Are Articles still the best free SEO and traffic driving source

Using articles to drive traffic has been used by internet marketers for decades. A good article that ranks high in the search engines can bring you an unlimited source of traffic and the fact that it is free is just one of the benefits. Forget expensive PPC advertising you are better of spending time writing informative articles that will be hanging around the internet for years. Articles that contain your links are also a good source of backlinks to rank your website higher in the search engines.

Tips:
Write informative captivating content with no self promotion in the body of the article.
Write your resource box as a third person and use keywords as your links.
Only write unique content NO copying.
Include keywords or phrases in the article related to your website.

Share your article success stories - what is the highest ranked article you have had for the largest amount of keyword search results and how long has it been bringing you quality traffic. Don't be shy lets boast a little

The best article I ever wrote as far as getting traffic for me was on Government Tax Rebate Checks. It has gotten over 40,000 hits - only bad part is, I never monetized it.

It was one of those things where I thought , "Oh what the heck, I am going to throw it out there."

I wrote it a few years ago when tax rebate checks were a hot subject. It rose to the top within days and stayed there for about 2 years and it is still on page one.


I have discovered long tail keywords work best to get to the top of google.

Alot of article sites surround the article page with so many ad spots that can pull the reader away. So are they the best way to get a good seo rank still. Yes, but I defer to a good forum. A good forum thread post will get you some great seo rankings with a repeatable forum.

Google, and others, loves forums and people love to read up on the discussion of things. They are similar to blogs, the birth of blogs if you think about it.

I'm sure any forum owner wouldn't mind such unique posting in their forum and you can follow up and add to the thread, some thing you can't do with an article.

One draw back is a limitation on your signature thread but this can be great when you are focused in one area. Forums are such a great place for a very targeted audience and permanent internet presence.

I teach all new marketers in my business to seize upon forum commenting/marketing more than anything first and foremost when it comes to free marketing, especially since they have served the growth and expansion of my business well.

I am always reluctant to label any particular marketing method as "the best" because there are too many uncontrollable factors that could influence your results on any given day.

Having said that though, I give article marketing very high marks for delivering targeted traffic at practically no cost, for a very long time after publication.

Example: My best performing article in EzineArticles in May 2010 was written and published all the way back in October 2007.

The cumulative impact of hundreds or thousands of articles can be a big force in delivering solid continuous traffic.

FreeCashMan: A good forum thread post will get you some great seo rankings with a reputable forum.
That's true. In addition to that, the traffic you get is perhaps the best qualified since there is a common interest. The quantity of traffic may not necessarily be as high as in the "open" market, but the conversion rate is usually significantly higher.

That's because the poster has already established a trust factor, reputation, credibility and influence in the forum community which works to his/her benefit.

Hermas

There are of course other ways to monetise from your posts by using sites like squidoo and more recently hubpages which seems to get good rankings. As for posting in forums, I agree another excellent way to market but what you have to ask yourself is how many signatures do you click on, for me it is not many.. they really have to have something interesting and worth while to contribute. The back link factor with forums I am not to sure or experienced with but I have heard that posting in education forums is the best way to get very high quality back links.

Articles can be huge yes, we often have aritcles published by professional magazine companies and such that are featuring our business, and those because they are published on already high traffic/ranking sites are priceless because just like was mentioned, they are there forever practically! I've used our blog mainly to publish some articles and shared them on forums and such and that has helped, haven't submitted to a site like Ezine yet, though am going to try that this year! Posting on related forums and blogs has been one of the best forms of free advertising for us, and I try to do it in a non-promotional way, only including my link in the signature, and maybe name/e-mail/phone number for credits. People don't mind this if you post quality content I've found. Once we had some magnificent pictures of an airborne 800 lb shark, that picture went viral and my posts still rank high for some of those keywords from so many people linking to it, and 2 years later it is still a very popular page on my blog content! Yes forum, blog posting, and article writing is great and free, though can be time consuming, I've almost been doing it non stop the last couple months in my off time so that's not great, though the results speak for themselves as we've jumped up to the 1st page on many keywords we were previously on the 3rd page and under for!

I've just now started using article marketing. Any advice or other info you post on this forum is greatly appreciated. Is there one place online that is better to submit your articles to than others?

pplrulz: Is there one place online that is better to submit your articles to than others?
ezinearticles.com is the best in my opinion as they are manually approved. So while you wait for your article to be approved there, change the title and submit it to a few other places such as goarticles.com and articlesbase.com

Although I use a variety of traffic sources to generate targeted traffic, I can say that article marketing is one of my favorite methods overall.

As long as you don't have problems creating content, it's a goldmine. Research keywords and competition carefully and you'll benefit even more.

Article Writing is one of the best methods for creating backlinks. You just have to remember the following.

Page Rank Doesn't Matter
High Quality Sites Generate High Quality backlinks

Also remember that Google is preparing to slap content farms with large amounts of duplicate content.

"Article Writing is one of the best methods for creating backlinks. You just have to remember the following.

Page Rank Doesn't Matter
High Quality Sites Generate High Quality backlinks
"

.... and to add to ThisIsOli's list.......

Just Keep Writing - think of every article as a brick in your empire. Building it is slow and tedious, but boy the end result is worth it!

Article marketing is my main source and yes it is like adding a brick. It takes a lot of work, true, but it's effective. You won't get rich I doubt with just a few articles, it takes a lot, in the thousands I would guess, though I could be wrong here.

I have one article that has stayed withing the first 3 spots in google for over a year now, usually at number 1 for a very specific key word. Not sure how I did that, as I was very very green at the time. Funny thing now, I have two affiliate programs that I interchange the link too. The own of one of these programs will email me if I take his link out, but really I am just testing to see which has the higher conversion, but he sure notices.

robinincarolina: I have two affiliate programs that I interchange the link too. The own of one of these programs will email me if I take his link out, but really I am just testing to see which has the higher conversion, but he sure notices.
Ha Ha, those darned affiliate managers don't give a flip about you untill you start making them some serious coin.

my bro started doing $300 per day on one campain and all of a sudden he gets a call from his aff manager asking about what could he do to help him better?

its funny, but now he is in a position to make demands, like bumping up his pay rate, e.t.c

You can't beat article marketing really when it comes to driving hoards of fresh new visitors to your website.

A well written 100% unique keyword rich article can bring you traffic for months, if not years to come.

Submitting your article to as many of the top article directories as possible will certainly go a long way to gaining lots more traffic.

The best way to do this, is to write an informative article on your websites subject/niche, and then alter it as much as you can for each submission.

Make it as unique as possible and google will position it well for you every time.

I would like to add the following advice: Be careful to use EzineArticles.com or Articlesbase.com for SEO purposes.

This directories are including a lot of Google's ads in your articles and this might not help you when it comes to ranking higher in the search engines.

I've done some testing with this and I personally prefer directories that more private.

For raw traffic purposes I do think they can help you. People looing for info might get there and find your article...Also, other sites (blogs for example) might pick up your article and post them in their site. That's free traffic for you.

PM if you're into network marketing/mlm and I would be more than happy to let you know which ads free directory I use to build backlinks to my main site.

Yes, Articles are the best way to drive traffic to your site and its free that is beneficial thing...

Articles still work but now they have to be unique quality articles. If your articles are good then it will be shared and liked thus giving you somewhat of a viral effect for your site and plus giving you a backlink to your site. Id rather have 5-10 good quality articles than 100 so -so articles that doesn't help the user what he is searching for..

These days people tend to focus on "content marketing" for drawing traffic. Those can be videos, memes, guest posts, blog posts, articles, infographics - you name it. Back in the day it was separated into article marketing, video marketing, niche marketing, etc.

Email marketing, solo ads, ezines, attraction marketing still work very well, but they're pretty much old school now. They're not as "hip" as content marketing is today. Social media has pretty much changed the game, making it easy to share and spread content.

Businesses, especially big businesses, want to brand themselves, so they're plugging into social media. That's where everyone is at: Facebook, Twitter, Buzzfeed, Pinterest, etc. Where people gather, that's where businesses swarm to.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” ​

- Shakespeare / Romeo & Juliet​

Every few generations, it seems that society and marketers invent language and guises to relabel everyday things and conditions. These new descriptions only serve to dilute or soften our perspective of the thing or condition, but the actual thing or condition remains the same.

Here are some examples to illustrate what I mean:​

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- a deaf or blind person is said to be hearing or visually impaired.
- used cars are marketed today as previously owned vehicles.
- drug addiction is referred to as substance abuse.
- soap operas have become daytime dramas.
- old people have matured into senior citizens.​

- shell shock has been renamed post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)​

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Notice! In each example, the thing or condition isn't altered one bit, only the way we are conditioned to perceive it through the new label. Get my point?

In the "old" days of article, video and niche marketing, content ruled the roost. Remember the expression "content is king" that pre-dated the social media/web 2.0 craze of today? Well, in my opinion, content has always been relevant, still is, and that fact has never changed.

What has changed are the number of methods and guises that are available today for us to showcase and distribute that content. The new social media platforms have introduced fresh meanings for words such as "like", "tweet", "share", "stumble" and so on. It's all designed to keep us engaged, while providing a way for us to get our content "pollinated".​

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But that content has still got to be strong and valuable for us to extract maximum gains. If it is weak and inferior, we'll eventually be exposed and our business will wither and die. In short, our content must still rule!​

When we become sufficiently insightful to recognize and ignore the distraction that euphemistic language and alternative media methods can create, we'll observe that the core truths never change, and we'll appreciate that there is truly "nothing new under the sun".

Hermas

Articles are still good, but as far as SEO goes, the best way to do SEO nowadays is to share your content on social media and make it go viral, then acquire backlinks naturally. Articles are still pretty good for traffic, but social media is much better!