Viral Article Marketing – Quality Counts Whether It is Good or Bad
You can’t discuss article marketing, especially if you’re wanting articles that will spread like wildfire across the internet, without discussing article quality. There will always be those who think you should focus only on writing and submitting as many articles as you can, and to hell with the quality of those articles.
For a lot of folks, the goal of article marketing is simply about backlinks. Get as many as you can. Doesn’t matter if they’re good, bad or somewhere in-between. Of course, they’re always going to be more skewed to the ‘bad’ side of the equation, but hey, who cares? Well, if you want your articles to go viral, then you should care.
The trouble with focusing on quantity is that it requires a helluva lot of work. When your only focus is submitting as many articles as you can, you’re setting yourself up to be working like a machine. And you’ll have to continue working that way for the foreseeable future. Want to know why?
Search Engines Don’t Like Rubbish Content
And if you think you can still just put it out there, and fool the search engines into loving it because you’ve also thrown a few backlinks at it, think again. Remember, the main concern of any search engine is providing relevant, useful information to searchers. Everything else is just gravy.
Your articles might be up there at the moment, but you’re going to see more and more of them disappear into the supplemental neverland. Which means you’re going to have to write more and more of them to make up for those that keep disappearing. Not really a great business model.
It’s Not Viral If You’re The Only One Sharing It
It’s true. Check your stats. How many of your articles are being republished? How many times are they being Stumbled, Dugg, Twittered… and don’t include the sharing you do. That just proves my point!
Low Quality Content Gets You Noticed Just as Much as High Quality Content
If someone reads a crappy article, do you really think they’re going to believe anything the author has to say? If other site owners aren’t taking your content seriously, you can bet your bottom dollar potential customers aren’t going to take much notice of it either.
Actually, scratch that. Readers very probably will take even more notice than other site owners. If someone is searching for advice on getting back with their ex and you have a zillion articles published on that topic, it’s fair to assume they’re going to come across more than one of your creations. Once they’ve seen your name over and over again, and every time they see it, it’s linked to some piece of crap… you can guess what sort of conclusion they’re going to come to about you, your site, your products, your services and anything else you might be writing about.
Quality Counts in More Ways Than You Know
Backlinks - Quality articles are more likely to be published by other site owners or picked up by ezine publishers, news sites, online magazines, etc, giving you more backlinks or every piece of content you write. And many of these will be high quality backlinks; the kind Google actually cares about rather than just Joe’s blog.
Sharing - Quality articles are more likely to be Twittered, Dugg, Stumbled, etc. Again, all of this will happen with no further work on your part. Imagine the time saved from having to go socially bookmark and backlink your own content. Heck, you could even (gasp) find you have enough time to write another quality article!
Traffic - Once readers associate your name with well written, useful, informative, quality content, they’re more likely to actively seek your content. When they realise your website provides them with all the information they need, you replace the search engines. Why bother asking Google when they already know where the best source is?
Reputation - Just read everything above. Better quality = more of everything, more articles published, more articles shared, more traffic, and ultimately more sales – because your street cred goes up with every quality piece of content you write.
I really don’t get why people insist on making life difficult for themselves. Viral marketing using articles means you absolutely need quality content. If you don’t believe me, then don’t. But it won’t make it any less of a fact.
