Just Ask – Article Marketing And Site Promotion

Jul 06

Just Ask – Article Marketing And Site Promotion

Subscriber and long time friend Janice Willingham has left a question on our Just Ask page. There’s a wealth of experience and knowledge in our subscribers and site visitors. I’m hoping you can help Janice by answering her questions or giving a little advice.

Here’s what Janice wrote:

I have a blog about dental care. PersonalDentalCareInfo.com I am a member of a social bookmarking site where the members are responsible for bookmarking each other’s websites. I recently found out from one of the members I should be bookmarking my posts from the blog and not the actual blog. So, I changed that. I also write articles to promote my site. I’ve submitted six. I am going to do four more and I guess just promote the articles and continue with the bookmarking.

My questions:

  1. How many articles are enough? I was thinking 10 should suffice.
  2. What do you do next to promote your site. At what point do you promote and start on another niche. I feel as though I am missing a step in promoting my site.
  3. Although, I’ve done all this I have yet to sell any of the  affiliate products located on my blog. One guy stated I should just focus on one product. However, I have a choice of products all focused on the dental care niche.

Any suggestions?

About the author

Keith Bloemendaal wrote 110 articles on this blog.

Keith is a passionate blogger and writes Blog Tips, Social Media Tips, and also operates a Social Bookmarking service. .

Related posts:

  1. Blogging Your Way To Article Marketing
  2. What Blog Promotion Steps Do You Take?
  3. Internet Marketing At It’s Best – Using Videos For Niche Site Product
  4. Valuable Article Marketing Training by EzineArticles.com – Free!
  5. News Related AdSense Site – First Month = One Hundred Dollars
  • I agree with Tom. Articles, RSS feeds and Backlinks are needed for a busy site, but that is a constant process. You cannot relax after submitting to a few. Your site may not get high PR initially due to google dance, but ultimately, the PR will improve by backlinkings.
  • For question number two - I would not stop promoting until I am sure that I can reach number one position in google - once you think you have enough links move on to another niche and check in a couple months to see how much you have improved. Remember many search engines will take months, even up to a year to count links it is all a matter of time - they will show up eventually. :)
    .-= heather@dental assistant training´s last blog ..Begin A Career With Dental Assistant Training =-.
  • Great advice Heather, I recently put the brakes on setting up new sites, for the most part, to increase traffic and SERP for those I already have going. It's already paying off.
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Website Magazine Is Free For Many Subscribers =-.
  • Articles, RSS feeds and Backlinks from a decent directory are all that's needed for a busy site!
    .-= Tom@ UK Business Directory´s last blog ..Jobs in Gulf =-.
  • cnc
    Brian, Im sorry i still cant understand "right" keywordLuv using.. (
  • cnc
    About articles as a Internet marketing tool - I'm absolutely agree with Yan! Quality not quantity! just 10 good 9cheched, dofollow) articles' catalogs can bring 10 times more than 500 others. I also like ezineArticles.com
    cnc@cnc machinery
  • My opinion for promotion is, if you have articles, you can do blogs on it and then bookmark those blogs and then submit there RSS.
    .-= Kris´s last blog ..Video Door Intercom- Are You Sure that You Have The Right Guest! =-.
  • Janice, you also need to remember that it's all about traffic and from the traffic only a small portion will actually click on an ad and an even smaller portion of those clicks will generate a sale. Also if your site is only 3 months old you may want to give it some more time.

    Do you have a blog connected to the site? If it's at all possible a blog can generate more interest and frequent updates will keep the googlebots happy.
    .-= Sire´s last blog ..Cash Burners And Their Electronic Super Cigarette =-.
  • That's what I was thinking Sire. A small percentage of very little traffic and like Yan said it's probably the wrong traffic so it's easy to see why no sales.

    I feel her frustration, I've been there myself only with email marketing. You do what everyone seems to say and get zero results. That's why I started this Just Ask Someone section. I feel you guys that are active here are honest and knowledgeable and care enough to help others. It was just a good fit.
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Your Guest Posts On The Extreme Ezine =-.
  • Hey Janice

    You mentioned that you've "....been promoting it for the past 3 months using article marketing and this social bookmarking club/group where we bookmark each other’s sites or articles about 3 times a week."

    Truth is, more than 70% of the traffic is the type that DON'T click & buy your products.

    You need to figure out a way to push your search traffic above 60% and once you've got that figured out, sales should come in.

    But then there are other equally important factors before a sale is made such as where you position your call-to-action, blah, blah, blah.......

    Don't give up yet. You can still make it in this niche - I'm pretty much confident of it if ONLY you do the RIGHT thing.

    Yan

    PS: With all due respect to Brian, drop me an email at my blog - thoushallblog.com. I'm more than willing to help.
    .-= CiggArrest´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
  • Thanks Yan, I'm glad to see you back. The advice of getting the search traffic above 60% is great. I was wondering that myself and the realization that we need a certain type of traffic is very important. Something I need to concentrate on too.

    Thank you for offering to help Janice, I know she wont give up. I've known her for many years and she's still here so I'm pretty proud of her. Thanks Buddy :)
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Extreme Ezine – Social Edition | Aug09 =-.
  • The reason why I think she shouldn't give it up is the fact that "Personal Dental Care" niche is beatable (on last check), meaning it's possible to rank #1 for that particular keyword. Again if she does the right thing.

    On a side note, Brian. Join me at the keyword academy. (It goes the same to Janice too, at the very least she will know what she did wrong)

    There are tons of valuable resources you can get from the forum itself. It covers pretty much the do's and don'ts of niche marketing from one of the best guys in the business.

    Yan
  • Thanks Yan, I'm in. I subscribed to their feed by email and signed up as a Premium member. Make sure you get credit from the referral link. Let me know if it didn't work. I'm going to get started right away. Thanks, I appreciate the invite
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Extreme Ezine – Social Edition | Aug09 =-.
  • Hi Janice, I'm glad you came by, Thanks for that.

    Are those stats monthly or daily? My opinion is you definitely need more traffic, regardless of the niche. Choosing the right niche is an important part of niche marketing but every site needs traffic. 372 hit's, I'm assuming unique is pretty low. Are there a lot of searches for your target key words? It looks like you have a nice balance of referred and search engine traffic. I'm surprised by the 44% of Direct Traffic. All you need is to build the traffic and test ad placement, colors etc..

    I would also add that one site isn't going to generate a ton of profit. The idea, in my opinion, is to generate a few dollars a month from each of hundreds of sites.
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Extreme Ezine – Social Edition | Aug09 =-.
  • Thanks everyone for your replies. I have read your responses carefully and with interest. The dental site I am promoting, has made no money. I am seriously considering changing niches because I am not profiting from my efforts maybe that's a sign to do so. I've been promoting it for the past 3 months using article marketing and this social bookmarking club/group where we bookmark each other's sites or articles about 3 times a week.

    I have submitted my articles to two article directories EZA and websitearticles.net with most of my traffic coming from EZA. All are in the dental care niche. I also noticed that my website since belonging to this bookmarking site is on page one of Google and number one with competing websites.

    I'm not sure what all this means, but here are the stats from Google analytics:

    Site Usage

    * 372
    Visits

    * 1,741
    Pageviews

    * 4.68
    Pages/Visit

    * 0.00%
    Bounce Rate

    * 00:02:07
    Avg. Time on Site

    * 83.87%
    % New Visits

    Traffic Sources
    # Direct Traffic 164.00 (44.09%)
    # Referring Sites 108.00 (29.03%)
    # Search Engines 100.00 (26.88%)

    I'm not sure if I should have more traffic or what. I am at a lost why I am not making any sales. The site is monetized with Ebay, Clickbank and Amazon products, but no sales. Why?
  • I came to your site and just wondering, I don't seen ebay and amazon ads near your article page. What I see, you put ebay and amazon ads in different pages from your articles. If you want to make money put relevance ads near your article.

    Amount of ads is not the answer to get more money.

    Seriously with 372 visitors I already make dollar, not penny. Maybe you should come to my site to see what I am doing..
    .-= Ruri@Free article directory´s last blog ..Vinyl Wall Sayings and Quotes =-.
  • If you want to really make your article "SELL" then you've got to craft the perfect RESOURCE BOX, it needs
    # Your Name
    # Your Website Address
    # Your Elevator Pitch
    # Your Call To Action
  • Thanks Charlie, that sounds like great advice. Feel free to explain 'Elevator Pitch' if you like.
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..How Does Your Favorite Brand Rank In Social Media? =-.
  • I have a friend who bookmarks all his articles religiously using an automatic program. He says that if he doesn't that the articles often don't get indexed.
  • Hi Skip, I think social bookmarking is a good move but I wouldn't recommend an automatic program.
    .-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Ten Reasons To Start A Paid Membership Site =-.
  • Sorry Brian to do this to you but I had to post this just to subscribe to this post. You can delete this comment once it's done it's task.
  • No problem Sire, I should put an option to subscribe without commenting. I know I've seen it on other blogs. I wonder if it's a plugin.
  • Love to know if there is such an *auto subscribed* plugin too.

    Oops, am I in the wrong place? This isn't a senior citizen club, is it?

    ;)

    Yan
    .-= Table Tennis Conversion Top´s last blog ..Table Tennis Conversion Top =-.
  • Probably, but I think this option is better as it does encourage people to comment. I think I saw an option somewhere where it automatically subscribes them once commenting.
    .-= Sire´s last blog ..Word Of Mouth, A Bloggers Most Effective Marketing Technique =-.
  • I'm with Rob on this one with one addition, and that is to concentrate on dofollow blogs that use the commentluv plugin, thereby getting two links for the price of one. Make sure to always leave well structured comments that enthrall the reader enticing them to visit your blog.
    .-= Sire´s last blog ..Sire’s So Stupid =-.
  • Well said Sire, following blog comments is almost always how I find the blogs I visit regularly.
  • Hi Rob, I agree 100% with blog commenting and targeted traffic. I wrote a post on it a while back - Are You Passing Up Comment Credit?.

    Was there a URL on "read: interested – visitors to your site"? Feel free to leave a link if you want.
    .-= Brian´s last blog ..Ten Reasons To Start A Paid Membership Site =-.
  • Many social networking, link-sharing, and article promotion sites fixate on getting you volumes of raw clicks.

    I'd rather have a handful of interested visitors - ie: readers - who might decide my content is worth subscribing or returning to than bucketloads of random clicks that may be far less likely to produce any lasting effect.

    I'm convinced that promoting your blog within your niche via commenting on others' blogs and posting on niche-specific forums can be a very good way to bring more targeted - read: interested - visitors to your site.
    .-= Rob O.´s last blog ..From Bytes to Bits - Not Sci Fi Anymore =-.
  • Thanks Mikes, I love ProBlogger but I'm looking for actual proven advice for Janice rather than just telling her to go study a particular website. I do agree that ProBlogger should be required reading for all of us.
    .-= Brian´s last blog ..Ten Reasons To Start A Paid Membership Site =-.
  • What i understand is: she's asking how to promote her site through social bookmarkings, right?

    i suggest she go and read problogger.net as I think Darren has all the rights and powers how to promote your one blog.
    .-= Mikes Sumondong´s last blog ..Where the is no Vision, People Perish | Apollo 11's 40th Anniversary =-.
  • A little over a year ago I wrote a post that I still think is relevant: Blogging Your Way To Article Marketing. Basically, I talk about using your blog posts for article content. One note about recent posts, like Yan stated above, don't worry too much about duplicate content but I recommend you make sure your blog post is indexed before submitting it for articles. No reason to take a back seat to another site for content you wrote. One problem with many of our posts are all the links we tend to insert. Those will need to be removed before submitting to most article directories.
  • I have subscribed to that, but still haven't read all of the letters. Do you have to modify the articles if you are submitting them to several directories, or is ok if they are the exact same? Just wondering about the duplicate content stuff, whether that matters in this case.

    ~ Kristi
    .-= Kikolani´s last blog ..Fetching Friday - Resources, Follow Friday & New Moon Parody =-.
  • Kristi

    As long as you provide unique content to Ezine, the rest can be the exact copy of it. Forget about dupe contents. It's a myth.

    Put simply, ezine (or hubpages) is the one that you want to use to rank for a certain 'keyphrase' while the rest are used for link building purpose - the more the better - all pointing to your main site with relevant anchored keyword.

    This method is often referred to as "linkwheel" strategy.

    Hope it helps.

    Yan
  • Hi Kristi, thanks for checking in. Perhaps we can all learn a little more about article marketing. I should have brought this earlier post in the main post - Valuable Article Marketing Training by EzineArticles.com – Free!. It's about free training by EzineArticles.com in the form of an email subscription. I'm behind in the lessons but so far they have been top shelf.
  • That is some great advice. I'm looking into doing some article marketing soon for clients, and I was wondering how that really worked. Thanks for the simple explanation!

    ~ Kristi
  • I guess hoping works sometimes... ;) I know it's been a while since I last visited yours. Hope all is well here.

    Yan
  • I was hoping you would give some advice Yan, it is appreciated. That's straight forward and honest advice that Janice and even myself can use.
  • If I were allowed to share my humblest opinion, I'd say that submitting your articles for group bookmarking is pretty much a waste of time.

    The same kind of writing effort can be put into better use by submitting your articles to article directories (ezine is recommended)

    If you're prepared to write at least 10 articles and submit them 10 directories with at least 2 anchored keywords, it doesn't take a genius to know that you'll eventually end up with 200 quality keyword anchored backlinks.

    The one with the most backlinks win the game.

    It's only when you're anywhere on the top #5 of Google, you'll start to monetize your site with your choice of affiliate products.

    Otherwise, keep writing and keep building links.

    Allowing others to bookmark your article isn;t going to help much in Google ranking.

    Quality (keyword anchored) backlinks do.

    Hope that helps.

    Yan
    .-= CigArest´s last blog ..CigArrest =-.
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