Article Marketing Update
Saturday, March 13th, 2010I have a few articles published on various article directory sites. When I am viewing my analytics I see a few referrals from these sites. I think that the most consistent traffic (subjective not objective) comes from the site Buzzle.com. This may be due to the content of the article there (I have only posted one article there). This is a library site, not a reprint site.
Ezine articles gives a very complete article analytics page to each author. This page tracks views, reprints, and comments among other things. The pattern that I see emerging for most of the articles that I have posted there is that one is likely to see several views by passers by while the article is on the first page of results for the category, but few will click through. Then, later in the article’s life, the targeted audience will come upon the article, probably through an article search. These viewers are much more likely to click through to the offer site.
This makes doing your keyword research even more important. You want your article to show up for your target audience when they do a search on the article site. Keywords need to be incorporated into the article title in a sensible manner. They also need to be worked into the article a few times. This will help to get your article in front of your target viewer.
My primary sources of clicks have been Buzzle and eZine. I have a few articles up on Go Articles with little direct result. I do see a trend toward more traffic to all the sites that I have supported with articles. My conclusion is that there is still value to article marketing. The best approach would be through volume and consistency. I think that sticking with the higher quality sites is probably the best plan for direct visitors, but shear number of backlinks may improve the organic traffic more.