Article Marketing Lives On – Part II: It’s All About The Title Stupid

Posted by Ian on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009.

A couple weeks ago we wrote a post on article marketing, providing a free directory list of the top 5 article marketing directories. The list isn’t long, because the fact of the matter is, there are lots of article directories out there that aren’t worth a dime. But the fact of the matter is, those sites we’ve listed won’t be worth much either if you write an article that no one wants to read or isn’t picked up by the search engines. Sure, you may get some benefit from an SEO perspective (as part of your overall link campaigns) but wouldn’t you much rather get both traffic AND the benefits of quality inbound links?

Many SEO experts are convinced the author bio is the most important piece of any article. I beg to differ. Yes, the bio is important, for it should contain links back to your site as well as a good description that “sells” your expertise on the subject at hand and builds reader trust. But all too often I’m seeing articles on ghost sites/blogs that don’t contain the author bio, resulting in zero additional links back to your site. Furthermore, with so many articles being published all over the web in hundreds of article directories, what are the chances you’re article will be picked up over someone else?

So what should you focus on? The body of the article is important. The information contained within it should be helpful, informative, provide an answer to an actual question (and links if possible). But when it comes down to it, what you need to focus some time on is a good, relevant title. There are a couple reasons for this, the obvious one being you want to grab peoples’ attention. But not so obvious is that most of these directories use your title within the title tag and, quite often, in the meta description and internal links to that article as well. Do your keyword research and try to include your main keywords in the title twice. Even better, find a keyword(s) that has little competition, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your article can appear on page 1 or 2 of the SERPS.