Article Marketing: How Does It Drive More Traffic And Improve SEO?
Updated on: 1 December 2021
Nowadays, consumers have become increasingly meticulous in their spending. They want to make sure that every product they buy or service they use gives them the highest value their money can afford them.
This is the very reason why content is still king.
Content provides users information on products or services through articles, blog posts, or reviews, helping them make informed decisions. People read articles because they want to know whether something is a good fit before they proceed to check it out. This is why content marketing is a crucial part of every organization’s grand digital marketing plan.
For search engine optimization (SEO), content is essential. It is what search engines use to index web pages and rank your site. Content improves your online visibility, which drives traffic to your site and brings people to purchase your products or services.
All of these kinds of content are a part of a larger marketing campaign called article marketing. It is one of the tried-and-true strategies used by marketers to bring in new visitors and increase sales.
What is article marketing?
Article marketing is a part of content marketing. It involves writing and distributing articles across multi-channels to promote a brand or website through the backlinks it creates, the authority it builds, and the visibility it gains.
For your article marketing campaign to be effective, of course, you need to create content that’s informative, relevant, and valuable to your audience. It must also be optimized for search engines to reap higher returns.
Article marketing also offers the following SEO benefits:
1. Enables websites to rank for a wide range of keywords.
2. Provides opportunities to rank in video or image search.
3. Increases website authority and trustworthiness.
4. Directs authority to other pages on your site through internal links.
5. Converts users into customers, followers, or subscribers.
6. Attracts valuable backlinks.
7. Attracts more organic traffic from search engines.
What can multi-channel article marketing do for you?
What’s great about article marketing is that it can help you generate traffic via a selection of direct, social, and referral channels, including:
- Facebook posts
- Instagram posts
- YouTube
- Paid campaigns
- Blogs
By marketing your articles through a wide range of channels, you can get the highest return on your investment. Plus, you’ll also get to enjoy these benefits.
- Increase interaction and engagement on social media platforms.
- Get a lot of opportunities to convert visitors into paying customers or subscribers.
- Generate organic traffic and referral traffic from different sources.
- Be able to re-share your articles to third-party sites and more.
In other words, the primary goal of article marketing is to attract new audiences to your site and increase your leads and sales. By increasing traffic to your site, you’ll also be able to rank higher on search engines, which further increases your traffic and revenues.
So, how do you start with article marketing?
How to do article marketing?
Article marketing may be done differently from website to website, but the following are the most basic steps you need to follow.
1. Pick a topic.
There are hundreds of topics you can write about, but what you should be choosing is one that your audience will most likely be interested in. Your articles should be related to what you do – what your business is all about. For example, if you’re a restaurant owner, your topics need to be about food or eating – i.e., different types of cuisines, table etiquette, nutrition, etc.
Make sure that you’ll be able to discuss or analyze the topics thoroughly not just summarize. You want to add value to your audience’s life after they’ve read your content.
2. Find the best keywords.
Once you’ve come up with excellent topics, the next most important step you need to take is to conduct keyword research to map out your articles to searchable keywords. This is crucial because you want your articles to be searched for.
You will need to use keyword research tools, such as SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, to look up a range of topics and determine whether there are lots of searches for them every month. The search volume of the topics you are thinking of writing about is a good indication of whether your articles will be worthwhile to write for SEO purposes.
Another factor to consider is competition level. Keywords with high volume may be too competitive for a small and start-up company like yours. If you’re new to article marketing, it’s best to aim for less competitive keywords or topics for now just to get the hang of it.
3. Identify your market niche.
Knowing your niche will help you find the right topics to write about. After all, all your marketing strategies will be created around your niche to make your content more searchable.
Identifying your niche will also make it easier for you to develop your ideal customers – people who are, in a way, already interested in what you have to offer. Plus, you’ll be able to focus your efforts and resources on the right people, which should prevent you from wasting marketing dollars.
4. Choose enticing and optimized article titles.
Your titles are as important as the quality of your articles. Keep in mind that the titles or headings are what people will first see when they search for your keywords. Using the right titles will also help improve your search engine optimization.
Headings should be short. They should give readers a good idea of what your content is all about. Insert keywords into your title if possible. Don’t force it. Keywords must also be placed at the beginning, not the end of your titles.
5. Optimize your content.
Once you’ve written and polished your articles, the next thing you want to do is to optimize your content using on-page SEO best practices, which includes the following:
- Keyword-optimized title tag
- Eye-catching H1 headline
- Short and descriptive meta description
- Concise H2 and H3 headings
- Optimized URL structure
- Grammatically correct, plagiarism-free, relevant, and useful content
- Internal and external links
Make sure all your articles will have these crucial elements to rank high in search results.
6. Add the right media.
To make articles more eye-catching, add the right media to them. It can be an image, video, GIFs, graphic designs, PDFs, surveys, infographics, or digital tools. Visuals can make content more compelling and more interesting. People tend to get more interested in reading an article if it has great visuals.
7. Develop a sharing strategy.
Maximize your reach by sharing your articles to all the possible channels. Most CMS platforms have social share icons that you can click when you publish your articles. You can also submit your content to article directories. You also need to create different versions of your topics to publish your articles in different channels without being flagged by Google as duplicate content.
8. Get republished.
Widen your reach further by pitching your content to other publishers or by reaching out to other blogs to ask for guest posting opportunities. It will be a great opportunity to also get quality direct links to your site, which can increase your visibility.
9. Engage and follow up.
To improve the visibility of all your posts, interact and engage with your readers. You can respond to comments, like and comment on re-shares, retarget readers with ads, follow up with new subscribers to your email list, and respond to those who reply to your emails. These are excellent opportunities to gain more visibility for your articles while waiting for them to drive more traffic to your site.
Final words
Article marketing is indeed worthy of every marketing dollar. By marketing your posts, you’ll be able to drive more traffic to your site, gain more customers and subscribers, increase your ranking, and boost your sales.
There are many ways to come up with great topics to write about. For one, you can run a survey asking your followers on the topics that they’d like to read. You can tap into their suggestions to keep traffic flowing into your site.