges. Often, many of the sites that want to exchange links are quite spammy and will ultimately hurt my client rather than help.

Article marketing is the way to go.