Continued from page 1
Article topics should also be interesting. If a website is focused on a specific subject, an article about an interesting element of that subject will be syndicated more than a general article. For example, there may be hundreds of available articles about mortgage refinancing, but how many articles focus on ways financial advisors will try to manipulate someone seeking to refinance?
4) Stay Organized
Time should be taken when finding article sites to submit to. There are many Web sites that have large lists of article sites that accept submissions. A good technique is to submit articles to all of
article sites in a list and check later to see if those articles have been syndicated. Searching for title of article submitted in quotations on Google will show where exactly it has been reprinted. Backlink searches on MSN and Yahoo! can also be helpful. Building a solid list of verified article sites can help maximize article syndication and also time efficiency.
Some article sites only accept submissions via e-mail. Some SEOs shy away from e-mailing articles because it is more time consuming and often involves creation of a biography and picture submission. E-mail submission article sites however are often more inclined to only reprint articles of high quality, and thus these types of sites' articles are often widely syndicated.
5) Write a Killer Resource Box
The heart and soul of a syndicated article is its resource box. The anchor text and link destination of links in articles should be varied. Varying anchor text will help avoid penalties in search engine rankings and create higher-value links. Often changing resource box after submitting to each site proves beneficial. An article about dogs with anchor text "dogs" should be varied with anchor text like "puppies" for other article submissions. Using technology such as latent semantic analysis, search engines will notice "dog" and "puppy" as related words, but will not penalize site for having unnatural links (e.g., if all of links used "dog" as anchor text). This same effect can be achieved by varying link target. Linking first half of article submissions to page A, and second half to page B will avoid penalties from search engines like Google. Articles are a proven way to get links, but if a new site suddenly acquires 100 links to same place in a short time, search engines might penalize it.
Article submission is a great way to get high quality links from topically related sites. The more effort and care given to an article that is submitted, more syndication potential an article has. Compelling titles, high-quality content, and interesting topics will all improve syndication of an article. Varying backlink text and destinations can also help avoid heavy penalties from search engines. Some SEOs believe that only traditional directory submissions and link swapping are effective methods of building links. I, however, am a firm believer in power of a well-written article to deliver a large number of topically related links to any fledgling site.
Scott Hawksworth works as a link popularity campaign manager for Andy Hagans Link Building.
