Wednesday 27 June 2012

B2B Article Marketing

There are numerous link building strategies to choose from when implementing an SEO campaign. The best campaigns are diverse and include a variety of links from many sources. A popular SEO and marketing strategy for many B2B companies was to write helpful articles and submit them to article and document sharing websites. Often, companies would submit the same article to numerous sites. The thought was that submitting the same content to multiple sites would increase the chances of a target audience member finding it and build a link portfolio from different sites for SEO purposes. It was considered to be a win/win strategy. However, a few months ago Google threw a curveball that has since changed the landscape of article marketing. In their quest to combat spam and improve search result quality, content that was “duplicated” across the web was punished. Severely. Multiple sites saw their traffic drop instantly after the update and the problem was so serious that some people even lost their jobs due to the loss of search engine rankings.


The result of the Google Panda/Farmer algorithm update is that some B2B marketers are now concerned about the value of article marketing online. Article marketing is still an extremely valuable component of a B2B strategy, it has just evolved. Instead of focusing on the quantity of articles for SEO purposes, it has become much more important to focus on the quality of articles for readability and user benefit purposes.
While it may have caused some major stress, this Google update is to be praised. Some article writers got so concerned about keywords and links that they forgot who they were writing for. The original purpose of article marketing was to establish yourself as a trusted resource of information in the eyes of your target audience. It was a way to build a brand and a reputation. Google has reminded us of this.
This does not mean that you shouldn’t submit articles to multiple document sharing sites. Having a presence and profile on multiple document sharing sites is still a great way to build brand equity over time. The difference is that each article that is submitted needs to be unique. Sure, it may take more time and effort, but all this means is that the quality will be better, increasing the chances that you will catch the eye of a target audience member.

 http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/b2b-article-marketing.htm