Promoting websites with articles

Promoting websites with articles can be a very efficient way to increase your online visibility, but it has some pitfalls you should be aware of.

As most online marketers and SEO specialists know, the number of links pointing to your website from other related websites has a direct impact on the success of your online marketing efforts. It is now common that search engines use algorithms that give an edge to websites with high quality links leading to their website. The search engine industry leaders; Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves, are all using such algorithms. Taking this into consideration, it is a common reflex for online marketers to think about promoting their website with articles. As you notice, I had the same reaction. So what is the problem then? It seems logical to think that writing articles related to your activities and publishing them on the web through various article directories would help you get some links leading to your website but there are actually some pitfalls you can avoid.

Get your web page indexed first!
This is a highly recommended practice when it comes to promoting websites with articles. Website owners and online marketers are in hurry to publish their newly written article, to see their search engine ranking improve. Take a deep breath; wait until the web page where your article is located gets indexed by major search engines, before sharing your article with others. The reason behind this is that some websites and e-zines will publish your article on their website and submit it to a paid for inclusion services. Some websites with high Page Rank can even have a page indexed in Google within a few days without even submitting it! As a result, they will get a content page with your article showing in major search engines within a few days. Many of them will do it without linking back to you! Not only that you will loose quality links leading to your website, but in the process search engine robots might consider the article posted on your own website as a duplicate when crawling it. Such a thing could penalize the content page located on your website and make it rank lower in search engine results. Can you imagine loosing all those great keywords you had in your article?

Add notes about the author:
When promoting websites with articles, make sure you add notes about the author, copyrights, and reproduction guidelines. You should specify that people using your article need to link back to your website, and publish information about the author.

Conclusion:
Promoting websites with articles can indeed, play a major role in your internet marketing campaign. Just make sure you are identified as the origin of the article and it will only improve your chances of success.

Important

© Copyright Netmar Solutions 2004. All rights reserved.

This article may be reproduced in whole or in part provided that the reproduction includes a credit of authorship to "Frank Levert, Netmar Solutions", plus a crawlable link to either http://www.netmarsolutions.com or to the original article on this website.

NETMAR SOLUTIONS, your marketing solutions specialist!