There are three common myths about article marketing, and if you continue reading, I’ll not only dispel them, but also help you understand how to turn the process into a virtual sales assistant that works relentlessly.
Myth #1
Article marketing is dead. It was once a magical way to turn words into easy cash that magically flowed into your bank account, but it doesn’t work anymore. Article marketing is lying on its back with all four legs in the air!
Myth #2
Marketers often get a bit confused by the terms used to describe actions in the world of marketing. It’s often all too easy to confuse a business promotion method with the business itself. Article marketing is a good example. Many people think of article marketing as a business in itself. Unfortunately, it is likely that they have been duped by some of the unscrupulous “button riches” sellers.
Myth #3
Article marketing has nothing to do with writing or outsourcing short articles with links to affiliate offers. It also has nothing to do with the other misconception often associated with online writing: backlinks.
It’s not uncommon to find newcomers asking where to post their articles to get the best (or most) backlinks.
The answer to that is, nowhere.
There are two reasons why neither of these ideas is practical, and when you understand why not, and how to do article marketing correctly, you’ll understand that article marketing is one of many tools you can use to promote your business, and why it’s not a business in and of itself.
1. Affiliate links are generally frowned upon by many article directories. This may seem like a dent in your business if you hope you can generate sales copy after sales copy and make money on your efforts, but the truth is, no one likes to be sold. If you could add affiliate links to your article, the chances of you making money from it anyway are very low.
The true value of an article is to demonstrate through informative content that you understand your niche or business and that you are a competent person within that niche. It is also to help inform or entertain your reader or prospect.
2. Posting articles for backlinks shows a misunderstanding of how articles work in search engine optimization. Newcomers to marketing are often fooled by the advice that putting their articles in a high PR directory (page rank) gives the article “link juice.”
This is not like this.
As it clearly says, page rank is the rank of a specific page. Google and its cronies rank pages on the web based on their relevance to a topic, not entire websites. There are, of course, ways to create many pages within a site that link with anchor text to each other to help demonstrate their relevance, but it’s the pages themselves that rank, not the site.
Many pages will have their own ranking for a particular keyword or phrase, if they are optimized correctly.
The real benefit of a good article is syndication. This means that a good informative article will be syndicated by others within the same industry. Think of blogs as similar to magazines. There are personal blogs out there, and they are generally considered the norm, but the truth is, there are a plethora of sites where content is curated.
Content curation is quickly becoming the norm, and blog owners are always looking for interesting material to share with their audiences. If your article is chosen for sharing, it is this syndication that really benefits you.
In effect, your article is placed in front of a targeted audience who may follow the link in your resource box to return to your blog to learn more about you.
Forget affiliate links in your articles. Forget about getting backlinks to your site. Write quality content that informs and engages your chosen market and your content will get shared, driving high-quality targeted visitors to your blog.
Article marketing is a method, not a business model, so it cannot die.
