Solo Promotion - A critique of "what the pro's do"

The necessity for leverage in online promotion is that everyone starts out by themselves. 

And what prompted this is a new look at Market Samurai's "Professional SEO" article from an application viewpoint. You may want to have this article open in another window (or a separate screen, which is even better) so you can refer to it as we go.

This article makes some sense on the overview, and is why I refer people to it.

However, it doesn't really say much about the individual and their efforts to succeed or scale.
They are actually pointing out that there is a huge market in the middle between the two - since the Professional SEO firms are dealing in major corporations only, while the individual is simply working their own concept over.  And there is a scale of work which separates these two as well - one is dealing in "hundreds" of pieces of content every week, the other a single piece of content weekly.

That isn't very fair to the individual, and they don't tell you how to scale this or how to leverage your work.

Of course, these 30 days are just that - how an individual can leverage their own efforts to earn extra money online. And we've also reviewed how you can ramp your content up to many versions of the same work within a single week - unlike their example of the individual who chose hard ways to do things and later quit these in exhaustion.

Limiting Misconceptions

1. The first one is their emphasis on backlinks. And we've already covered this. You don't use bookmarks and social media to try to get backlinks. You use them to improve the social signal quality of your main and remotely-posted content.

They do cover the point that article directories are a valid way to get backlinks, all white-hat and everything. And this is where they start - pushing their incomplete project of an article publisher. (I'm sure they'll get there, eventually.)

2. And because they don't write this from the view of really getting the whole job done (just from an article marketing viewpoint) they don't really lay out a scheme or plan which the individual can use to scale their production.

So for a long time, this sat in my own mind as an isolated report. Only on finishing up this series and starting that new project did the groundwork they laid start to bear fruit.

How an individuals can scale their promotion

The idea is that the Internet is a great way to leverage all that you do. Market Samurai is a great way to leverage your time required on market research in order to get all the data you need quickly. That one-time purchase should last you years or more - since they support it with updates, and you can also recommend it as an affiliate product.

We've covered in some broad strokes how to simply get this accomplished using a central hub, remote social properties (blogs), and social signals. This type of system can also be scaled, to include other interests - so you are able to promote in several lines. This splits your time up considerably, so it may be that you want to simply start out with concentrating on a single interest and building up content on this.

What the Market Samurai guys cover about Article Directories is correct, provided you spin the content (instead of hiring people to write articles for you on a one-to-one basis) - which is covered in Day 23 - How Article Directories Could Work.

Under that workflow, you simply would take the extra hour to convert that content into a spinnable format, and plug it into Article Demon (another one-time purchase that looks to be supported well so far.)

And that additional hour, plus a submitter like Article Demon, will leverage your one hour into perhaps a hundred or more backlinks on article directories - where everyone wins.

Once your article shows up an AD, you can then bookmark it and then ping your bookmark profile RSS feed - as covered. You may wish to have that article bio spun to give links to your remote blogs instead of your hub - or in addition to it. Just depends on how you created the content for each. But it gives you more options.

As well, many of these AD's give each author an RSS feed, so that could be pinged. As time-consuming as it is, the best results would be probably to use is like a remote blog, and bookmark it/ping RSS. I have no program (yet) which will submit sites to be pinged on a delay - though I'm sure they are out there and will only take looking to find.

Press Releases

Another line of promotion we haven't talked much about is the Free Press Releases. As usual, you want to use those which are effective, and cost nothing. There is simply no good review or explanation of these in The Online Sunshine Plan. Sorry.

Press Releases are not used much, as they are often misunderstood. Mostly, they do not get picked up by news services. And have recently been plagued with spam. Results is that many have been dropped by Google News (if they were ever on it to begin with) and have had to change their operation to restore their credibility. (See http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=6 for an exceedingly short list, and some descriptions of why.)

Essentially, these sites are picked up by both regular web searches and also Google News. So they are similar to article directories, but give you additional exposure on a new type of search engine.

However, they are each decidedly different as to how they accept your data. And so have no programs which will submit spun copy (as the Article Directories have only recently begun to have - well, as far as decent ones.)

So there is no real value in getting these only as backlinks. They simply take too much time to implement. You are going to have to spin the content and then also hand-copy/paste it into their particular fields. Some allow internal links within the body copy, some allow images. So it's no walk in the park.

But, like article directories, once you have spun copy, it's simpler to post to several of them, which will mean keyword-rich backlinks on authoritative sites. And - who knows - maybe a reporter will actually read it and call you up (or more likely email) for more information...

In order to find these, the simplest way to test this for yourself is to take a list of "top" or "best" free press release sites and then do a search of Google News to see which ones have pages indexed there. In the search box, type "site:" followed immediately by the domain name (no space between or "http://"). This will show you the top dogs of Google News.

If you cross-compare this with lists of such "best" free press release sites, then you'll get a short list to distribute to.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon (in between interruptions) and culled a short list for you (again, this will change, so isn't final - and I'm sure I missed a few.) And when I was done, I remembered and pulled up an older list I had and cross-compared. (And you'll also see that their Alexa rank has no relation to what Google thinks of them.) Again, these counts change all the time. What was interesting is that the top dogs gained quite a bit on average and the bottom feeders either dropped, or dropped out completely.

URL	Alexa Rank	Pages on Google News
prweb.com	2,469	24,600
prnewswire.com	2,915	23,300
businesswire.com	4,951	12,500
live-pr.com	24,157	9,720
mynewsdesk.com	12,156	7,420
pr.com	8,492	3,770
SBWire.com	16,376	3,180
mediapost.com	4,502	1,150
your-story.org	42,303	688
PRUrgent.Com	17,479	547
betanews.com	5,442	363
PRLeap.com	43,629	314
DirectionsMag.Com	19,834	236
ClickPress.com	12,498	130
free-press-release-center.info	19,260	96
openpr.com	17,098	89
ecommwire.com	29,673	35
MediaSyndicate.Com	446,193	30
NewsWireToday.com	23,797	6

New format? Not so much...

How these would fit into your promotion system is similar to what you already have:

• Hub
• remote-blogs, slideshare.net, video sites, podcast sites, article directories, press releases
• social bookmarking
• pinging RSS feeds of bookmarks
  

Using these doesn't fit every model. My own instance is moving to writing and publishing short stories. So for every short story, I could author a press release - and by illustrating these stories would be able to create all the rest of the content. However, article directories would probably be best suited for a non-fiction treatment or analysis of what the story meant. So it's 2 additional pieces of content needed for the press releases and article directories. Regular content could be simply spun in order to fit it into article directory posting, but may not be newsworthy.

(Does that 2 additional pieces of content put me over the top? Personally, I don't think it's unmanageable right now.  Getting into the inspired flow, illustrating a short story to bring it to life will be a lot more work. But there is method to this madness as well - all that content can be republished ever again, but that's another story.)

Now note that you can ping the RSS feeds of the article directories and (some) press release sites. And so cut down on your bookmarking work, which is pretty one-on-one in its execution. However, the real effective use of pinging is to do the bookmark feeds. So you may want to get your bookmarking done simply, as the RSS feeds would be cumulative for the bookmarks you do via that feed - once per week should be plenty.

Freebies: I did find some pdf's which cover more the style and use of press releases. "New Rules of PR", and "News Releases". And don't forget the "Article Re-Writer" as a free download (right-click and "save as").

And, as usual: Wishing you Good Luck in Everything You Do.

Day 23 - How Article Directories Could Work

Article Directories are far from dead. There is a lot of linking going on.

The trick is to work out how to automate their submissions so we can give them what they want (content for their advertising) and we can then get what we want (backlinks from authoritative sites.

We've been over the fact that they all want original content. And you have to spin everything you give them in order to make it so. Posting individual content to each of hundreds of article directories (AD's) would take a month or so.

And it already takes hours to get a decently spun article. (You have to spin articles by hand - never, never, never use any sort of auto-spin program - there are none out there which work, period. Been there, tried that.)

If you recall from that last time I told you about this area, I referenced pages 254-257 of The Online Sunshine Plan.

In that section, I recommended a spreadsheet-based spinning tool called Article Re-Writer. (It's linked as a download - right-click and Save As.)

I've worked quite a bit with that program and sorted it out to some simplicities. What this had as it's best feature is that you had three (or four) alternate sentences which were chosen at random. Most article spinners simply change synonyms, which too often will make your sentence into complicated nonsense.

Google is all over synonyms, since this is what they show you when you are looking for keywords. So don't think they can't spot that with their algorithms. But the more important feature is that people won't stick around and view your page - which means Google will devalue it. Of course, you may only be looking for cheap backlinks, but let's be real. Tons of low-quality backlinks will not give you any authority and you will just be hurting your own main site rankings.

The reports I've seen say you have to be from 40% to 70% original. Which means you are re-writing the bulk of every version. Article Re-Writer makes that a lot simpler.

When you change out sentences, you can change grammar structure (active to passive or vice-versa) plus all sorts of Modern American English sentence forms like "Expressed Thought". No kidding. You think? Well, I'll be.

Article spinners can't and won't handle creating quality content at least as good as your original.

I've even found that changing whole paragraphs works. This is better, since you can change things around quite a bit. Often a paragraph consists of three sentences, which can be in at least three different positions without changing the meaning of the paragraph. So if you had A-B-C, then C-B-A, then B-A-C - you would still make the same point, but these different positions won't be duplicate content.

Best I've found is to simply write the article and then go down it, paragraph by paragraph, making two alternate paragraphs each time.

Sure, it's a lot of work. But there are a near infinite amount of varieties this way. The original author of the spreadsheet said there was something over 10,000 unique versions. And you'll run out of possible article directories before that time.

Next point to solve is the one of submitting your spun articles.

The top 10 I still recommend doing by hand. Plug your spun paragraphs into that spreadsheet and hit refresh (see instructions) to give you another version. You have to use Excel or Open Office Calc - any real spread sheet program. Google Docs (now Google Drive) doesn't do random functions.

But how to do the rest of those article directories? There is only one product I've found worth mentioning. And, to be honest, I've only scratched the surface of it (remember that I've not though article directory posting was worth my time up to now...)  It's called Article Demon.

The features are that is has long lists of article directories you can load and it will then go even register you with them, and has a place to spin articles (or you can - and should - simply plug in your own spun-by-paragraph articles as above) and it will submit your articles on a schedule, with delays - so they look more natural.

And as far as I can see, it does a very good job of being able to post articles and take the load off your time. It's also a one-time purchase (right now under a hundred bucks) and is being pretty well supported, having come out with a new version just recently which was offered as a free download for existing clients. (At the time I'm writing this, I'm waiting for the download to complete so I can check it out newly.)

One of the best parts is that it allows you to spin the titles, tags, and even the biography. So they are truly unique across the various AD's. 

But that is the general theory of how I would consider utilizing all those article directories out there.

The advantage of spinning your content is that you can have original content which will rank on it's own. And I've said that there are programs and plugins (I've used ScribeFire with success on both Firefox and Chrome) to remote post your blogs. The tip here is to create the text with html code, so you can also include images, then generate variations with the code included - and then insert it as html instead of text. Trickier, but once you get the hang of it - and use a WYSIWYG editor like Kompozer - it's pretty simple work. Longer than Posterous, but if you intend to post to Article Directories, it's a simpler approach. I'll leave you to work out the production sequence and flow, though.

I get results without article directories, but if you've been already submitting to AD's, this would be a way to improve your work flow.

Flash Update: Just found this page from the folks at Market Samurai who are developing what they call "Article Samurai" - and I found a description of how it works (as linked.) Of course, you can see the similarity to what we've already discussed...

- - - -

Update: Recent research and practice down this line shows that really only EzineArticles is potentially worth anything. Looking up Warrior's forum showed that you don't have to spin content, but the backlinks from these sites aren't worth all that much. One author was telling me the backlinks helped to out-rank the competition, but you can do better with a mini-net distribution and social signals such as Onlywire and Synnd.

The other point brought up on that Forum was to remember why Article Dirs exist - to help people republish your content.  EzineArticles has survived the Panda/Penguin updates well and has been known to drive some traffic. It's also not bad to have additional links back to your landing pages from them.

But skipping the Article Directories entirely is OK, too. Synnd is developing their own article directory publishing - but it will need spun content, so you are back to burning time manually spinning your content to make it into quality work.

Fastest is to post on your blog to begin with and then re-publish to remote blogs as you go. Always bookmark and also do the "super-spindle" strategy Synnd recommends for really effective social signal utilization.

So forget "Article Demon" as it's not needed. And

- - - -

I've included another freebie today - an interview with Dan Swanson, who has spent his time writing articles and tells an overview of their benefits.

Day 20 - Backlinking you probably can't afford

(Secret Sauce sub-series 06)
Now, this is a change from what I've gone over, but you are going to run into these things and I have to tell you why I don't use them (anymore). Plus, I'll also tell you how they can be done - if you have the time to spend.

Pre-reading on this from The Online Sunshine Plan was pages 263-265.

Now I did a thorough number on researching this area after the book was published, as I kept hearing about Squidoo and Hubpages. These two have long been held to be a standard for getting backlinks. And article directories have been held up even longer. You keep running into various mentions of these, hyping them as the latest and greatest thing to use.

My research showed that while they can contribute backlinks, the search engines have moved on, so they don't have any particular reach beyond other platforms. So I'm covering these to let you make up your own mind.

There are 2 reasons I don't use any of these as part of a regular campaign for the web development clients I support (or my own online promotion):

1. They are no longer reliably able to rank on the first page of Google.
2. They take a lot of individual time to produce and maintain.

But they are all three a great way to get backlinks if you do have the time to commit yourself. And all have valid communities which they support. As well, if you study how they became a success (and how they lost it) you will see a greater understanding of the basic natural laws at work (IMHO).

Article Directories

There is more on article directories in The Online Sunshine Plan (pg 254-257) than the rest of these. And that write-up is still valid. But, as noted, you are going to have a nice time investment to take advantage of them.

This area was researched extensively, since AD's had a long run in being popular with the search engines - and were just as extensively promoted, especially by people using them to acquire list opt-in's.

Unfortunately, the AD's didn't change fast enough to remove duplicate content and both gradually were down-ranked and also slapped by the "panda" algorithm updates. Interestingly enough, the top 10 AD's (which are also the ones which routinely send traffic to your site) were also the ones which regained their rankings almost as quickly as Google lowered them.

If you want traffic, the top 10 are really the only ones you need to submit to. Unfortunately, they all insist on non-duplicative content and on top of that are each different in their submission process to the others. So they must be dealt with individually - for the most part.

Another drawback is that the best AD's all have individually-reviewed articles. So it can sometimes take 3 months to get a submitted article approved and online. This is faster after you've gotten several approved, but most won't let you submit more than a handful until you have proved you can abide by their rules. Now, after a hundred or so approved articles, you can basically get away with murder (unless someone reports you). So AD's have a long ramp-up time.

That said, if you've submitted before, they will probably start checking your work quickly, as they really do want people to submit there. So don't close old accounts with them. Might be useful, later.

While I'd (mostly) given up on these for my own submissions, recent research has discovered a relatively inexpensive one-time-payment tool which is designed to actually help solve this problem. As well, it can post non-duplicative content to dozens (or hundreds) of other AD's, which would then give you some backlink juice. (More on this with a later day, after the "Secret Sauce" series is complete. You don't need AD's as part of your own success sauce.)

Squidoo

These next two get short shrift in my book - only part of a page, in fact (pg 263).

What prompted my research into these was my studies of "Conversation Domination" which gave extensive write-up's on how to utilize them.

Squidoo was built by marketer Seth Godin and was loved by Google for a long time. This, of course, brought in spammers. Squidoo changed their requirements and were mostly able to keep showing up in the standings. As well, they have a solid community of people who go around and comment on other's "lenses" - which gives them points in Squidoo's internal awards system, and this helps raise their own sites within Squidoo rankings.

However, you really have to spend some time each week within that community to keep your own Lenses alive and expanding. If you are adding new content each week, and helping other lenses with theirs, then your various lens will "stay alive". If they go dormant, they will become invisible. And if invisible for too long, will be deleted.

The other point which came up during ranktracking just around the Panda update, is that they don't show up on the 10 ten anymore - unless you do extensive work to freshen their content and get comments as above. It's probable that a bookmarking and pinging campaign could raise a lens - but you have to decide if all this time and effort is worth it, compared to other approaches. (And after today's post, we'll start stringing my favored approach together for you to study on your own.)

Hubpages

This is a tough community to be part of. Mainly because they were top of the heap for a couple of years for Google. And the spammers hit them hard. So now, they review every single hub. And if your hub is flagged, it takes a ton of work to get it off that list. Hours per week, actually, just to build and maintain a hub.

Too many flagged hubs and your profile get flagged.

My setbacks far outnumbered my successes, so I simply dumped this as an unworkable scene. As well, since Panda, they have also not been able to rank very well for content (at least not page 1 or 2, which is all I look at.)

Before Panda, they were one of the Internet Marketing darlings - and were easy to set up hubs. Now, it's like a Fort Knox with guards coming around every few minutes - well, maybe not that bad, but compared to how easy a free blog will rank and can be posted... I decided that I didn't need their approvers looking over my shoulder and the time it took to make things all nicey-nice for a hub which would barely rank.

Probably the kicker is that they only allow one backlink per hub. Hell, I could get 2 or 3 with any submitted article. And not so stringent lookovers.

My view on this one is to completely forget it. They've gone anal with their internal community and really don't want outsiders creating content for them (IMHO.)

Summary:

I didn't really want to scare you off using these or trying them out. Articles are very good for backlinks, and once approved can be promoted with bookmarks and pings. Both Squidoo and Hubpages will tell you exactly what you need to make great content - and are actually telling you what search engines like. So if you want some training on how to build content, post a few lenses or hubs and get them approved. Great training.

However, the added time you need to invest in these make them hardly useful for a serious production line-up in terms of being able to roll out content which routinely ranks well.

And again, I'll show you what I mean over the next (and last) 3 days of "Secret Sauce" posts.

- - - -

Freebies today are numerous. But at least they are simple and fast reads. I couldn't let you go without seeing some of the marvelous marketing that was done for Squidoo. Note that these PDF's I include tell you basics which can be transferred/applied to other social media or regular websites as well.

Everyone is an Expert
Who's There?
Squidoo It Yourself