SEO Content Solutions

When you write articles for marketing purposes, it may be tempting to stuff them with keywords in hopes of getting them noticed faster and ranked higher. But with article marketing, a very high keyword density is actually detrimental: people reading articles are looking for useful information, not your promotional spiel. The companies that publish articles know that, and screen content accordingly. Articles are rejected every day for being too self-promotional.

Many clients want to know why article marketing is helpful if it doesn’t promote their particular products or services. It may seem counterproductive to create articles that don’t specifically reference your company, but in fact, article marketing promotes your company by being highly useful to readers.

Benefits of Objective Articles

Even when an article doesn’t directly reference your company in the text, it will discuss some aspect of your products or services. Efficient article marketing may mean a “how-to” or “benefits of” article that leads the reader to desire what you provide. Regardless of the topic or content, all articles directly benefit you by:

• Providing backlinks to your site in the “about the author” portion of the article
• Establishing you - and your company - as an authority on the topic
• “Selling” the reader on need for the product. Once a need for your product has been established, your link is right in the footer and able to supply.

Using Keywords to Inspire Interesting Topics

One of the most commonly made mistakes in article marketing is choosing a bad topic. Many writers have difficulty looking beyond the marketing aspect of the article to the objectivity, and end up with articles that are too self-promoting or simply not interesting. When writing an article, creating interesting content is absolutely vital.

When search engines consider articles, they always look for how useful a particular article is to a user. The most self-promotional articles are usually the worst ranked: search engines know the difference, and act accordingly. In this age where search engines are smarter, the old rules of marketing no longer apply.

The goal of your article should always be to provide useful information to searchers - don’t worry about promoting your company in the article. Leave that for the author bio.

Some good article topics include:

• How To…
• 3 Ways To…
• Comparisons of 3 or more different products/solutions
• 3 Things to Consider Before…
• 4 Reasons Why…
• A Unique Solution for…
• A Guide to…
• X vs. Y: Which is Right for You?

Even if a topic isn’t obviously promotional, it should always be slanted toward the product your company offers. If it’s comparing two items, simply have the article conclude that your company’s item is superior. Build up the need for a given product or service through your topic and body text, and you will effectively increase demand and traffic on your company’s website without mentioning them once in the text.

Just the other day, I read a very effective article that focused on how to create an effective display at a trade show. As I was reading through, the article made me realize that I didn’t have the necessary skills or experience to make a professional looking trade display. So I promptly followed the link in the author bio at the bottom of the article and looked at a website that could create one for me.

For this reason, how to articles are particularly useful for service industries, or companies offering products that are hard to make or inefficient to produce anywhere else. Many people think they can do something themselves fairly easily. But if they discover how truly complex a process is, or how potentially substandard their results could be, they may very well decide to hire a professional. And to reach a professional, they have to look no further than the bio of that very same article for a convenient link.

The Importance of the Title in Article Marketing

Once you have an interesting and informative topic, you need a title to match. Make sure that your title contains the keywords for your article: these titles often become part of the URL or title tags for the article’s webpage, making them a powerful indicator to search engines. Many search engine web crawlers use title tags to get an idea of the topic of the article. Search engine spiders need to recognize that your article has relevant, interesting content for their searchers. More importantly, your headline should appeal to humans. Brian Clark has a fantastic post on Writing Killer Headlines that is definitely worth reading.

The title tag is also commonly used as the linked title of the page itself. It needs to be compelling, because it is often this title that searchers use to decide whether or not to visit a page. If you write an interesting and relevant title, searchers are much more likely to click through and read your text.

When you unite a compelling title with interesting and objective text, you will produce an article that is accepted by distribution sites and attractive to readers. With the right touches, article marketing is a crucial component of any SEO strategy.