Case Study: Using Articles To Increase Traffic and Ranking

If you have a website (and if you are looking to make money online, you need one) you most likely have the same problem as the rest of us, traffic. We all want more traffic; however, as search engines get smarter traffic is harder to find.

Recently I came across one of the best written articles I have ever found. The SEO Tip was about article marketing and it's effect on a web site's traffic and ranking. They clearly pointed out the success they have had with article marketing and what they did to make it work. After reading the article, I thought I would start a case study using some of the ideas mentioned on the SEO tip article.

As part of this case study, I will detail every action I take for this project and then list and track the results. If done correctly, I will be able to show empirical evidence about the effect article marketing can have on a website.

The goal: To use Article Marketing to increase links and traffic.

The Metrics: I will be using Google Analytics, and Google SiteMaps to track the results. Any increase in links, search engine rankings, and traffic will be easy to monitor.

Step One: The Landing Page

Step one of the process is deciding upon, or creating, a landing page. In this case, I have made a new page targeting some of the long tail keywords around the keyword "eBay store." I used the the keyword difficulty tool over at SEOmoz to help select what keywords to target. I ended up choosing the following keywords for the landing page:

Open eBay Store: Per SEOmoz, Keyword Difficulty 32% Slightly competitive, top rankings require well optimized on-page use and moderate link strength.

and

Starting an eBay Store: Per SEOmoz, Keyword Difficulty 29% Low competition, top rankings achievable with well optimized on-page keyword use and light link strength.

Notice I chose relatively easy keywords, as opposed to make money online, in order to better demonstrate the results of this study.

The landing page was created a week ago and therefore has no links or traffic (as I have not done any link building..yet). As with all my pages, I've optimized on page factors to be more search engine friendly and will use off-page optimization techniques. If you are curious about some of the on-page optimization techniques I used, just right click and select view page source on the landing page. I also used the W3C validator to ensure the page was XHTML compliant and used Copyscape.com to ensure the content was unique.

Step Two: Writing / Submitting an Article About The Landing Page

I am in no way a professional writer, I don't even like writing. But, it's necessary and once I put my mind to it, I can usually come up with something. In this case, I already had a topic ( and landing page ). All I needed to do was write an article that expand upon the landing page and make it unique enough that I did not run into any duplicate content issues.

Using a great article at WilsonWeb.com as a reference, I decided upon and submitted my new article (one different than the landing page) to the following article sites: EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.com, ArticlesBase.com, SelfGrowth.com, ArticleCity.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleAlley.com, SelfSEO.com, Amazines.com, ArticleTrader.com, ArticleFactory.com BusinessKnowHow.com, PromotionWorld.com, URHowTo.com and ExcellentGuide.com. In addition, I also used the article submission service over at Article Marketer.

Step Three: Write a Press Release

After careful consideration, I decided to skip this particular step and my topic article and landing page were not consistent ant with a suitable press release. However, I highly suggest doing a release if your topic warrants it.

Step Four: Monitor Results *results shown for landing page only*

It can take months for articles to be picked up on various websites and it can take up to six months for an article to "exhaust" itself on the internet. I will post weekly updates including stats on this case study.