It's stunning sometimes how far article marketing has come
over the last few years as an effective means of promoting
business through educational articles. But precisely because
it is so useful to online business, it is getting perverted by
overzealous marketers. Some are using software that "Blasts
your Article to 10,000 ezine publishers!" and others are simply
SEO copywriters who write horrible so-called articles
disguised as keyword lists parroting repetitive keyword
phrases 15 to 20 times in a 700 word article. Some submit
their article perversions for their clients or even to benefit
their own AdSense filled sites.
Other article marketing perversions include a sort of
"advertorial" article, clearly written by copywriters, purely
for promotion of client interests, in deceptive testimonial
form to sell a service, software or product and gain links to
client sites. Some using this technique loudly proclaim a
service as though they just discovered it themselves when a
simple search for their name beside the product they recently
"discovered" shows that they have been hired wordsmiths for
the newly "discovered" company for several years.
Further web content and article marketing perversions include
the submission of press releases disguised as articles by
clueless PR people who have little to no understanding of
article marketing. They submit their client releases to
article distribution services and article archives mindlessly
without even attempting to change the distinctive form of a
press release into something resembling an educational
article. They even include the outdated -30- or ### which
signifies the end of a press release.
As an online marketer myself, I've written and distributed
press releases through appropriate PR forums such as PRWeb and
the like for clients. They are used as one means of gaining
visibility and exposure for online businesses. Sometimes we do
rewrite them as articles and distribute those through article
distribution channels if they can actually be adapted to a
semi-instructional or entertaining form of web content. The
standard journalistic five W's are entirely out of place in
article marketing. The factual reporting must be converted to
an educational "how-to" format or a form of instructional and
entertaining short article.
Next among web content clueless come the newbies who have been
told that article marketing is useful for gaining links. Often
these newbies will include a half dozen of their own URL's
without the http:// portion - unaware that web content
management software will NOT turn those web addresses into
clickable links and losing the value of those links wherever
the do manage to get published. These dummies fill the article
with links to their own sites and affiliate program or
ad-tracking redirect links, very nearly turning the article
into a directory menu of their own site in the hopes of
gaining multiple links from a single article.
Just one thing stands in the way of that silly expectation of
easy link popularity - NOBODY will publish the article except
those worthless AdSense filled automated sites which blindly
publish EVERYTHING distributed through some freebie article
distribution lists. Those links will do the author very little
good coming from worthless, poorly ranked sites. That is if
the distribution list will even publish that type of blatantly
self serving article. Most article sites refuse to accept and
distribute articles with self-referencing links within the
article body and say so clearly in their guidelines for
submission.
But then - Keyword Parrots, PR shills and linking fanatics
don't read web content article submission guidelines.
Copyright © August 12, 2005
Mike Banks Valentine operates http://Publish101.com
Free Web Content Distribution for Article Marketers and
Provides content aggregation, press release optimization
and custom web content for Search Engine Positioning
http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm
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