Hi everybody!
I have been studying a lot and have come to understand that one of the most important aspects on getting ranked is being linked to the specific page we are working on.
I know it will take a lot of time and work to get in the top 10 of google for my keywords if I create a website in a competitive market.
So the big question that I have is what kind of thing has worked best with you in getting backlinks?
Has the best way been creating articles for websites that have your signature tag?
I know someone who has done a lot of promotion of their website through article writing.
I guess my biggest confusion at this moment is – when we do write articles to promote certain pages on our website—what should our article focus on?
How do we know what kind of article the webmaster would like to have on their site?
It seems rather awkward to me to say- hi – I wrote a great article for your site….
Could anyone please give me some direction on how this would be done?
What has worked for your sites?
Thanks for any help

Welcome to the forum, Learner.

Now there are two kinds of article marketing...

1) You submit articles to sites like articlecity.com and ezinearticles.com and webmasters who have sites that fit the content of your articles may choose to add them to their site.

For example let's say you wrote an article on how to improve your golf game and you submit it to ezinearticles.com. This will allow other golf site owners to use your article on their site and you'll get a subtle plug because your link will be at the end of the article

2) Another kind of article marketing is where you write content for other people's newsletters. This is a little more direct approach and may be a bit challenging depending on your niche. But I've heard of webmasters finding sites within their niche and volunteering to write a guest article for people's newsletters. Some sites ask for volunteers and in other cases you may have to physically search and e-mail the webmaster to see if they will allow you to appear in their newsletter as a guest writer.

But the first scenario is a much more effective way of getting traffic via articles.

Article marketing is one way but you have to include a combination of blogging, building content on your site, link swaps with related sites and so forth. And if you are in a competitive niche it's imperative that you offer something different than the other sites you're competing with, otherwise it will be hard to stand out in the crowd.

I always use associateprograms.com as an example. When Allan first launched that site 8 or 9 years ago and people found out how successful he was, everyone kept trying to create similar sites but Allan already had so much of the market and the copy cat sites offered nothing unique so many of them failed. That's why I always discourage people from going with the competitive niches, especially when you're new.

I'd much rather hear of someone doing a site on coin collecting than affiliate marketing or money making.

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Hi Lisa!
Thanks for your answer.
My niche is competitive but not in the money making or website stuff.
The one thing that is still confusing me is how can more than one website owner put up the article that I submitted and not be penalyzed from google for duplicate content?
The other thing that is racking my brain---(-lol) is should the article always be directly related to my niche- or can it be somewhat related to it?
For example- If I have my site on birthdays for children can my article be about making life easier to take care of children while working? The article would be somewhat related to my website in the sense that they both talk about children but not directly related.
What do you think?

When multiple Webmasters put up the same content, Google will recognize the duplicate content and more than likely ignore the content on their site but that doesn't hurt you the person who wrote the article. In fact, Google will see that you have multiple sites linking to you and that's what counts on your part.

That's fine. As long as the topics are somewhat related (children is your main theme) then that's OK. But if you want to get ranked high for "children's birthday parties" you want to create a s much content around that specific topic as possible.

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Hey learner and welcome.

I'm a new commer to building content rich niche sites as well. Article writing is the best way to create backlinks to your website and improving your search position. Not only that, your article will bring additional traffic to your site. Sometimes i find my ezinearticles in google when searching for related words.

It is important to link your website in your articles using the keywords you're trying to optimize for. For example, if you're writing an article for your "cool ideas for children birthdays parties" page, then make sure you link to your page using those key phrases. So, google will rank you high for them.

I personally recommend ezinearticles.com. They have lenient guidelines. I think you can use 3 hyperlinks in your articles. Meaning you can link to your site three times in your articles using your keywords.

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Thanks for that great answer, Lisa.
The one thing I might have to say is- the really high page rank sites have probably figured out that posting an article that is posted somewhere else will not help them that much. So they would probably not post my article. How do I get a high page rank site to post my article? Is there anywhere in Ken Evoy's book that goes into detail about getting backlinks? I have his book on my desktop and have read his explanation in his 2002 version. That version doesn't go into a lot of detail. Maybe another version of his book does.
Could you tell me of a good book or resource that goes into detail of how I could get a high page rank site to post my article?
Thanks again- hope I am not annoying you with so many questions......

Hey Webdev!
Thanks for the tips.I'm the kind of person that needs to know exactly what I am doing before I plunge into anything. I have the time to create my site and I think this is one of the most important parts of trying to start your online business. You need to have the time to learn how to do thing right and also to create excellent content.
Thanks again for your help.

Annoying? No way...that's what we're here for. Yeah Make Your Site Sell is pretty old and that's why Ken provides it for free now.

Download Ken's free book Make Your Links Work...

http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/#MYLW

It goes into greater detail about building your link popularity. It was written a few years ago but it still has tons of relevant info.

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Thanks for the link to that book
I've already printed it out and will be reading it tonight.

You can also submit your articles to sites such as Digg.com... I've read that Digg.com can send you over 25,000 visitors if you write a good tech article. The hard part is to write an original article that everyone will 'digg'.

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