Does Article Marketing Still Work?

[leonardpayne]

The reason why I ask the question is that I had a rather disappointing (read disasterous) time
recently with an article marketing campaign.

Client provided 10 base articles in a specialist health niche area.
I spun each one 12 times giving a total of 120 articles
and then outsourced the placement on various articles sites.

In addition I paid for a linkwheek to be constructed.

Results - Virtually no traffic and absolutely NO SALES.

Obviously client was disappointed which makes him hesitant about a second campaign.

I did warn him that real results come from a long term digital marketing campaign covering all areas
including video and everything else.

He had been "told" that article marketing was the big money making thing - "Silver Bullet"

It makes me wonder whether either the concept if wrong or I was doing it wrong.

Any ideas please guys and gals


Leonard

[SJG]

Leonard,

I read recently on another forum about article marketing, that a person had a clent that he wrote articles for and it took from July 2010 to just recently, doing 3 articles a month and submitting to about 50 article directories each month, to finally see results in the form of increased traffic and backlink SEO help for the clients site. It is vitally important to make sure your client knows this is a long term, continous method. Try to get them to commit to a six month trial before they make any decisions about whether to continue to use you. By then you should be seeing some concrete results.

Just a thought but you may offer some kind of guarantee like 3 months free if after 6 months they don't see any results. Just make sure you can prove the results after 6 months otherwise neither one of you will know how effective the articles are.

P.S. did you check to see if any of those articles are showing up yet as backlinks to the clients site? You should be seeing some by at least a week after acceptance. If not, you may have to get backlinks to the articles so Google can find them.

[Newbie]

Learnard, I do not think that what you have done for your client is article marketing. I consider article/information marketing to be much more. Build 100-300 articles on his site and then another couple of hundred out for other sites ... all original. Sure, use PLR, but rewrite it in the client's "voice".

Here is an example of an informative website on a niche topic that brings credibility to its author:

www.household-budget-made-easy.com

I believe simply spinning a bunch of articles and "throwing" them out there does a disservice to the author's reputation in the long run.

Here is a recent thread over at the WF on this:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-spinning.html

[leonardpayne]

Thank SJG for your useful comments/ I'll check those out to see whether the links 'took'.

Newbie - I beg to differ. The so-called 'voice' aspect is overratted IMHO. The Only reason for spun articles, (and we are talking about decently spun - not some hack), is for backlinks. I've read the WF thread and there are a lot of differing views there.

At the end of the day, A customer/client wants to see some ROI. He/She needs more Sales.

They are expecting us to provide those through our campaigns. All else is secondary.

Thanks
Leonard

[MrPhelps]

I always advise people not to expect anything to appear stable for at least 90 days. I know lots of others who do the same; some won't even LOOK for anything for at least 90 days.

For articles published in July to be starting to have an impact today, 3 months later, fits that time-frame.

I think it's the universal expectation that everything is supposed to happen instantly that's the problem.

-David

[pryphpmysql]

Article marketing has consistently worked for those who have always produced quality content, of which readers have consistently searched. Google only slapped the ones who have never learned.