These days everyone seems to have caught the content bug. It's become the rallying cry of modern SEO: Build great content and the links will follow.
The problem is, that's where the conversation often ends. Few people will elaborate on just what is actually meant by "great content," or how such content can be created for the typical business site.
What's more, even if you have great content, how do you promote it? The greatest article in the world isn't going to help you build many links if no one knows about it.
To illustrate the point, here's an email that's typical for the questions we often receive on this topic:
| With the importance of using articles to promote one's web site in this day of quality link building, how does one write such articles when marketing an otherwise dull web site? Sometimes I feel it's downright next-to-impossible to write interesting articles for a web site selling what most people would consider a fairly boring product. |
The thing is, there's an almost limitless number of articles that can be created if you pause to consider:
- How people use the web, and...
- What kind of content gets people linking.
Your typical web surfer has developed a fairly short attention span. There's so much content out there that people have gotten very good at quickly scanning a page and making a snap judgment about whether a page contains what they're looking for, and whether they want to sacrifice the time (everyone's most valuable resource these days) to read that page.
If they don't see what they're looking for within a short window of time they're off to find that information somewhere else. And once they're gone, it's unlikely they'll ever find their way back to your page again.
So what are people looking for? They're looking for short, bite-sized chunks of information that do one of two things:
- Solve a specific problem in a clear, concise way, or...
- Entertain them.
If you can do one of those, you can generally lock them in long enough to read your article. And an article that gets read has a much better chance of being an article that gets a link.
The trick is to create articles that are compelling at first glance. It's an art form that can often only be mastered by studying other successful examples of articles that have managed to build up huge number of links in a short period of time. Where does one find such articles? Read on...
How to Write Short Mini-Articles That Build Massive Links
Have you heard of Digg.com? It's an extremely popular community-driven news site. What's interesting about Digg is that its stories are chosen by Digg's users rather than editors. Users submit a story and if other users like it they vote for (or "digg") it.
The more diggs a story gets, the more prominently it's featured on the site. Stories with lots of diggs end up on the Digg front page. Because Digg is so popular, sites that get their stories on the front page typically get server-melting levels of traffic (50,000 visitors or more in a day is not uncommon). And because so many bloggers read Digg, front-paged stories often receive hundreds, or sometimes even thousands, of incoming links.
Because of this massive link building potential, it's instructive to study the kinds of stories which are getting front-paged in Digg to see if there are aspects of these stories you can emulate for your own articles. Let's take a look at some recent examples:
 | 31 Different Ways To Lace Shoes |
Fieggen.com is a site that sells shoelaces. When it comes to sites that sell dull products, you probably don't get much more dull than that.
So what did they do to market their site? They created a page featuring 31 different shoe lacing methods, and somewhere along the line someone submitted it to Digg. The article was a huge hit and this single page received over 7000 incoming links–mostly from bloggers just looking for something interesting to comment on that day.
Currently, this site is number one in Google for the singular and plural versions of both shoelaces and shoe laces, due in no small part to the huge number of Digg-generated links.
| | The Worst Cars Ever Made |
Here's a simple idea for a site that sells pretty much anything related to automobiles—whether it's parts, repairs, or the cars themselves. Automotoportal.com came up with a list of the worst cars ever made.
The list is short (just 5 cars) and features a picture of each car, along with what made them so bad. Couldn't have taken more than a few hours to put together and so far this article has been front-paged in Digg and garnered over 1300 links. You can bet this Digg-generated link building puts this site at a significant advantage when it comes to ranking in the search engines.
| | The Top 10 Web Developer Libraries |
Cameron Olthuis markets himself as a social media expert. And well he should, as he's gotten articles listed on the front page of Digg several times just by creating short lists of what he considers the best tech resources online, along with a brief description of why each is so good.
Digg's audience is tech oriented, so it's easier to get articles about tech-related topics to gain traction with the Digg community. However, Digg also has sections devoted to business, entertainment, news, sports and other topics, so there's room for non-tech material.
Cameron's list of the 10 top web developer libraries has garnered nearly 2700 links since it was placed on Digg. While Cameron has a knack for finding topics and presenting them in a way that compels people to link to him, anyone can easily emulate this formula and apply it to their own site's topic.
| | 99 Things You Didn't Know About Your Body |
This one took a bit more work than some of our previous examples, but not that much more. It's basically a list of interesting health-related facts, many of which can be found in books and magazines related to exercise and healthy living.
With a little effort, it's something that just about any site related to health or beauty topics could replicate. Like the others, it was featured on the Digg frontpage and has so far received more than 900 links.
| | How to Concentrate on Writing |
Here's some advice all article writers could use now and then. Matthew Stibbe created a short list of 10 ways to focus on getting writing done.
A simple idea that unleashed a flood of Digg traffic and over 800 links.
How to Make an Article Diggable
Although the five articles mentioned above are all about very different topics, they each share some common elements.
- They're all lists — There's something about the simplicity and scan-able nature of lists that draws people in. Give them a solid block of text and most people will bolt. But break it up into a well-formatted list and tell them how many items there are, and people feel like they're getting the most important stuff in a clear, well-organized fashion.
Next time you're in the check-out line at the supermarket, check out the covers of the magazines there. These magazines are some of the most-read publications in the world, and the titles they place on their covers are practically a masters course in the art of title writing.
Whether it's Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, or Shape, these magazine covers are loaded with "10 Ways to..." and "5 Quick Steps to..."
It's no accident. These titles are scientifically designed to make you pick them up and investigate further—then buy the magazine on impulse while you're standing there in line.
- Most are instructional in nature — One surefire way to get people to read your article is to start it with the words "How to..."
This tactic has been used since the earliest days of copywriting and still works like gangbusters today. People are looking for bite-sized chunks of specific information.
Getting people to read your article is a lot easier if your title contains a numbered list or starts with the words "How to...", which brings us to our final critical point...
- They all have catchy, descriptive titles — Your title is the single most important factor in getting people to read your article. In fact, the best article writers often focus on writing the greatest possible title first, then they work on creating an article to support that title.
After all, unless you have a title that's going to draw readers in, there's really no point in writing the article (because no one's going to read it).
So What's So Great About Digg Links?
Oddly enough, Digg itself is not a reliable, or even decent, source of traffic. Sure, when your article gets on the front page you'll get tons of traffic for a few days, but that sort of traffic doesn't usually convert into revenue.
Digg users don't explore the rest of your site, they don't click on ads, they don't sign up for newsletters, and they definitely don't buy anything. They converge like a swarm of locusts, read your article and move on.
The real value of this traffic is indirect. It stems from the huge numbers of visitors who will mention your article on their blogs and link to you. And it's those links that will help your article, as well as your whole site, rank better in the search engines.
The great thing about these Digg-generated links is that they're exactly the type of links that Google likes best. That is, links freely given based entirely on the value of your content. They accumulate without your needing to be involved in requesting or paying for them at any point.
As such, they don't have any of the nasty characteristics of the artificially acquired link. In fact, they are the epitome of the natural link, the exact type of link Google rates highest.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Promoting Your Articles
It's important to note that the majority of articles won't get enough Diggs to make it anywhere near the front page. Without a doubt, it takes practice to fine-tune your approach until you find something that resonates with the Digg audience.
But that really doesn't matter—because as long as you're creating the type of informative, entertaining, bite-sized articles that do well on a site like Digg, you're also creating the types of articles that are most likely to attract links from other places.
So even if your article goes nowhere on Digg, you still have a great article you can add to your site. And the article can then be promoted through a variety of other outlets.
| | The Social Media Sites |
Digg is the biggest site of its kind, but there are many other similar sites that can be used to get people to read your article, including:
- Del.icio.us — A social bookmarking site, the Del.icio.us popular page is known to send almost as many visitors and links as Digg. Once you sign up with Del.icio.us, simply use their service to tag your articles with relevant keywords.
Other users often subscribe to RSS feeds of certain tag keywords. For instance, here's the page for photography tags. People who are subscribed to the feeds for the keywords you've tagged your article with will see a link to your article in their feed.
If they read your article and like it, they might tag it themselves. If enough people tag your site, it will rise up to the Del.icio.us popular page where it will be seen by a huge number of people, often resulting in thousands of visitors and tons of incoming links.
- Reddit — Much like Digg, except with a smaller user-base. Users submit links, vote on them and the more popular stories rise to the top.
- Furl — In simplest terms, Furl is to Del.icio.us as Reddit is to Digg: Essentially the same thing, just with a smaller user base and a few minor tweaks to make it unique. Furl is an online social bookmarking service as well as a way to save archived copies of web pages. Articles which are "Furled" by large numbers of users can end up on the Furl popular page.
Furl is capable of generating a good amount traffic as well as putting your article in front of people who may submit your page to a more popular resource like Digg. However, the most important reason to use Furl is that, by tagging your pages there, you can get them to show up on the Technorati Tag pages.
Many bloggers subscribe to these Technorati Tag pages, so showing up there can result in some pretty good links (provided people like your article, of course!)
- StumbleUpon — This is a toolbar you install on your browser. You select from several categories the topics you like. Then click Stumble! on the toolbar, and it will take you to pages that other users with the toolbar installed have rated as I like it!.
You can of course go to your own articles and click I like it! This will submit your site to the StumbleUpon database, where other users can see it. If a lot of people like your article and rate it positively, it will be shown more often. This can result in a large amount of traffic, as well as numerous related links. - Yahoo MyWeb — Yahoo's version of social bookmarking, similar to Del.icio.us and Furl. Smaller user base than Del.icio.us, but still good for building traffic and links.
- Netscape — AOL-owned Netscape was recently overhauled to work very similar to Digg. Notable differences are: smaller user base, more editorial control (making it harder to get on the front page), and they try to keep users on Netscape rather than sending them to you.
Thus, it's not nearly as good as Digg, but it can still expose your content to a large number of people. Netscape was once a very popular portal and still has a fairly large user base, so it's worth submitting your story there. - Blinklist — Essentially a Digg clone, but used by a lot of people, and they're good at weeding out spam, so you can get decent traffic from this site (although only a fraction of what you'd get through Digg and Del.icio.us).
Keep in mind there are certain rules of etiquette to follow with each of these sites. For those sites which are primarily designed for people to save bookmarks to sites they like (such as Del.icio.us, Furl and Yahoo MyWeb) feel free to submit and tag your pages as often as you like.
However, for those sites which have a voting element involved, it's often looked upon negatively if you submit your own pages too often. This is especially true with Digg. Rather than submitting your own stuff all the time, you might consider asking a friend or coworker to create an account and submit them for you.
An even better approach is to submit your article to sites other than Digg, such as Del.icio.us, then wait for someone there to find it and submit it on their own. If that doesn't happen within a week or so, then you'll probably have to take things into your own hands and submit it yourself.
Making the Most of Your Link Building Strategy
As you're likely well aware, link building is challenging. That's why having your article take off in a viral way is such a great shot-of-adrenaline. When you naturally generate 1000 links in the same time it takes to build just 10 links through artificial means (like reciprocal linking), you know you've hit on something truly amazing.
Of course, not every article will take off. But when you hit a home run, the positive link building impact can be huge. So huge it can often make most other types of link building look trivial by comparison.
By spending a few minutes each day tracking what kind of articles are taking off on Digg or Del.icio.us, you can fine tune your article writing and viral marketing skills to the point where you and your articles may never again need to beg or pay for links again!
Nuk ka komente:
Posto një koment