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4:21 am
QuoteWith the recent article changes at ezine articles where they raised the word count, do you think it's still worth it?
5:55 am
June 7, 2011
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Absolutely. It's all about ROI. The way I look at it with articles is that I can outsource them for about $5 each. $6 now that the word count has gone up. If you know your metrics and know what you can afford to spend to acquire a new lead then you simply take the average number of subscribers you get from an article and see if it falls within the parameters of your target ROI.
If you are in a position where you don't have the funds to outsource but need traffic and so are doing this yourself, it really comes down to the results your getting. Word count is irrelevant if you are getting more subscribers per hour of effort than any other method.
Bottom line, write a few dozen articles and then ask yourself if it was worth it to you. I am still using article marketing on a number of projects. It may even prove to be a positive because the raised word count has thinned out the field a bit.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
5:09 am
June 10, 2011
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Ok, I am almost finished working on my first article. A friend of mine insists that I cite my sources in order to back up my assertions. I noticed that many of the articles didn't have any such citations, is this step necessary?
Am I correct in understanding that the body of the article is supposed to contain keywords or phrases that get lots of search queries, but with low competition? What about the tags? Wordpress lets you add tags to what you publish, should these also be keywords/phrases, just the subjects mentioned in the article?
And finally, it looks like at the end of the article you include a line like "if you want to find out more about such-and-such, click here." So there's where I should put my lead in and link to my squeeze page?
Do I publish it on ezinearticles first or on my website first?
10:37 pm
June 7, 2011
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You want to have a keyword that gets at least 10 searches a day, ideally dozens or even hundreds, but has a limited amount of competition when you search that keyword in quotes in google. There are no rules on this but I like to see less than 50,000. Ideally a lot less.
You want that keyword to also appear in your first paragraph and your resource box. You want to also have as many related secondary keywords as you can and pepper your article with those.
I would not worry about citing sources. This isn't journalism, it's just a quick bit of helpful content. But f it makes for a better article and it's easy to do, go for it.
Your keyword tags are your target keywords. Your primary keyword and your juiciest secondary keywords.
Yes, you put your link in your resource box. I recommend two links. One with anchor text and one that is just a naked URL.
Definitely publish it to EZA first.
Hope that helps.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
2:58 am
June 9, 2011
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To add some clarity to this, if I may, when John says like 50,000... he means competing sites.
When you submit a search, you'll see google say "Showing 15 results out of 1,004,400" or something to that effect.
This is why you search with the quotes on. You'll see results for sites that rank for that exact search keyword combination.
If it gets double-digit searches per day and only has around 50,000 competing websites, go after it.
It's not that you can't rank 1st-page for searches with higher competing sites, it's just that the likelihood of someone being at the top for that search knew what the hell they were doing to get there... and STAY there!
I have articles that rank top 5 against over a million sites for the broad match of the keyword...but you use the quotes to see who your competing against with regards to relevance.
That's reeeeeaalllly important if you want highly targeted traffic to your site. It's not a perfect measuring stick, but it's a pretty darn good one if you ask me.
-Steve
5:13 am
June 10, 2011
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Ok, just to make sure that I understand this: My article deals with tips that I use for managing depression. When I search on the keyword "depression" it has 509,000,000 results, so that word is far too general and the haystack is too large.
When I search on the phrase "depression serotonin" a much more reasonable 59,400 results come back and Google adwords shows that it gets searched about 1,000 times a month. Incidentally, this is how I search for things on Google, by just typing in the words, without the quotes, because I know Google is looking for the words in close proximity to each other. I imagine others do too.
So if I want to use this keyword, I need to re-work my first paragraph to contain the phrase "depression serotonin?"
Thanks for your help,
Tim
1:05 pm
June 9, 2011
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Tim,
Without the quotes, you are simply going to get results that from sites with content ranking for seratonin and depression in general.
With the quotes on , you are going to get results from sites that rank for the phrase "depression seratonin"... used exactly that in that order. (eg. "Studies Reveal Depression Linked To Seratonin Levels")
You'll see that an article/page title with the above title is more likely to be relevant to the search, whereas "Find Depression, Seratonin, Medical Supplies, Nicotine Patches In Your Local Area", while ranking for all of those keywords individually in the same site/page, there seems to be no connection between the words contextually or with regards to relevance.
This is why for keyword research purposes, using quotes helps to get some of the "garbage" out of the way so you can see who is ranking for these keywords used in context that makes sense of the link between depression and seratonin.
Make sense?
So to answer your question, yes it would help to rework both your article title and headings tags to include the phrase you are trying to rank for. There are some other on-page/ on-site factors that can come into play, but if you remember to make your titles reflect the exact relevance to your use of the keywords, the more likely you will be viewed as an "appropriate" search result in the eyes of the search engine.
It's a good idea to search with the quotes on and then review the first few listings to see how they are using the keywords. Reverse engineer those results and see if you can out-do them, as far as the content goes.
If you can, then things like social media and other social proofing will take on a life of their own to help "secure" your rankings for those keywords.
In other words, the more relevant you are, the more inclined your visitors will be to comment, share, subscribe to rss or bookmark. Google gives a lot of weight to social interaction with your content and in turn, a high ranking.
Not to be too long-winded about this (too late), but a real- life scenario I came across was when searching for How To Start a Band... without the quotes you will eventually see results for How To Start a Rubber Band Ball, which really just is not even relevant to what I was searching for, however all of the keywords were present.
This is a situation (for pay-per click) where you would want to use the negative keyword -rubber and -ball. (a little off topic)
7:07 pm
June 10, 2011
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Thanks Steve, I think I'm clear on that now. But now I have another question.
Reading through the terms of use on Ezinearticles item 9 states:
it is permissible to forward to an affiliate link from:
http://your-company-name.com/
http://your-company-name.com/s...../page.html
I was planning on linking to: http://www.sapphirerebellion.c.....offer.html so that would display my squeeze page, but this seems to imply that I can't do that. I looks like I'll have to make my squeeze page the first thing that someone sees on my domain and include the link to my domain name.
Another issue may be that my company name is not my domain name. My company name is Platinum Dragon Productions, but my domain name is sapphirerebellion.com because this is the main "product" of my company.
Do you guys have advice about this? Thank you.
8:09 pm
June 9, 2011
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If I understand what you're trying to do, this rule does not apply to you because you are not sending the traffic to an affiliate link.
This rule seems to be for people selling clickbank products and the like.
EZA seems to be suggesting that you may send traffic to a top level domain that serves the purpose of masking (or redirecting) to an affiliate page you have for someone else's product.
In your case, there is no site replication or affiliate link, therefore you should be able to send people to any directory or subdirectory on your site.
I use a link to mysite.com/my-squeeze-page.php with no issues because I am not sending to replicated content.
Neither are you (I'm assuming)
Of course, this is a the perfect opportunity to employ John's strategy of sending cold traffic to a squeeze-only domain, then sending subscribers to your actual content site after they are a subscriber.
6:32 pm
June 7, 2011
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Hey guys,
Steve has it exactly right. That only pertains to affiliate marketers. Unless you have set up some kind of a tracking link you don't need to worry about that. An interior page is fine.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
10:31 pm
June 10, 2011
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Ok, thanks guys. I was confused by what an "affiliate" link was. I thought I was the "affiliate."
Yeah, I want to do the separate domain trick, but at the moment, I just want to get the ball rolling, and hopefully traffic rolling, with what I have.
Can I post my article here and get some feedback before I try and submit it? Or should we start a topic specifically for that purpose?
I've revised my arcticle about 100 times already, trying to get all of the key things in it. I have one anchor link in the article, but after watching John's creating a "press release" video, that link should be on a keyword or phrase that I am targeting, and should link to my squeeze page, not just a supporting informational link for the article? Is this correct?
11:09 pm
June 9, 2011
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I'm not sure of the rules on posting articles here, but I'd be more than happy to read thru it for you if you want to pm it to me.
I've had a few articles rank highly on page one search results for targeted keywords, so I can definitely try to spot some of things I've done to achieve that in your article.
Send it on over, Tim
-Steve
6:19 am
June 7, 2011
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Tim Curry said:
Ok, thanks guys. I was confused by what an "affiliate" link was. I thought I was the "affiliate."
Yeah, I want to do the separate domain trick, but at the moment, I just want to get the ball rolling, and hopefully traffic rolling, with what I have.
Can I post my article here and get some feedback before I try and submit it? Or should we start a topic specifically for that purpose?
I've revised my arcticle about 100 times already, trying to get all of the key things in it. I have one anchor link in the article, but after watching John's creating a "press release" video, that link should be on a keyword or phrase that I am targeting, and should link to my squeeze page, not just a supporting informational link for the article? Is this correct?
Hey Tim,
By all means, that's what we're here for. But maybe post a new thread for it. It's a good idea to break these things up any time we start a new stream of consciousness.
A bit of advice though when it comes to Ezine Articles...
1. Don't over think it. Your better off starting a new article then revising one you already have. This is a numbers game to some extend. I try to write in article in about 20 minutes and be done with it. You want quality, but you don't want to labor over this. Manay articles are going to be duds, some are going to hit big.
2. you can only have the kind of links you are going to want in your resource box. You can technically link within the body, but EZA is going to reject it if it's self serving. That's what the resource box is for.
3. Linking with the anchor text is great for SEO, but it is very unlikely you will ever rank well with a squeeze page because Google isn't a fan of them. The SEO factors would pertain more to a link that was going back to a page on your content site which I don't normally do, unless it's for the SEO value itself.
All I'm really saying is, don't stress it. Crank out a keyword rich article and move on. Get 20 of them published (a few each day) and wait a few weeks and see what the results are.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
10:28 pm
June 10, 2011
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Ok, my first article has gone live. I don't think that I'm ranking very high in the search engines though. Now, do I create a "blog" heading on my Wordpress site and publish the article there as well? What do I do to link them to each other?
12:52 am
June 9, 2011
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If it makes you feel better about the search engines….
There are 2,200,000 competing sites ranking for those keywords. It might not be instant and there are certainly some off-page things you can do to help it along.
Congrats on getting it approved and out there! Personally, I think you did a great job with that article and utilizing the keywords throughout the article.
It also happens to be keywords that are in the health and wellness industry which means you are going head to head with some pretty big fish who have been at this game for awhile. However I think I remember David defeating Goliath.
Nice work, bro! I would have that on a blog too, not sure if it would go on my band's blog, but definitely another blog relevant to it's contents.
EDIT: Actually... this WILL make you feel better about the search engines...
I just decided to search for those keywords with your name and someone has syndicated your article already. However the page is taking too long to load, server keeps timing out. Let's hope they didn't pillage your resource box, huh.
http://www.google.com/search?q.....38;bih=449
7:52 am
June 7, 2011
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Hey Tim,
The article is really well done. There are a couple things I can see here that might be hurting you though.
1. I assume you are targeting "combat depression naturally". In phrase there is only about 90 searches a month for that keyword and about 26,000 competing sites. You already received 40 views which would be more than what would be expected if you were ranking #1 in Google, which your not (I'm guessing your traffic is coming from the long tail). So the biggest issue there is that the search volume for your keyword is too low.
2. You've also written an article that is nearly twice as long as it needs to be. It's awesome that you put so much effort into it, but when you write a long article like that it pushes your link further down on the page and typically it's going to hurt your click through rate. That's not always the case though. But it's something to be aware of.
3. Your article is not really targeting music lovers and that could hurt you significantly. The idea is to jump in front of traffic that is hungry for music.
4. Your resource box does not flow with the article. I like to try and create a resource box that almost reads like it's the last paragraph of the article so that when someone is reading they continue reading on into your resource box. There is a thing that happens in many people's minds where they sense that an article is concluding and stop reading before it actually does.
4. One final point, is that you need to write at least 10 - 20 articles before you can properly assess the benefit. It's a numbers game. Some articles will flop and some will take off.
Don't get me wrong, I see that you put a lot of effort into this and that's really cool. And you might get some results from this article. But I just want you to get the most bang for your buck out of the process. I hope you don't mind the constructive criticism.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
10:59 pm
June 10, 2011
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No, I don't mind constructive criticism at all. It's why I'm here! 
I don't think I'm assessing the keyword(s) and competition for them properly. Your numbers are different from the numbers than I thought I was getting.
I started with something like "depression" or "depression naturally" in the Google keyword search and got a related keyword "combat depression naturally." It met the "at least 10 searches a day" guideline, having over 300 monthly global searches. I thought, "that will be easy to work into my article," so I put it in quotes and ran it through Google, and it came up with < 50,000 hits, so I figured it met that criteria.
I realized that it was long when I read the guidelines on Ezine@rticles that it should shorter, so I hacked a bunch of it out to make it shorter. I had been meaning to write that article for a long time, I already had it outlined in my head, so that's why I picked that subject. I could get it done quickly, and tie it into the music because the song "This Day Will Pass" is about the the same subject.
I'm not really sure know how to write something that people who are "hungry for music" would search on, so I might need some suggestions/help on that. I can write about being in a band, being on the road, why you need a producer, why you need mastering etc. There are a number of things I'm very knowledgeable about, but I'm also not selling any of these things. So I felt I had to write about something that I could be an "expert" on and try to tie it into me from the "real person" angle.
I did look at examples of other authors to see how they did it, but I guess I need to study that part more closely. I did a brief summary at the end of the article and then filled in the resource box how I thought Ezine@rticles meant for me to.
I realize that I will need to write more, so I'm already trying to come up with my next idea.
Any advice on what to do about posting it on my site and linking back is welcome. I think I need a "News" category, and a "Blog" heading seperately on the main site.
Any advice in general is appreciated and welcome, I don't have much background at all in internet marketing so I'm a novice, but I am applying everything I learn as fast as I can.
Tim
4:04 am
June 7, 2011
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I think making the leap from depression to a song about depression can work (you'd need to test it to be sure). To be honest. I didn't even catch that your resource box made the leap until you just pointed it out. When I read it, the resource box started off talking about you as a musician and the author of the article and I must have done what most people do and assumed we were done and stopped reading before I read the last sentence. You might try leading with how people with depression might take the next step, which is to download your song. Making the call to action seamless with the article itself.
My guess about the keyword research numbers being off is that you may have searched in "broad" as apposed to phrase. Your numbers are consistent with broad search volume, but not phrase or exact. I personally look at "phrase" volume.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1:38 pm
June 9, 2011
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I agree with John that you can definitely use your current article to tie people into your music.
I mean, you already have a section about music being a good way to battle depression. Perhaps you can create another article focusing on just the music part and really get into how it helps you (use real-life examples to reach people). That would be a good way to tie people back in.
"How I Use Music To Combat Depression Naturally"... or even better "How YOU Can Use Music..."
I think a good, genuine article from someone who really knows the struggle can really start to sway people in your direction to pick up a free track… at the very least.
Certainly no harm in it and essentially the music really is your contribution to their cause. It's win/win and that's why I know it will work.
8:14 pm
June 10, 2011
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Yes, John, you are correct. I forgot to set the search mode to the phrase setting. To quote Homer Simpson, "Doh!"
Thanks for that insight, Steve! I think I could write an article about that. Some of my Facebook friends, responding to the article, commented about how they used music to liven their mood.
Thanks, guys!
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