I feel as if I’m getting a little better at picking keywords lately, but I know I still need more practice. The good news is that a lot of my new sites have appeared on page 1 without any work as soon as I put them up. But, and this could be a sign that my keyword research still isn’t great, I seem to need to give them a kickstart before they move up slightly and get some traffic.
Basic Ways to Kickstart the Site
I’ll start with the basic things I do, because they’re so easy. I have products from Incansoft that can submit to RSS feed directories automatically, can social bookmark and also submit to web directories. This software is not perfect, far from it, many of the submissions fail – but it’s cheap and it’s automated so I start with this. Sometimes I get a little social networking traffic but I don’t normally notice the effects straight away.
My Article Marketing Plan
I find that this first batch of article marketing does make a real difference to sites that are indexed but not yet getting much traffic. The traffic usually starts straight away (of course, I get more traffic for some sites than others). I’ve never been good at separating the different marketing I do to show clear results, but recently I’ve become pretty much sure that this two step plan works to kick-start the site:
- I go to Ezine Articles and search for an article in my niche. I scroll down to the end of the article and take a look at the most viewed articles in that category in the last 60 days. I pick a similar topic to write my own article on.
- Then I spin this article for Unique Article Wizard (I do this ‘manually’ though I do have Magic Article Rewriter which is great if I need it spun more times). I don’t really care about using a keyword in the UAW article, since I don’t expect the articles themselves to rank – I care about the keywords I use in my anchor text. One anchor text link includes my main site keyword, and the other links to another page/ post.
(Sometimes I do this the other way round i.e. write for UAW first then submit the “spun” version through Ezine Articles. Both methods are fine under the terms as long as they’re under the same pen name).
I’ve really noticed traffic starting to come in and rankings building as a result of these steps, so I’m planning to do this for each new site I set up (unless it ranks perfectly well on it’s own). Unique Article Wizard doesn’t come cheap, so I try to subsidise the cost by selling article submissions, but hopefully this new tactic will also help me make the most out of it.
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Excellent tip with checking out the views on the other articles. I’m going to steal that one. I have some articles but I’m having trouble getting people to click through to my site. This is something I need to work on.
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Motivated As Hell – The Review =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Mike – To be honest with you I have the same problem. In the past, Ezine Articles always got me lots of clicks and views in the first day of publishing, but now some articles barely get any views at all. For some niches it really works, though. It’s hit and miss. For my resource box, I usually try to play on a fear or worry like that I will answer in my link. In some niches this works very well.
Well I had 6 pages ranked this morning which is cool. Guess it just needed a few days.
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Don’t Obsess Over Stats =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Mike – Yeah it takes a little while. For my sites to get indexed can sometimes take a week, then after that have to wait a while longer to see the effect of my Ezine Article/ UAW on the ranking but I find it gives it quite a quick boost
Well now that its indexed I can submit to ezine. I’m going to try some tricks to get people to click through. Maybe offer something for free.
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Don’t Obsess Over Stats =-.
Hey Ruth,
I have not used Ezine for a while but starting again today to push up some old posts that i want to rank on my frugal site…. As for UAW, I have not tried that yet, nor have I ever actually spun an article.
.-= Forest´s last blog ..Haven’t Bought A Mother’s Day Gift Yet? Don’t Get One!! =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Forest – Hopefully Ezine will work well to push up your posts, like I said in the comment above I find it can be hit and miss these days for traffic but you do get the backlinks. With UAW, it’s not really “spinning”, it’s just rewriting the whole thing in a certain format a certain number of times. I’m not allowed to say exactly as they have a non-disclosure policy, but yeah it doesn’t make use of real spinning.
Hey Ruth,
Thanks for the little insight into UAW
.
I’m mainly concerned about the backlinks and will be writing some nice interesting articles not too pushing on the keyword front, although I may use some of my keywords in the titles…
.-= Forest´s last blog ..Haven’t Bought A Mother’s Day Gift Yet? Don’t Get One!! =-.
Hi Ruth,
Thanks for sharing with us your method getting sites rank. Now a day I stop submitting to Ezine. Firstly it’s pain in the bxxx to wait for it to be approved. Secondly, it’s kind of easily for others to spot your network of sites. Who knows what will my competitors do to my sites?
A couple of questions though. Do you use any aided tool like MNF in selecting the keywords? Would care to share with us your criteria in selecting keywords? I used to have rather good hit rate, lately it seems getting KW that can make money rank had been tougher.
Cheers
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Tinman – Thanks for visiting
Yes I understand your problem with EZA. Thankfully my account got upgraded so my approvals usually take less than 24 hours these days. As for people being able to see all your sites, I use different pen names to prevent that happening.
Your MNF question – do you mean using it to select keywords for my article marketing? Well, the method above I don’t actually bother, I just write on a “Hot” topic found on EZA – and for UAW I’m more interested in the backlinks than actually using keywords within the article itself. But yes sometimes I do pick keywords for my article marketing promotions. To be honest, I am quite lazy with it and not very strict. I just go for green SOC keywords that have hopefully a couple of thousand exact searches.
For my domains etc I am much more picky with keywords. I don’t take SOC at face value. Instead I go to Google page 1, check all the page ranks. I look to see if there are maybe three or so PR -, 0 or 1, and then check if they have few backlinks. If I want to build a very small “micro niche” I will be very strict and opt for very low page rank competition only. But if I know I’m going to put a bit more effort into the site, I will take on slightly higher PR. I’ll also check what kind of sites they are (e.g. small niche sites, shopping sites vs sites like Wikipedia which I don’t want to compete with)
I am a bit nervous about posting my keyword research strategy as it’s not fully developed yet. I’ve made some mistakes in keyword research but I do feel like I’m getting better. Once I get more confident that I’m not completely wrong I’ll do a better post about it.
Nice tips! I guess I had swayed a bit in my kw research. After able to get rank easily, I become unknowingly over confident and went for tougher kw thinking I might able to rank as easy.
I will be looking forward for your keyword research strategy post then. Cheers!
.-= Tinman´s last blog ..Day 36 – Status Update On My Backlink Experiment =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Tinman – Yeah I have realised sometimes I’m just not strict enough with my keyword research. If you’ve got a method that can get your sites ranking well straight away I say stick to that!
You write/submit an individual article to promote each individual blog post?
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..I Need MORE Aweber USER Affiliates! =-.
That’s what I’ve always done in the past. I have started submitting to the article directories with my new blog though.
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Don’t Obsess Over Stats =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Dennis – I only write one article that promotes the main site URL. Then I just pick a random blog post or page for my second link in the article resource box. Depending on how the site does, I may write and submit more articles for each of the blog posts later on. UAW is useful for this since you can have different resource boxes/ different links in one submission.
Lots of articles that is…Yoda.
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..A TRUE Make Money Online blog – Part 2 – Choose My Domain Name =-.
Looks like a solid plan!
Don’t worry about the failure rate of SocialBot and Co. by the way. Even the most expensive and high-end submission tools tend to have around 50% failure rate, if they are fully automatic.
As long as it’s automatic and high-volume, that doesn’t really matter.
Cheers,
Shane
.-= Shane´s last blog ..Market Samurai vs. Keyword Blueprint vs. Keyword Elite 2.0 =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Shane – Thanks, that really does make me feel like SocialBot etc is even better value. And you’re right, they are automatic so still save so much time.
Ruth,
I do check out existing, related, popular articles at Ezine Articles to see what’s the best strategy.
Are you saying you do that and then take the author’s work, spin it, and then post it for yourself?
.-= Moon Hussain´s last blog ..Fun Friday Round-Up: Best PI/PF Posts of the Week =-.
Twitter: webcareergirl
says:
Moon – No that’s not what I meant. All I do is use it as an idea to see what’s “hot” on Ezine Articles and write my own article in a similar hot topic.
Nice method.I use the same tricks myself