How To Use Article Marketing To Improve SEO And Drive More Traffic

What Is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is content marketing that involves writing and distributing articles across various outlets.

These articles are designed to promote the author’s business or website via backlinks created, authority built, and visibility gained.

 

How Article Marketing Helps SEO

Article marketing involves the creation of valuable, informative content to be read by users online.

When users search for a specific topic, they’re taken to the top-ranking web pages and blog posts related to that topic.

This means that website owners can publish their article content, optimise it for search engines, and rank in Google Search for various topics.

Do the optimisation right and you can drive dozens to even thousands of users to your website with your articles.

 

SEO Benefits Of Article Marketing

Article marketing offers many benefits when it comes to SEO, 

These include:

• Increasing the authority and trustworthiness of your website.
• Providing opportunities to rank in image or video search.
• Converting users into subscribers or customers.
• Directing authority to other pages on your site via internal links.
• Attracting more organic traffic from search engines.
• Attracting valuable backlinks to your site from other websites and blogs
• Enabling your website to rank for a broader range of keywords.

Can Article Marketing Work On Other Channels?

Article marketing is not only a strategy for SEO; it can also empower you to generate traffic through a wide range of social, direct, or referral channels.

For example, with article marketing, you can drive traffic from:

• Twitter.
• YouTube.
• Other blogs
• LinkedIn.
• Email campaigns.
• Paid campaigns.
• Facebook.

Benefits Of Multi-channel Article Marketing

Taking a multi-channel approach to your article marketing is the most innovative way to get the most.

If you are going to put time and money into creating content, why not use it to attract visitors from various platforms?

   Here are a few benefits of article marketing on other platforms:

• You can generate organic traffic to your site and referral traffic from various sources.
• You get multiple opportunities to convert visitors into subscribers or paying customers.
• You can re-share your articles to Pinterest, third-party sites, Medium.com, etc.
• You can increase user engagement and interaction on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

How To Write, Publish And Share Great Article Content

Article marketing is made easy when you establish a go-to process that fits your business and the users you are trying to reach. This process can look a bit different from website to website, but the general steps follow.

 

1. Choose Your Topic

Brainstorm a list of different topics that will be of interest to your audience. Whether you are a blogger, a business owner, a marketer, or something in between, you’re likely sitting on several topics if you give yourself the chance to think.

For example, if you are a freelance graphic designer, you can believe that your target audience is interested in all things digital design.

They may want to know:

• How to design a logo.
• What are the best tools for graphic design?
• What are the best fonts for business flyers?
• How much does graphic design cost?
• What are the most outstanding designs of this year?

2. Conduct Keyword Research

Coming up with exciting article topics is good, but mapping them to searchable keywords is even better.  What’s the use in writing an article if no one is looking for the topic you are writing about?

Keyword research tools like Semrush will allow you to look up a range of broad topics and see how many people search for that word every month.

This search volume is a good indication of whether it’s worthwhile to write the article for SEO purposes.

Another factor to consider is competition level. You might find a high-volume keyword, but it’s too competitive for your site.

In that case, it’s best to aim for a less competitive topic and then go after more competitor keywords over time.

 

3. Draft Your Article

Writing your article may be the best or most complicated, depending on your writing experience.

One of the options is to hire an SEO writer to ensure your content is informative and optimised. You can certainly write your content yourself.

If you are going the DIY route, we highly recommend the Inverted Pyramid Method of SEO copywriting; this is an easy-to-follow structure for writing an article from start to finish.

This method will help you lead with value and write content users enjoy reading.

 

4. Optimise Your Content

Next, you’ll want to optimise your content.

This involves:

• Including a descriptive meta description.
• Including concise H2 and H3 headings.
• Writing valuable body content.
• Adding internal and external links.
• Writing a click-worthy, keyword-optimized title tag.
• Using an optimised URL structure.
• Adding an interesting H1 headline.

Ticking all of the boxes in terms of on-page SEO will help set your article up, helping make it easier to rank high in the search results and drive traffic from Google.

5. Add Media

Once you have the bulk of the article content, it’s time to get creative.

You can now add media to engage users and improve your chances of ranking in image or video searches.

Some media types to add to your article include:

• Pre-recorded videos.
• Graphic designs.
• Gifs.
• Surveys.
• Digital tools.
• Infographics.
• PDFs.

6. Establish A Sharing Strategy

Before you publish, think about all the channels you can share your article to to maximize your reach.

Many CMS platforms make this easy by including social share icons when publishing an article.

Similarly, third-party tools like Buffer allow you to share your article to Facebook, Twitter, and beyond automatically.

Whether you go auto or take the manual route, share your article far and wide to reach as many users as possible.

 

7. Include Linkable Assets

One of the most important pillars of SEO is backlinks. Backlinks direct authority to your site, which causes search engines to essentially “trust” your site as a respected source of information.

Adding “linkable assets” to your article can help attract links backto your site. Some linkable assets might include videos, infographics, free tools, resource guides, images, etc. 

 

8. Get (Re)published!

It’s one thing to publish your content on your blog, and another to get it posted on other websites. You may have to “pitch” your content to other publishers to broaden your reach.

Another option is to reach out to industry websites directly to ask about posting opportunities. Finally, social blogging sites like medium.com allow you to publish content for free and link out to your site.

 

9. Interact, Engage, And Follow Up

Rather than wait for the traffic to drizzle in, you can double-down on your marketing by engaging with users when they interact with your content.

This can look like this:

• Replying to your blog post comments.
• Liking and commenting on re-shares on Twitter.
• Responding to comments on Facebook.
• Follow up with new subscribers to your email list.
• Respond to people who reply to your email campaigns.
• Retargeting readers with Facebook Ads

You can re-share your content repeatedly, giving your article new life. That way, you can drive traffic for months or even years.

 

Get Creative With Article Marketing

Is article marketing part of your content strategy? It should be!

Every blog post should be an opportunity to attract more traffic, subscribers, and a range of platforms. Don’t let your blog go to waste!

Another pro tip? Ask your audience what topics they are interested in and add these to your queue.

You can start a running list of article ideas to tap into to keep the traffic flowing.

 

Are you ready to smash it online?

Euphoric is an SEO agency based in West Sussex.

If you want to find out how we can help you with your SEO and content marketing strategies, we would love to learn about your next project.

We’ve been smashing it for our clients and achieved significant increases in rankings and traffic through our SEO strategies, and we would love to do the same for you!