When we spend our money on article marketing, we focus on two things: 1) Persuading the consumers of the article to visit our site; 2) obtaining some “link juice” for the page of our site linked in our anchor text (i.e. SEO).  After all, we want to get “the most bang for our buck” when it comes to content syndication.  Particularly when we outsource to a professional web writing service, we hope to recoup the expense as quickly as possible.  That makes sense, in so far as we take it.

However, there is one thing that we sometimes forget in our enthusiasm of driving traffic and external links directly to our site’s pages.  For our articles to be truly effective, they need to be found by readers and considered worthy by the search engine algorithms.

We must face a harsh reality: Our newly submitted article is not the only new addition to A1Articles or EzineArticles today.  Indeed, it probably isn’t even the only article being posted that day that deals with our topic, although nobody has written as cleverly as we have of course.  So how do we make our article stand out from the massive amount of new content published on the web each day?

We, you and I, are fully aware of the standard tips for article marketing submissions:

*  Make sure your title is descriptive and memorable.
*  Tag the article with keywords that are popular and that are actually used in the article.
*  If the article directory offers and opportunity to provide your own synopsis (as does EzineArticles), spend the time to write in well and make it inviting.

All of those tips are important; none should be ignored.  We have to take another step, add another recommendation to our standard list in order for the major search engines to provide our article with the respect that we know it deserves.  After all, most of our potential readers will find our article by means of a search engine.  Only then can they be emotionally moved by our prose.  Only then will they follow the link to our site.  Only then will they repeated buy our product and service.  Only then will we become as wealthy as King Midas as we sit around in our pajamas, working from home only fifteen minutes a day.  Oops, I think I may have read a bit too much hype from the make money from home scams.  I offer you my sincere regrets for getting carried away.

How do we really earn respect from the search engines for our articles?  External links.  Lots and lots of external links.  And…how do we get those links?

We need to dedicate a portion of our article marketing strategy to building links for our articles, themselves.  Yes, that may mean somewhat fewer links to our site, but the advantage is that the links that we do have pointing to our site will become more potent.

You can settle on your own ratio, but most of us should probably assign about 20% to 35% of our article marketing content to providing external links directly to our previously published articles.  For example, every once in a while, post an article on A1Articles that contains links to some of your content on EzineArticles and GoArticles.  Use an ArticleDashboard submission to pass a little link love to a brilliant piece you have published on ArticleVista. 

If this sounds as if it might complicate your overall strategy, your record keeping and your approach to writing, you’re right!  Consequently, many Internet marketers outsource all of this to a well trained company that really understands writing, submissions, keywords and search engine optimization.  Then we can just sit around in our pajamas and count our money.