SEO Ghostwriting

There’s a good chance that much of your article promotion efforts are a waste of time. Why? Your articles will be indexed only to a limited extent. Through the past year, I’ve been experimenting with many different approaches, including quadruple content and title rewriting, experiments with JetSpinner, mass submission, submitting different material to various directory types and playing with the time of submission. Here’s what I found:

• Google and other SE’s will index the same article 4-5 times, if submitted in a close timeframe (same day/week).
• Date of acceptance (ie. where was it published first) matters more than the PageRank of individual sites.
• Articledashboard clones are close to worthless.
• Google duplicate content checks use checksum algorithms rather than DupeFree Pro style word-order and phrasing comparison (my theory, and it makes sense as it’s a faster and less complicated way)
• All the fuss about mass submission? Funny.

What does it mean for you? A couple resulting tips and pointers:

• Write (or have it written for you) quality content first and foremost.
• Submit your content to the 5 top ranking article directories and prefer those who give you more options for anchor text links, bio’s and which have a better hierarchy (ie. less subfolders).
• Using DupeFree Pro a lot is a waste of time. Use it only for the purposes of rewriting for mass submission.
• If you want to write alternate versions, write an article with 2x the content (more tips, more insight) and split it in two. Submit these entirely different versions to different sites. It’s actually all about the content, so don’t just rephrase the same thing.
• Using JetSpinner and alike will not give you much, unless you’re in an extremely competetive and spammy field such as gambling, viagra or “instant quote insurance no medical”. Efficient but not effective.
• Use mass submission as infrequently as possible, which means once in a month maximum. It’s really not worth that much of your time - I’d suggest you automate the entire process, and you’ll still get only limited results due to the reasons mentioned in the second bullet point of this article.
• If you can, don’t submit all of your articles the same day.
• NEVER EVER use submission software (huge waste of money and time).
• Instead of wasting your time with article submission tricks, focus on building quality content which others will promote for you naturally. There are many other fronts of online promotion which yield better results, such as building expert status by getting featured on blogs, via interviews and promoting multimedia content (the last one is a BIG one).

How much time have you wasted this week? Next time, don’t.

A lot of people tend to think that white hat SEO and site promotion is alike to selling air. They argue that all these companies are doing is selling overpriced web design and using the same simple promotional tactics as everyone else. No wonder that there’s a tendency to opt for the cheapest rates possible and hope for the best. Unfortunately, as the old time cliche goes, “you get what you pay for”, and many people are surprised that the results aren’t showing any dramatic increase in the rankings even after a few months of “work”. There are several caveats of using cheap SEO services, promising many links for ridiculous prices:

• Promotional strategies used by these companies are following a one-size-fits-all policy.
• Backlinks obtained from cheap SEO services usually come from non-related sites, especially with very low pagerank scores (spam sites, automated article directories). These links have little or no value, and it’s best to put minimal effort into them if any. While they might increase short term rankings, there’s a good chance that the sites will get banned, devaluated or abandoned, rendering any links useless and potentially even hurting your site.
• Low quality PLR articles linked to your site will create a cheap impression in the eyes of your customers.
• There is no effort or thought put into these services.

People spend a lot of time on the web. Luckily for online business owners, it definitely looks like they’re not going to give up on this habit anytime soon. Keeping this in mind, there are a few key strategies that you should be implementing in your marketing plan to get the most of the new possibilities.

1. Go where the party is - Target your promotion to places, where they have a lot of returning visitors. It’s worthless creating a presence if people just stop by once or never. The best way usually is to find it out the very easiest way - talk to your customers, friends and pay attention to what’s happening out there in the real world. The people who are most likely to buy from you are those, who would buy similar items in a regular store out there. Think of it as allowing them to make the same decision easier online.
2. Create a good foundation - Before you start promoting your products on Web 2.0 sites, make sure you understand the environment. What group of people is the site targeting? How often do they visit? What are they looking for? Why are they coming back? When you have these questions figured out, adjust your strategy and create your profile accordingly.
3. Be sneaky but natural - The trick is to make the folks think of you as a friend, and take your business as a natural part of yourself. Create a visually interesting page with tons of good information and good links.
4. Don’t interrupt - Don’t be obvious by interrupting people and making your profile look as a sales letter. Sure it works to a degree, but would you like to convert 3% of your leads or only 0,3%? Instead of scaring the potential customer away, put something interesting there and make them come back from time to time.
5. Market a topic instead of yourself - Trying to sell yourself when you’re not known enough is very, very cheesy. The way to do it is to create a related topic which will lead to a lot of natural chit-chat on the web and hopefully in the real world as well. In fact, the more controversial the topic, the better. You need to create a wave big enough so that the aftermath can be felt a long time after the initial excitement is gone. It’s easier to fuel the fire once you have started it.
6. Don’t try to sell meat to vegetarians - Although this mistake is luckily not that common anymore, there’s still someone odd here and there that is trying very hard to convince people who are naturally inclined against your product or service. You’re way better off just cleverly delivering the final convincing touch to those, who are already looking for something similar.
7. Hit it from every angle - Many people think in a very limited way on the web and don’t use it’s promotional capabilities to the fullest extent. The best is to try everything and be everywhere. Use text, photo, audio, video and interactive formats which will allow you to quadruple the fronts for your potential target base. Google widget Ads is a very good example of what’s possible out there.
8. Balance - Think long term. If you carefully balance everything, you’re maximising your potential success. It’s good to start with a big thud, but you better follow up. Don’t be another one-hit wonder when you can be the star of the decade.
9. Keep track - As obvious as it is, it’s important to keep track so you can measure your success and adjust your strategy accordingly. How many people visited? Did they ever return? Did they order? Where did they come from? Do you have their e-mail adress?
10. Capitalize on experience - The longer you’re in the game, the more authority and respect you can gain. Use your data to your advantage.