Content, and how to use it

Content is still king, and using articles and stories judiciously can really boost your web presence. CHRIS THOMAS

By Chris Thomas

Last week I spoke at the Search Engine Bootcamp about link building techniques; why link building is important and where to get them.

So, yes, it was a little on the dry side.

I’ve blogged quite extensively about link building before, but I never discussed the benefits of creating articles (or using someone else’s).

Probably the biggest “article” website is ezinearticles.com. They have thousands of articles on the site published by an army of content producers (or article writers). There are articles on everything from promotional mouse mats for employees to Wiggles cooking tips!

There are two ways you can leverage the world of free articles.

1. Become a contributor.
2. Publish articles on your site for free.

Become a contributor

If you have a flair for writing, you can sign up to ezineartciles (or the countless other sites which offer this service) and post your articles on the site for other people to use on their websites, email newsletters or blogs.

OK, so you won’t get paid for offering your work directly, however the indirect benefits of unique article creation are numerous.

Perhaps the most important benefit (which ties back to link building) is the ability for you to create powerful, relevant links back to your site from the copy of your article. If your article is picked up by other websites and re-published, your inbound link count can be replicated and increased very quickly.

Rather than me list them all out, other (rather self promotional) benefits can be found on ezinearticles site here.

Become an article publisher

Publishing other people’s articles on your site can also be beneficial. This can especially useful if your site is quite new and you’re looking to flesh it out a little.

More content on your site can help reduce bounce rates (the number of visitors who visit just one page and leave straight away), as interesting content usually has people reading and engaging more with your site.

The downside is that the articles you publish won’t create any search engine ranking benefit due to duplicate content filters being applied. In other words, those pages probably won’t rank at search engines (like Google), as the original article will have priority over your copy.

One thing we have noticed though is that ezinearticle content doesn’t show up when the “results from Australia” button is ticked at Google (because it’s a US-based website). This indicates to me that if you did post articles on your Australian site, you might have a chance of ranking for Australian users.

Another useful tip might be to publish a few articles on your site and look at your page view stats from analytics. If one particular article is receiving many more page views than the others, you may consider writing your own unique content version of the article.

That way you can research areas of content that is of most interest to your visitors and provide a highly useful experience (as well as achieve some search engine ranking benefit as you avoid the duplicate content filtering issues discussed earlier).

To sum up, “content is (still) king”, and the more content you create on your site, the more targeted traffic you will receive.

Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.

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