You all know how important generating high quality backlinks are in order to build traffic back to your site and improve your rankings within the search engines.  But too often, discussions about backlinking and linking best practices tend towards the theoretical, which leaves webmasters knowing what they *should* do, but not necessarily how to do it.

So today, we’re going to look at a few examples of existing sites and the results of their backlinking efforts.  Hopefully, you find this information helpful in terms of understanding how to implement a solid backlinking strategy on your own website.  Let’s get started!

Today’s analysis sites come from the invoicing software vertical.  This market is growing, as consumers are increasingly turning towards cheaper, more flexible cloud-based accounting products over their pricier desktop competitors.  Because of this, businesses that implement good backlinking techniques now will be well-positioned to take advantage of growing traffic and business opportunities.

For this post, we’ll be looking at five of these competitors – Invoice Bubble, Zoho, Freshbooks, Invoice Machine and Trade Shift.

Invoice Bubble

Currently, Invoice Bubble has a number of good links from authoritative blogs, as well as some low value links from blog comments, which have resulted in rankings in positions two and three for the keywords, “Free Invoice Software” and “Invoice Software,” respectively.

Unfortunately, their weakness is link volume – they simply don’t have enough backlinks to compete with the site that’s ranking in the number one position for these keywords.  Not only does Invoice Bubble not have the exact match domain name its competitors have, the sites in the number one spots have an excess of 2,000 back links, while Invoice Bubble has less than 200.  Clearly, this represents a significant opportunity for the company.

Because the company’s current link building speed is adequate, we would recommend working social media promotion into their SEO strategy.  Not only would this help to improve rankings for the site – as social signals now function as a ranking factor in the search algorithms – it would also help to generate social media buzz and more backlinks from tweets, shares and likes.

Zoho

One of the top competitors in this space, Zoho’s backlinking strategy has been to combine multiple keywords in the same piece of backlinking anchor text.  For example, they’ve built a lot of links with the anchor text “Online Invoicing Expense Billing time tracking software,” which breaks into three different keywords:

• “Online invoicing,” which they rank number six for,
• “Expense billing,” which they rank number one for,
• And, “Time tracking software,” which they rank 24^th for.

In general, the site would benefit from mixing up the anchor text it uses in its backlinking campaigns to vary more naturally. Their current anchor text strategy looks spammy, and could result in an over-optimization penalty down the road.

Additionally, like Invoice Bubble, Zoho could derive some SEO benefit by working more social media promotion into their SEO strategy to build more linked tweets, shares, and likes for the page related to invoicing.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks is the shining star in our case study here, as they appear to have a well-rounded and diversified link building strategy.  Freshbooks is definitely doing it right!

Freshbooks currently has a number of links originating from many different root domains and going to all the pages on their site (which is important in order to spread link and page authority effectively). They’re also promoting themselves effectively via social media, which means that their pages are accruing valuable likes, tweets, and shares. Finally, their PR campaigns appear to be performing well, as the site has a large amount of links referring either to their brand name or just the website.

Freshbooks is targeting terms like:

• “Online invoicing,” which gets 22,000+ searches per month and for which they rank number one,
• “Time tracking,” which gets 246,000+ searches per month and for which they rank on page five,
• And, “Expense service,” which gets 12,000+ searches per month and for which they’re ranked number one.

Overall, you’re doing a good job, guys – keep up the great work!

Invoice Machine

After a quick look at their backlink profile, it’s clear that Invoice Machine is not doing enough link building to challenge their competitors effectively.  Because of this, we’ve identified a few areas they could improve on in order to compete with sites like Freshbooks and Zoho:

• Identify the right keywords and target them properly with the anchor text of all backlinks created.  The keywords Invoice Machine chooses to target should be relevant to what they offer and chosen specifically to drive visitors with commercial intent back to their website.
• Acquire links at a more consistent pace that’s meant to keep up with their competitors.
• Implement social media campaigns designed to attract consumers and build backlinks through tweets, shares and likes.

Although the site appears to offer a good quality product, no one is ever going to know about it if the site isn’t ranked for the right keywords.  We estimate that Invoice Machine could see substantial traffic and subscriber growth by implementing the steps listed above.

Tradeshift

Tradeshift is a newer service that’s taking a really innovative approach to billing and invoicing systems.  They’re based in Europe and are working not to build yet another invoicing program, but to create a “billing social network” of people who can use their free invoicing software to bill each other.  Looking at their current SEO strategy, I can see that they’re getting a decent amount of links, but there are some issues with their approach.

Our biggest concern is that they’re not targeting any particular keywords with their anchor text selections. After looking through their backlink profile, it’s clear that the large majority of their anchor text is branded terms or links referring to the founders of the company.  While these links are beneficial from a PR standpoint, the company needs to diversify its anchor text to include “buyer” keywords if it wants to attract the right people to the service.

For this reason, we’d give them the same advice we had for Invoice Bubble.  Figure out which keywords will bring the right people back to your site and conduct a targeted backlinking campaign that utilizes these keywords as anchor text within links from high profile, authority sites.  In addition, make use of social media promotion – which is especially relevant given the social nature of Tradeshift itself.

After looking at these stats, it’s clear that some players in the invoicing software vertical understand what to do and how to do it.  But a few of these sites need to focus on diversifying their link building strategies and developing a keyword focus that actively targets the phrases you’d like to rank for and get traffic from.  By implementing the recommendations described above, these sites could dramatically increase the amount of traffic they receive by boosting their positions within the search engine rankings.

Image: mcmstocksolutions

But while past SEO marketers had success getting their sites ranked well using this technique, are they still a valid promotional strategy? Or has Google uncovered the practice and penalized links created in this manner? Let’s take a closer look…

First of all, let’s look at the theory behind the link wheel. Essentially, a traditional link wheel includes 5-10 Web 2.0 sites, all of which have one link pointing to a main site and one link pointing to the next Web 2.0 property in the wheel, resulting in a structure that resembles a bicycle or wagon wheel. Ideally, the PageRank that’s passed from Web 2.0 site to Web 2.0 site strengthens each link that then points towards the money site.

Consider the following traditional link wheel structure, as designed by LJ Interactive:

Suppose that, for the sake of simplicity, each of the Web 2.0 sites in the link wheel pictured above has 20 points of link juice that can be passed on through links. If the Hubpages property contains two links pointing away from the site, conveying 10 points of authority, both Digg and the home site will receive these benefits. But now, in addition to the original 20 points of link juice, the links coming out from Digg have additional authority that they’re able to pass on. As the wheel gets bigger, this benefit increases, making links from a link wheel more powerful than links pointing directly from Web 2.0 sites to the main site.

At least, that’s the case in theory. The problem – as you might expect – is that this defined wheel structure is incredibly easy to detect. When a new website pops up with thousands of links pointing at it in this particular arrangement, it’s easy to understand that the site in question is trying to game the system and achieve an artificially high rank. To make matters worse, many of the link wheels that are created are done using automated software that spins stock articles and pumps out link wheels without regard to quality.

As the SEO Design Solutions blog describes:

“The only problem with mass automation is (a) if proportions reach unprecedented levels of unusual likelihood (such as a post being circulated in 2 minutes to 1000 social media sites) or the same old new same URL, title or “footprint” inundate search engines – there is a high degree of that cluster of “social proof” tripping a filter and creating a null set (effectively making the links moot or suppressed).”

That sounds technical, but the basic point is that when link wheel creation is automated, a digital footprint is created that’s easy for the search engines to detect and penalize. As Google explicitly states in its Terms of Service, linking schemes such as the automated link wheel method described above are subject to penalty or removal from the index entirely.

According to the Google Webmaster Tools Help section:

“Some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”

So, with all of this in mind, there’s no way that link wheels could still work as an effective SEO strategy, right?! Well, don’t jump to conclusions too quickly…

The truth is that the underlying model of the link wheel does have some merit. Building Web 2.0 sites is still a powerful linking strategy, especially considering the increased value the search engines are placing on links from social networking sites. However, it’s the way that you build your link wheels that matters most in terms of receiving link juice and ranking benefits from this technique.

Consider the following guidelines when adding link wheels to your marketing mix:

Use unique content on every spoke property you build. Although past link wheel creators have advocated spinning a single article and then using the variations resulting from this content to build every property in the link wheel, the increased importance of site quality conferred by the Google Panda updates makes using spun articles a very bad idea.

Yes, it’s a lot easier to use spun articles than unique content, but doing so runs the risk of having your Web 2.0 properties penalized as a result of the recent algorithm changes. So instead, every single spoke property you build needs to be created using totally unique, useful content. Essentially, you need to build every spoke property with the same care and attention you’d give to your main site in order for this strategy to work successfully.

Create your spoke properties over time. Instead of rushing out and building an entire link wheel in a day (which worked in the past but has since been penalized), build your spoke properties over time for maximum benefits. Think of the new link wheel as a long term project and add new content to your wheel as you have time, returning to interlink the properties at a later date.

Avoid the traditional spoke and wheel format. In the past, link wheels could be simple, with 5-10 Web 2.0 spokes pointing at a center site in a perfect circle. However, as this link format has been identified and devalued by Google, building a successful link wheel now requires website owners to create more complex linking structures.

Check out the following diagram by Affhelper:

As you can see, there’s no defined, circular link wheel structure as in the previous example. Instead, the format is disjointed, with various feeder sites and backlinks pointing at different Web 2.0 properties – some of which are interlinked and some of which stand alone. Although it isn’t recommended that you follow this exact pattern, it’s important that you vary your internal linking methods in order to create a more powerful link wheel.

Finally, if you’d still like to pursue link wheels as an SEO and traffic generation technique, keep in mind that you’ll want to be careful about how you link back to your main site. If your site is still young, sending thousands of links back to it via link wheels can raise a red flag with the search engines that the site is being promoted artificially.

Instead, consider sending any additional backlinks you create to the Web 2.0 properties used in your link wheel structure. These older, more established sites can tolerate more backlinks without triggering any penalties, and the additional link juice they generate will flow through the Web 2.0 properties you’ve created back to your main site. Over time, the effects of these additional links will turn your link wheels into power backlink sources that result in both increased traffic and rankings for your main site.

But while past SEO marketers had success getting their sites ranked well using this technique, are they still a valid promotional strategy? Or has Google uncovered the practice and penalized links created in this manner? Let’s take a closer look…

First of all, let’s look at the theory behind the link wheel. Essentially, a traditional link wheel includes 5-10 Web 2.0 sites, all of which have one link pointing to a main site and one link pointing to the next Web 2.0 property in the wheel, resulting in a structure that resembles a bicycle or wagon wheel. Ideally, the PageRank that’s passed from Web 2.0 site to Web 2.0 site strengthens each link that then points towards the money site.

Consider the following traditional link wheel structure, as designed by LJ Interactive:

Suppose that, for the sake of simplicity, each of the Web 2.0 sites in the link wheel pictured above has 20 points of link juice that can be passed on through links. If the Hubpages property contains two links pointing away from the site, conveying 10 points of authority, both Digg and the home site will receive these benefits. But now, in addition to the original 20 points of link juice, the links coming out from Digg have additional authority that they’re able to pass on. As the wheel gets bigger, this benefit increases, making links from a link wheel more powerful than links pointing directly from Web 2.0 sites to the main site.

At least, that’s the case in theory. The problem – as you might expect – is that this defined wheel structure is incredibly easy to detect. When a new website pops up with thousands of links pointing at it in this particular arrangement, it’s easy to understand that the site in question is trying to game the system and achieve an artificially high rank. To make matters worse, many of the link wheels that are created are done using automated software that spins stock articles and pumps out link wheels without regard to quality.

As the SEO Design Solutions blog describes:

“The only problem with mass automation is (a) if proportions reach unprecedented levels of unusual likelihood (such as a post being circulated in 2 minutes to 1000 social media sites) or the same old new same URL, title or “footprint” inundate search engines – there is a high degree of that cluster of “social proof” tripping a filter and creating a null set (effectively making the links moot or suppressed).”

That sounds technical, but the basic point is that when link wheel creation is automated, a digital footprint is created that’s easy for the search engines to detect and penalize. As Google explicitly states in its Terms of Service, linking schemes such as the automated link wheel method described above are subject to penalty or removal from the index entirely.

According to the Google Webmaster Tools Help section:

“Some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”

So, with all of this in mind, there’s no way that link wheels could still work as an effective SEO strategy, right?! Well, don’t jump to conclusions too quickly…

The truth is that the underlying model of the link wheel does have some merit. Building Web 2.0 sites is still a powerful linking strategy, especially considering the increased value the search engines are placing on links from social networking sites. However, it’s the way that you build your link wheels that matters most in terms of receiving link juice and ranking benefits from this technique.

Consider the following guidelines when adding link wheels to your marketing mix:

Use unique content on every spoke property you build. Although past link wheel creators have advocated spinning a single article and then using the variations resulting from this content to build every property in the link wheel, the increased importance of site quality conferred by the Google Panda updates makes using spun articles a very bad idea.

Yes, it’s a lot easier to use spun articles than unique content, but doing so runs the risk of having your Web 2.0 properties penalized as a result of the recent algorithm changes. So instead, every single spoke property you build needs to be created using totally unique, useful content. Essentially, you need to build every spoke property with the same care and attention you’d give to your main site in order for this strategy to work successfully.

Create your spoke properties over time. Instead of rushing out and building an entire link wheel in a day (which worked in the past but has since been penalized), build your spoke properties over time for maximum benefits. Think of the new link wheel as a long term project and add new content to your wheel as you have time, returning to interlink the properties at a later date.

Avoid the traditional spoke and wheel format. In the past, link wheels could be simple, with 5-10 Web 2.0 spokes pointing at a center site in a perfect circle. However, as this link format has been identified and devalued by Google, building a successful link wheel now requires website owners to create more complex linking structures.

Check out the following diagram by Affhelper:

As you can see, there’s no defined, circular link wheel structure as in the previous example. Instead, the format is disjointed, with various feeder sites and backlinks pointing at different Web 2.0 properties – some of which are interlinked and some of which stand alone. Although it isn’t recommended that you follow this exact pattern, it’s important that you vary your internal linking methods in order to create a more powerful link wheel.

Finally, if you’d still like to pursue link wheels as an SEO and traffic generation technique, keep in mind that you’ll want to be careful about how you link back to your main site. If your site is still young, sending thousands of links back to it via link wheels can raise a red flag with the search engines that the site is being promoted artificially.

Instead, consider sending any additional backlinks you create to the Web 2.0 properties used in your link wheel structure. These older, more established sites can tolerate more backlinks without triggering any penalties, and the additional link juice they generate will flow through the Web 2.0 properties you’ve created back to your main site. Over time, the effects of these additional links will turn your link wheels into power backlink sources that result in both increased traffic and rankings for your main site.

1. Fully optimize each page on your site – Choose good high-demand, low-competition keywords to target, and then make sure each keyword is used in your page title, your headline tags, your body content and the alt text for your page images.
2. Write engaging, compelling headlines – Drafting good headlines encourages more people to click through to your site whenever they come across your link. Check out Copyblogger for ten sample headline structures that capture visitors’ attention.
3. Encourage visitors to share your content – Make use of social sharing buttons that make it easy for readers to share your content on their favorite social networks. Digg Digg and Shareaholic are two great WordPress plugins that meet this need.
4. Create a Youtube channel – Youtube is one of the largest search engines on the web, so posting video content to this site can be a great way to drive visitors back to your main site. Be sure to include your full URL in the top line of your video description for maximum visibility.
5. Be present on social networking sites – A thriving social media presence is becoming more important every day, so set up profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ at a minimum. Stop by every day to share helpful content and engage with your followers.
6. Team up with other site owners – Set up a formal or informal mastermind group of 2-5 site owners in related industries and agree to promote each other’s content on social networking sites and in other avenues.
7. Answer questions on crowdsourcing sites – Answer community questions on sites like Yahoo Answers, Ning and Quora and site your own site as a reference.
8. Launch a podcast – Delivering a regular podcast and advertising it on podcast-sharing sites can be a great way to introduce new visitors to your site and drive existing listeners back to specific pages on your site. All you need to get started is a USB microphone and free audio-editing software!
9. Publish guest posts on authority blogs – Contact the top bloggers and site owners in your niche and offer to write a free post in exchange for a link back to your site. If your article is good enough, a percentage of the site’s readers will click through to your page.
10. Submit your content to blog carnivals – Sharing your links on blog carnivals (sites that collect blog links on related topics and send them out to all subscribers) can be a good way to send visitors back to your site.
11. Utilize social bookmarking sites – Don’t submit every post you’ve ever written, but when you have something exceptional to say, use free services like Ping.fm or Onlywire to generate social bookmarks back to your top content.
12. Add your site to directories – If you can afford it, submitting to DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory can be a great investment – if not, Google directories in your niche and submit your site to as many as possible.
13. Submit content to article directories – Sharing unique content on sites like EzineArticles or Buzzle is a good way to build both traffic and backlinks to your site.
14. Update your site regularly – No one wants to spend time on a site that hasn’t been updated since animated gifs went out of style. Update your content frequently in order to attract repeat visitors.
15. Create an email newsletter – Linking back to your site from within your email newsletters helps encourage return visits and introduces readers to past content they may have missed.
16. Deploy linkbait content – Linkbait is content that’s designed to generate attention, making it a perfect way to build traffic back to your site.
17. Mention your URL in your forum signature – Any time you comment on a forum, there should be a link back to your site in your signature. You never know who’s going to see it!
18. Comment on blogs in your industry – When you post good comments to authority blogs, other readers will be naturally curious about you, leading to clicks back to your website.
19. Promote your RSS feed – RSS feeds make it easy for your visitors to read and share your content, so make it as easy as possible for readers to join with prominent RSS icons.
20. Submit your feed to RSS directories – In addition to promoting your RSS feed on your site, share your feed address with directories in order to maximize your exposure.
21. Repackage and submit your content to Scribd – Scribd is a great place to download content on any subject, and listing your own work there can help send a flood of visitors your way.
22. Create Web 2.0 links pointing back to your website – Not only do Web 2.0 properties (like Squidoo or Hubpages) provide great backlinks back to your site, they also tend to do well in the SERPs, which can send traffic your way.
23. Join a blog network – Getting your content featured on sites like Blog Engage or Blokube can be a great way to increase the number of eyeballs on your page.
24. Post on free classified ad sites – Free classified ads sites can be hit or miss (and you’ll need to make sure you’re following the site’s TOS), but the right combination of ad and audience can result in big traffic gains.
25. Upload your photos to Flickr – Sharing your images under the Creative Commons license on Flickr can generate links and traffic back to your site when your pictures are syndicated onto top blogs.
26. Arrange an ad swap with related sites – If you don’t want to pay for advertising, consider arranging a banner swap with related (though not directly competitive) sites.
27. Publish in industry ezines – Do a Google search for ezines in your industry and find out how you can sign up to provide content that will be seen by tons of readers within your niche.
28. Promote your site offline – Depending on your industry, promoting your site offline with business cards, flyers and ads in print publications can be a good way to drum up new traffic to your site.
29. Improve the look & feel of your site – If your site looks bad, visitors will be less likely to share your content or recommend it to a friend, making investing in improving the look and feel of your site a great way to improve your traffic.
30. Share a controversial viewpoint – Articles on controversial viewpoints are more likely to be shared, leading to more traffic back to your site.
31. Join trade associations – If your industry has any relevant trade associations or organizations, join them for the opportunity to get a link back to your site in their directories.
32. Be the first to talk about industry news – When you’re the first to discuss a major development in your niche, you’ll see a spike in traffic and a number of sites linking back to yours, so be sure to stay on top of industry news in your field.

What other traffic strategies do you use? Share them below in the comments!

Image: drivemybike

Building backlinks has always been a priority for smart webmasters, who know that Google and the other search engines place a tremendous amount of value on the caliber and number of sites linking in to a given page. However, following the now-infamous Google Panda update, it isn’t the quantity of these links that matters so much as the quality.

It’s not that this is a new phenomenon – for years, Google’s spokespeople have been encouraging website owners to focus on providing value and building quality links. In fact, they’ve even let it be known that some of the ways Google penalizes sites with poor link profiles is with a lower PageRank score or lower rankings. As the KSL Consulting team summarizes:

“When link devaluation is applied, as it has with reciprocal links as well as links from many paid text links, low quality web directories and link farms, the recipient website may suffer a reduction in Google ranking. The severity of any ranking fall is usually synonymous with the website’s reliance on that particular type of linking.”

So it isn’t that the recent penalties dealt out by Google in response to backlinking strategies that don’t mesh with Panda’s quality guidelines is something new – it’s just that the recent algorithm changes have made Google more effective than ever before at identifying and penalizing poor quality links.

With this in mind, you can see why it’s so important that webmasters start focusing their efforts on attracting high quality backlinks. Google’s goal has always been to provide the best quality search results, so it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll continue making tweaks like this that are designed to weed out sites with bad link profiles. Just because your site hasn’t suffered from any of the past Google Panda rollouts doesn’t mean that your poor quality backlink profile will always pass muster.

But as you begin to align your efforts towards finding the best possible sites to link back to your page, keep in mind that there’s no specific type of backlink that’s guaranteed to provide the biggest benefit (although you’d be wise to stay away from all of the types listed in the quote above). Instead, your biggest concern should be the quality of your link source, whether you decide to pursue guest posts, blog comment links, link directories or other methods.

Here’s what to look for in an ideal backlink site, whether you’re approaching a site owner to solicit a link or have received a request from another site owner proposing a link exchange:

References to Paid Links – Now, I’m going to assume that you’re being a good webmaster and personally reviewing every site you plan to solicit links from, so while you’re doing that check, look out for any mention of paid or sponsored links. If you see anything mentioning “paid anchor text links” or “sponsored text links”, get out of there and look for better sites to request links from.

Updated Content – Google and the other search engines like to play favorites, and the sites they give the most preference to are those with regularly updated, helpful content. If you click through to a potential link site and see a homepage that’s as deserted as a ghost town and hasn’t been updated at all in the last month, move on. There are plenty of better options out there to pursue links from!

Relevant Niche – Although there’s still debate in the internet marketing community about how sensitive the search engines are at determining how closely related two sites are, there’s no doubt that it’s best to seek backlinks from sites that are substantially related to your own.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to go out and find a site that targets the same long tail keywords as yours (for example, finding another “dog training” site to link to your page on this topic), but it’s a good idea to at least stay within the same general niche (in this case, sites in the pets niche would be good linking candidates). Basically, if your site is on dog training, a link from a technology blog or a celebrity gossip website isn’t going to help you nearly as much as a more relevant link.

And whatever you do, stay away from links from adult sites, online gambling sites or sites that promote known scam offers (for example, “free” trials of Hoodia or HGC diet pills). Links from these sites can raise a major red flag from the search engine spiders and can result in penalties being applied to your site.

Language Barriers – This should probably go without saying, but look for sites to link into your own that are written in the same language. Mismatches here typically indicate that a link isn’t natural, which is a major “no-no” in the eyes of the search engines. Sure, there are a few limited scenarios where it makes sense for sites in different languages to be linked together, but if there’s no logical reason in your case, steer clear of these links.

Poor Site Quality – Yes, this criterion is a little subjective. However, if you come across a potential linking site that fails any of the following tests, chances are the site your considering won’t provide a high enough quality backlink to make the effort worth your time.

• Scraped articles – Different writing styles, a mess of topics that don’t quite make sense together and content that’s irrelevant to the theme of the site are all dead giveaways that you’re looking at a scraper site. If you aren’t sure, grab the first sentence or two of an article on the site and paste it into the search engines. If you see the exact article posted elsewhere, move on to the next potential linking site.
• Basic theme – Webmasters who care about their sites care enough to make them look as good as possible. While a site doesn’t need to a $5,000+ custom design to be a good linking partner, seeing a basic, over-used template is an indication that you’re looking at a low quality site.
• Frequency of posts – Ideally, a site that you’re considering seeking a backlink from should have no more than 2-3 posts per day. Any more than that and there’s a good chance you’re looking at a site that’s pulling all of its content in automatically via RSS feed plugins.

Low Site Metrics – There are a number of different metrics you can consider when analyzing a potential linking site’s quality, including its PageRank, its SEOMoz “mozRank” score and its Alexa rankings (depending on your niche). Although your specific preferences may vary, we prefer to build links from sites that have at least a PR1 score and a 2+ score through SEOMoz.

If – even after applying all of these criteria to a potential linking site – you still aren’t sure if the backlink you’d receive would be high enough quality, just use the good old “gut check.” If something doesn’t feel quite right about the site or if you aren’t 100% sure that the link is a good fit for your site, look for another one. There are so many potential linking partners out there that it isn’t necessary to jeopardize your site’s future with poor quality backlinks.

Image: imp

So today, let’s look at the “2011” version of what works in article marketing, as well as how you can implement this awesome technique into your website’s marketing plan, in greater depth.

In light of the changes made by the Google Panda update that focus on providing more substantive, quality results in the SERPs, the best way to succeed with article marketing isn’t to spam your content out to thousands of sites. Instead, it’s to focus on building both traffic and backlinks back to your site by posting high quality articles on other peoples’ sites as a guest author.

The process of guest blogging is simple, although it can take some time to put the various steps into practice. To get started, you identify sites that would be good guest posting candidates and then contact the site’s owner to get the ball rolling. Once you and the owner have agreed on a topic for your post, you draft your content – including a link back to your own site, of course – and submit it for publication on the owner’s site.

Now, let’s break each of these elements down into action items…

Finding Good Guest Posting Sites

The first step in succeeding with guest posting is to invest some time in finding the best sites on which to post your content. Think about it – what kind of benefit are you really going to see from a new site with no PageRank in a niche that’s unrelated to your own site? Instead, contrast that with the link juice and influx of traffic you’ll receive when you take the time to seek out the best guest blogging candidates in your industry.

Finding these sites isn’t difficult, as you’re simply looking for the largest, most authoritative websites in your chosen niche. Often, this can be accomplished by conducting a Google search for broad industry keywords and analyzing the results that come up to see what their relative PageRank, SEOMoz and/or Alexa scores are. Ideally, it’s best to find sites that rank highly in the SERPs for broad, competitive keywords and that have at least a PR2 score.

Once you’ve identified a few potential sites for your guest articles, do a quick search of the site to see if you can find any information for contributing authors. Frequently, sites that accept guest articles will post their quality guidelines and criteria, which can be extremely useful as you put together your guest post proposal. You’ll also need to find out whom to contact to submit your article, so keep an eye out for this information as well.

By searching each of your potential submission sites for this type of information, you should have a good feel for which sites are open to guest bloggers and which ones don’t accept this type of content.

Contacting Site Owners

Unless the site you plan to submit your content to explicitly states that only finished articles should be submitted, your next step will be to contact each site’s owner with your guest article proposal. This is the most crucial step in getting your guest articles posted on major industry websites, so consider the following elements of a good proposal carefully:

• Propose a specific topic – Don’t simply contact a site owner and say that you’d like to write a guest article. Instead, take the time to study the kinds of articles that perform best on the site and uncover topics that haven’t yet been addressed. Use this information to come up with a specific guest article topic for your proposal.
• Share work samples – If you’ve submitted guest posts to other websites, include a link to these articles in your email proposal. The site owner’s first concern when considering guest post proposals will be the quality of your writing, so make it easy for him or her to see that you’ve written good quality work elsewhere.
• Be specific about your expectations – State up front that you are offering to write a guest article in exchange for a backlink so that there will be no confusion later on once your article is finished. If you have any expectations about revisions, HTML markup or publishing deadlines, share these as well, but keep in mind that the site owner is doing a favor by considering your request. Don’t make too many demands up-front!

Drafting Your Content

If your proposal is submitted and accepted by the site owner, the next step in the process is to draft your article. It should go without saying that only your highest quality work should be submitted for consideration as a guest post. Proofread your work several times and ask friends or business contacts for their input to be sure you’re putting out content that you can be proud of.

Once you’re comfortable with your first draft, submit it to the site owner for consideration. He or she might accept your work as-is, or you might be asked to make revisions. If changes are requested, be prompt about returning the next draft of your work. If you’re able to provide good quality work and a pleasant working experience, you’ll increase your odds of being invited back to submit additional guest posts in the future.

Expanding This Practice

Keep in mind that while blog owners are a great first stop when implementing this strategy, given their constant need for fresh, updated content, they aren’t the only place you can submit guest articles to.

If you’ve exhausted the authority blogs in your niche as guest posting opportunities, why not try to repeat your success with ezine or email newsletter owners? Just like standard website owners, these publishers are always in need of content and will often be happy to accept your submissions for the price of a single backlink. To find these opportunities, simply Google “your niche” + “ezine” or “your niche” + “email newsletter”.

Other potential guest posting sources to consider include industry white pages, blogs on major forums, news websites and more. In fact, a quick brainstorming of all the different sites in your industry that have a regular need for content should turn up dozens of opportunities to increase your site’s exposure with guest posting.

If you’re diligent about pursuing these opportunities, you’ll find that your site will grow dramatically faster than sites that rely on traditional article marketing – and not just from the link juice flowing back to your site from these high-ranking pages! Having a guest article posted on an industry website is like receiving a tacit approval of your website’s content from a leader in your niche, will result in an influx of traffic from the established site’s readership.

Image: gotworship

Considering the number of websites out there that tell you link building is a “must do” in terms of achieving high rankings in the search engines, it’s no wonder that so many new webmasters run out and begin creating as many links as possible, as fast as they can.

But hold your horses! Building the wrong types of backlinks – or even building them too quickly – could trigger an over-optimization penalty by the search engines. This is because the search engines value “natural” above all else. Because their goal is to provide the best possible search results for their visitors, they put a premium on sites that appear to have grown naturally and that have earned a good reputation, as evidenced by the number of quality sites linking in.

So how do you think it looks in the eyes of Google when your five-day-old website already has 5,000 backlinks built up – all from the same types of sources? Definitely not good! Instead of falling into the trap of too-much, too-soon link building, be sure to avoid the following mistakes when it comes to this important off-page SEO technique:

Mistake #1 – Link Velocity: Too Fast, Too Furious

To understand what an ideal link velocity looks like, consider what would happen if you built a site without knowing anything about search engine optimization. Your goal for the site wouldn’t be to make money or to earn Top 10 rankings, but simply to share information you’re passionate about. In the beginning, you’d have very few links pointing back to your site, but as your readership grew, the number of new links created each day would increase naturally.

If, on the other hand, you started to manipulate the results by building your own backlinks, you could trigger a link velocity penalty. According to Tad Chef on the SEOptimize blog:

“Google is checking the link velocity – aka the rate in which you earn links – and if you get more links than you deserve, you risk a penalty even if the links are perfectly legit.”

Of course, opinions are varied on how many links it takes to trigger a link velocity penalty. As an example, consider the various responses to the discussion “How Many Backlinks Per Day is Too Many” on the Affiliorama site:

“Getting 3 backlinks to an article for a week or 2 would appear natural to search engines.”

“You can create 10 back links per day.”

“You can do more than that. I sometimes do 50-100/ day. I would not do much more than 100 though.”

So while there’s no magic number (that we know of…) that determines how many links are appropriate and how many will trigger a penalty, it’s a good idea to keep your link building efforts within reason compared to the average number of backlinks pointing to your competitors’ websites.

Mistake #2 – Anchor Text Overload

Another way to destroy the credibility of your backlinking campaigns is by using the exact same anchor text in every single backlink that’s created. Remember, in a totally natural setting, anchor text serves to inform the search engines what a linked-to site is all about. Because it’s the originating site owner writing the anchor text in these cases, it will naturally vary from link to link. This is why duplicate anchor text is such a huge trigger for increased scrutiny by the search engines.

So while it’s good search engine optimization to adjust this anchor text to target certain keywords, it isn’t in keeping with our goal of building natural-looking backlink profiles to set every instance of anchor text to a single keyword. Instead, mix it up! Use related keywords, different phrasing or different portions of linked text in your backlinking campaigns in order to both avoid unnatural backlinking penalties and to improve your latent semantic indexing benefits.

Mistake #3 – Link Diversity: The More, The Merrier!

The quality of your links and the sources on which they’re built – heck, even the TLDs of your referring domains and their various PageRanks – are all factors that play into maintaining good link diversity.

Again, this comes back to the idea of maintaining a natural-looking backlink portfolio. It’s incredibly unrealistic to expect that someone would launch a new website and only attract profile backlinks, article backlinks or blog comments. A site that had a backlink profile made up entirely of one type of link would certainly be at risk for a penalty in the search engines.

According to Market Position:

“As with monetary investments, putting all of your eggs in one basket is not usually the best idea. But diversifying your link portfolio can help protect your site against search algorithm updates, the closing of sites that have linked to yours and other changes that can derail your link building efforts.”

Mistake #4 – Quality Counts: Avoid Spam Links

The previous three mistakes should give you a good idea about what a high quality backlink looks like, but just in case we haven’t yet hammered home the point that link quality matters, consider the following case study from SEOptimize.

In order to test whether or not a penalty would occur for creating too many low quality links at once, author Marcus Taylor set up 10,000 spam backlinks to a new website he created specifically for the experiment. The results are pretty interesting…

Although the site reached the #1 position for its target keyword within a few weeks, it was eventually booted from the rankings. According to Taylor:

“Just as I was beginning to lack faith in Google’s ability to detect the most unnatural of link patterns, the site suddenly dropped out of search results for everything including brand searches, and what’s more it’s never bounced back.”

So what does this mean for website owners? Besides the obvious, “Don’t set up 10,000 low quality backlinks in one day,” this case study also illustrates why it’s so important to develop a range of different link types over time. Instead of relying on one method to generate backlinks, use several styles of link building that will result in different link types.

For example, maybe one day you focus on writing articles and posting them to directories. But the next day, you don’t go back to writing articles – instead, you build Web 2.0 sites or comment on blogs or in relevant forums. By making sure your efforts are diversified across linkbuilding methods and that the types of links generated come from different sources, you’ll protect yourself from looking too unnatural in the eyes of the search engines.

Mistake #5 – Stop Trying So Hard!

In this article, we’ve talked a lot about how to make your linkbuilding efforts appear more natural. But what if, instead of attempting to “appear” natural, you actually built links in a natural way?

When you build a site that’s full of high quality content, the people reading it naturally want to share it. Your content is posted to social networking sites (creating backlinks), it’s picked up and syndicated by industry blogs (again, more backlinks) and it’s linked to from other authors in your niche (shockingly enough, even more backlinks). So instead of worrying about the number of backlinks you create each day, worry about putting out good quality content first – the rest will follow.

There’s really no arguing that websites need to have plenty of high quality backlinks pointing to them in order to rank well in the search engines. And when it comes to creating viral content and building these valuable links, “linkbait” content can’t be beat.

But what is linkbait content? And how can you take advantage of its unique properties in order to generate traffic to your website and improve your site’s position in the search engines. Let’s get started…

First of all, linkbaiting refers to the process of creating content that has a high likelihood of being linked back to and/or shared virally, and can include text articles, videos, infographics and other types of web content. And although the phrase “baiting” has some seemingly negative connotations in terms of “trapping” or “tricking” readers, there’s nothing inherently bad about the process of creating and deploying linkbait content – as long as the content is valuable on its own merits.

To understand the process of how linkbait content can be used to build high quality backlinks to a website, consider the following example…

A website owner in the dog training niche wants to generate backlinks to his site and increase his traffic, so he writes a helpful, engaging article that he thinks his readers will love, titled “101 Ways to Make Your Dog Do What You Want.” Initially, he only publishes it on his blog, but later, he decides to submit it to a few social bookmarking sites as well.

His regular readers love the article, so they email the link to their friends and share it on social networking sites. At the same time, people on the social bookmarking sites are starting to take notice, resulting in more “votes” for his article on these sites. Eventually, an authority blog in this niche takes notice and publishes a link to the original author’s site in order to share the content with their readers.

The result of all this sharing means a lot more traffic flooding into the original site, as well as plenty of backlinks as the article is shared around the web. Our website owner hasn’t done any more work than usual, but because he built a “linkbait” article that was designed to be shared, he’s getting a lot more value out of the piece than he does from his usual articles.

Sounds great, right? If you’d like to take advantage of the power of linkbait content, consider some of the following options. Keep in mind that linkbait content is content that gets people talking – so really, anything you can do to get people’s attention can be considered linkbait. However, if you aren’t quite sure where to start, you might find a few of the following tried-and-true linkbait strategies helpful.

Conduct a quiz. Get your readers engaged, and they’ll repay the favor by sending you both backlinks and traffic. As an example, check out the following chart of referring sites that sent traffic to an NFL-based quiz set up by Netvantage Marketing:

Although the quiz was set up as a fun experiment, the results were very real. The spikes in traffic correspond to both the company sending out a press release about the tool near the start of the NFL season and several prominent bloggers in the industry finding the link and sharing it on their sites. As you can see, building good linkbait content can be very powerful!

Host a contest or giveaway. People love getting stuff for free, and – better yet – they love to tell their friends and family members about opportunities to win contests as well. For this reason, deciding to host a contest or giveaway can be a great way to get peoples’ attention and get them back to your website (just be sure to check the raffle laws in your area before committing to anything!).

List posts. If you feel like you’ve been seeing a lot of list posts (for example, “20 SEO Blogs You Need to Bookmark“) around the internet lately, there’s a reason for that – it’s because people love to share them. They might take a little more effort to write than other types of content, but a good list post almost always winds up getting more attention than more generic articles.

Be the first to talk about something. The cool kids in school were always the ones who were first to jump on the latest trends – whether it was wearing high top sneakers, trading pogs or having the latest MP3 player or cell phone. People look to these trend setters for advice and guidance – and with a little preparation, you can be one of these early adopters yourself!

Of course, being the first in your industry to share information on a given subject means constantly staying up-to-date on relevant news. To use this type of linkbait, you’ll want to subscribe to authority blogs in your niche, get on email lists for any related industry newsletters and check news websites frequently for any items you can post on.

Consider the following advice from Brandon Connell on Problogger, speaking about the best ways to stay current on industry news:

“Look at news sites and stories, like the Yahoo! homepage. Don’t hesitate: write about it, then publish it quickly.”

Share a controversial viewpoint. It’s never a good idea to be needlessly inflammatory or to resort to slandering another person, but if you can share a well-reasoned controversial viewpoint with your audience, you’ll likely find that these articles get shared (and, consequently, generate more backlinks to your site) more often than general posts.

Interview an expert. The major upside to interviewing an expert is that most of them already have their own followings who are anxious to read, listen or watch anything that the expert says. So posting an interview with said expert on your site is a sure-fire way to attract more visitors and develop content that people will be likely to share.

The tricky part here, obviously, is getting an expert to agree to an interview. You’ll find that some experts are much more approachable than others, so develop a list of key interview targets and then work through the list until you find someone who agrees to answer your questions – which, as you might expect should be professionally-constructed, well-written, and thought-provoking.

Create a “How To” tutorial. No matter what niche you’re in, there will always be people who are absolute beginners to your subject matter. By answering their questions with comprehensive, “how to” tutorials, you’ll be creating content that appeals to your readers and functions as linkbait content for each crop of beginners that winds up on your website.

No matter what type of linkbait content you decide to create, keep the following principles in mind: make it unique, make it engaging and make it easy to share. It may take a couple of tries to create a piece of linkbait content that really resonates with your readers and takes off virally, but once this surge of traffic and interest occurs, you’ll find yourself swimming in all the backlinks you can handle as the result of your linkbait content.

What has become clearer than ever is that Google is looking to promote sites that are (or at least resemble) authorities in their fields. So if your site doesn’t pass the “Would you recommend this site to a friend?” test or the “Would you feel comfortable pulling out your credit card and buying something from it?” test, be aware – Google’s coming after you.

So to understand how to structure website content in a post-Panda world, we need to first consider what a good, organic authority site looks like naturally. From there, we can apply these findings to our on sites in order protect ourselves from future updates to the Panda algorithm change, as well as completely new updates that may be coming in the future.

The following are some of the features of these sites that Google has given increased preference to recently. Even if you weren’t affected by the most recent algorithm change, you’d be wise to start implementing these tips on your sites ASAP!

Article Length – How Long is Long Enough?

Say you truly are an expert in your field. Can you really impart any kind of wisdom to your followers in a mere 300-500 word article? Probably not! True authority sites share loads of free content, much of it at least 1,000 words in length. In the wake of recent algorithm changes, it’s a good idea to be sure your posts are at least this long – possibly even longer (2,000-3,000 words even) if the topic you’re writing on can support it.

But not only should you focus on writing longer posts than ever – don’t forget to spice up your articles with relevant images as well. Adding images that depict data trends or clarify a process are great for usability and give you another opportunity to improve your site’s SEO with keyword-rich alt tags.

External Linking Strategies – Sharing the Love

Even if you are an expert on your chosen topic, chances are you recognize that other authors and website owners have valuable insight to share as well. And, as a true authority site, instead of worrying about how much link juice is flowing away from your site through external links, you connect with these other sites anyways, because you know your readers will benefit from what they’ll learn there.

So when writing content for your website, don’t be afraid to link out to other sources. In fact, it’s a good idea to link out to relevant sites 2-3 times in each piece of content you publish on your website. Just be sure that you’re linking to true authority sites to get the most benefit from this strategy!

Internal Link Structures – Promote a User-Friendly Environment

Recommending well-crafted internal link structures that reduce the depth of your website and contain keyword-rich anchor links isn’t exactly news. In fact, correctly structuring the framework upon which your site is built has been a de-facto part of search engine optimization advice for years.

However, this recommendation becomes even more important following this most recent algorithm update, as Google has made no secret about the fact that they value sites that enable users to quickly move from one level to another. If you aren’t sure that you’re getting the most benefit from your internal linking structures, it’s a good idea to focus some time on this area to prevent your site from suffering in future slaps.

Demonstrated Authority – Why Should Your Readers Care?

In the past, the standard search engine optimization advice has been that anyone can put up a website and get it ranked, provided he or she follow a set of guidelines – including posting a certain number of words of content, obtaining a certain number of backlinks and so on.

But there’s some evidence that this gravy train might be ending, as Google has filed patents that may indicate the search giant is going after a way to measure perceived authority. According to Richard Zwicky of Search Engine Watch:

“The patent’s title and obvious focus is around combining a blog post with the information referenced by the blog, and using the resulting information to determine the relevance of the original entry to a search query. A lot of signals or factors behind links can affect the quality, relevance, and value of these citations. Perhaps there’s another signal to consider: Author.”

As you might expect, this idea is frustrating to a lot of website owners – especially those who have significant experience in a field, but no educational credentials to back up their claims. But instead of getting frustrated with Google, why not try to work within the framework they’ve established?

For example, you might not be able to go back and get a degree in the field you’ve chosen to write about, but are there any industry organizations you could join that demonstrate your commitment to the niche? Could you submit a guest post to an authority site in your field so that you can claim you’re a published author on one of your niche’s biggest resources?

Even if you decide not to pursue any of these additional qualifications, simply expanding your “About” page (or adding a good one if you haven’t done so yet) to talk about why you’re passionate about the field you’re in could be enough to pass the Google authority test.

Active Social Networking Profiles – Measuring Engagement Among Readers

We’ve already talked extensively about how Google is placing more of an emphasis on active, engaged social networking profiles. But what key factors determine whether or not a social networking profile is “active” enough? And how can you set up your own profiles to earn the biggest possible benefit?

In most cases, you’ll find that Google values the same things on social networking profiles that it rewards on traditional blogs and websites. There, Google rewards freshly updated content and user engagement by indexing new posts and comments. On social networking sites, as discussed by Leah Beatty on Search Engine Journal, that same reader engagement is measured in tweets and likes:

“Attention generates commentary, articles, and conversation. Every mention, Facebook like, and retweet helps rank organically while simultaneously adding to authority. That authority is key for SEO.”

To see a few examples of how traditional websites can best harness the power of social networking, be sure to check out our post on “9 Companies Doing Facebook Right“. What similarities do you see between these profile pages? Do you see regularly updated content? Advanced user tools (like the Chik-fil-a picture brander)? Pictures and other resources for fans? Yes, yes and yes! When it comes to building your own social networking profiles, you can’t go wrong using these campaigns as a model for your own efforts.

Adding these new strategies to your promotional efforts isn’t meant to be easy. However, think of the added effort you’re putting in as your insurance against the next Google slap. You reap what you sow, and if you sow good quality content, strong link profiles and engaged social networking efforts, you’ll be rewarded in the long term with continued traffic and rankings.

Given the major slaps dealt out to content kings like EzineArticles, Hubpages and Associated Content, it would be easy to assume that article marketing is really, truly dead. After all, consider the following table from the Sistrix media research agency, which shows the specific changes in terms of ranking keywords in Google for the biggest content farms (based on a one million keyword data set):

It’s true – those are some pretty substantial losses in terms of the number of keywords for which each site ranked in Google. But let’s not jump to any conclusions yet. Just because a few major article engines lost authority in the latest update doesn’t necessarily mean that an entire technique is being devalued.

On the one hand, consider that – even though these sites are ranking for fewer keywords – they’re still ranking in plenty of SERPs, despite the changes. For example, look at the data listed for EzineArticles (long considered to be the strongest of the article engines). Even though it lost rank for about 130,000 keywords, it’s still ranking for over 50,000 – a pretty impressive number for any website. So let’s not discount this particular marketing strategy yet – even if it has suffered to some extent in the latest algorithm update.

Instead, we need to look at two different variables – quality and the original intent of article marketing.

As you’re no doubt aware, the Panda update was all about punishing low quality content and improving the rankings of well-written, informative text. And even though EzineArticles had a manual review process in place, you can’t deny that some of the content listed there was pure, unadulterated crap. Specifically, many of the EzineArticles had a few markers that indicate low quality in Google’s eyes, including:

• Short length (350-500 words, on average)
• Content that was unnaturally written to accommodate specific keyword densities
• Authors who clearly weren’t experts in their fields (as evidenced by links that pointed directly to sales pages or thin affiliate sites)

We can see that some EzineArticles are still ranking, along with plenty of pages on the other websites that got slapped. Based on the criteria used in the Panda update, we can assume that the pages that are still ranking are those that met Google’s quality criteria. From there, it’s pretty safe to assume that – as long as you publish content that’s good in Google’s eyes – you can still benefit from posting articles to the standard directories.

“It’s been said before, but now it’s more important than ever – your content has to be as unique as possible. If you were using spun content, that’s no longer an option. The poor grammar and bad phrasing that result from spinning content or using low quality writers isn’t going to fly anymore. Darren Olander – APSense“

However, to get more complete understanding of whether article marketing still has value post-Panda update, we also need to consider what it this technique was originally intended to do.

Article directories were never meant to be backlink repositories for over-eager website owners who spat out 350 words of junk content simply to earn the link juice back from high PR sites. Instead, they were meant to be places where information could be exchanged – where website owners could pick up content from expert authors to share with their readers and their lists.

Basically, in an ideal world, the sharing of articles should be a mutually-beneficial arrangement that helps both authors and website owners – not the one-sided system we’ve come to know today.

“So what a true SEO article marketing specialist should be doing is hand crafting – writing without the aid of software – legitimate articles that are intended for one and only one Website. You can submit these articles as guest posts on blogs, guest editorials on news sites, featured white papers on business sites – you can put them on many different types of sites. They’re not necessarily “SEO friendly” sites but they are good sites. Michael Martinez – SEO Theory“

So instead of lamenting that article marketing is dead, we simply need to acknowledge that it’s changed. In order to get the biggest possible benefits from article marketing, we need to return to type of exchanges it was initially intended for. For example, consider the following ways that you can take advantage of the benefits of article marketing, while still meeting Google’s quality criteria.

• Submit your articles as guest posts, rather than to article directories.

Offering your articles as guest posts to other bloggers offers a number of different advantages. First of all, if you choose a good authority blog for your guest post, you aren’t just getting the link juice that comes from posting on a reputable site. You’re also likely getting traffic from the post and increasing your own perceived authority (another important factor post-Panda).

Of course, to get the most possible benefit out of this strategy, you’ll want to be sure the sites you’re choosing to submit your guest posts to are true authority sites. So before contact site owners to see if they’re interested in your content, be sure to check the PageRank of the site (should be at least PR2), the Alexa traffic ranking (under 100,000 is ideal) and the number of email or RSS subscribers (if listed on the site).

• Submit your articles to newsletter or ezine owners.

Although ezines might sound a little out of date, there are still plenty of website owners who put out digests of helpful content week after week. And, in most cases, these writers and editors struggle – week after week – to sift through all of the junk content that’s been published online to find the “needle in the haystack” content that will genuinely help their readership.

For this reason, approaching these newsletter owners with your custom content often makes much more sense than simply publishing it to a spammy directory. Sure, your article won’t be published online (so you won’t get the benefit of a relevant backlink), but instead, it will be sent directly to the inboxes of all the people who have subscribed to the newsletter. That’s every bit as powerful as having your article published to a traditional website.

Locating sources to submit your unique articles to isn’t difficult – simply search Google for niche keywords combined with “submit article”, “guest blog” or “guest post” and you should be able to come up with a list of authority sites that accept content submissions. Again, for the biggest possible benefit, the sites you choose to target should come with high traffic, high PR and plenty of readers to check out your unique content.

Yes, it’s more time consuming to do article marketing this way, but ultimately – when you consider the benefit of not being subject to Google slaps, as well as the significant traffic you can generate this way – I think you’ll find that article marketing isn’t just “still alive”, it’s alive, thriving and ready to benefit you and your website.