Article Marketing SEO - 5 Simple Strategies

I've heard it said that article marketing SEO is effectively dead and that it has outlived its useful life! Well, think again, because even in this age of video marketing, article marketing can be extremely powerful and bring high quality leads to your site. Article Marketing SEO can seem overwhelming at first, so in this article I am going to share a basic blueprint that will allow you to systemise and automate the process.
Benefits of Article Marketing

1. You create an article once, and it will work for you for the rest of time
2. The power of articles compounds over time
3. Articles create highly targeted traffic
4. Your leads are trained to read your messages and will consequently take action at the next level
5. Articles act as a filter - they pre-qualify and pre-sell people on you, your product or your service. The result is often highly qualified leads for your business

Write Your Article Start by writing your keyword optimised article. 400-500 words should allow you to give solid content without making the article so long no one will read it. Remember Ezines allows a maximum keyword density of 2%. Select 4 -6 keywords and include some long tail keywords.
Here is a little tip: Google your keyword and select a top ranking website. Go to "view", "page source". Scroll through the text until you find the keywords used for that site and use the same ones for your article.
You are now ready to start promoting your article.
Strategy #1
1. Directory Submission: Submit your article to as many relevant sites as possible to increase page views and search engine rankings. It is also a great way to get high quality incoming links to your site. There are over 450 sites to choose from. Try and submit your articles to directories that have a page rank (prchecker.info) of at least 4 and are relevant to your niche. Article Submit Auto can automate the process for you. This site comes highly recommended and will submit your articles to the top 30 directories, including Ezines for a fee of $27 per month. If you prefer a manual approach, start with the top sites such as Ezines, HubPages, Squidoo, Blogger.com and ArticlesBase.
2. Search Engine Submission: To submit your articles to various search engines automatically, you can try Submit Express. This free tool will submit articles to 70+ Search Engines, including Google.
Strategy #2
Social Bookmarking: With the rise in use of Social Media sites, these sites have become authority sites, often with page rankings of 4 and above. Submitting articles to sites, such as Stumbleupon, Digg, Twitter, Facebook and so on, will again increase page views and engine visibility and create valuable one-way back-links to high ranking sites. Use Onlywire to submit articles to 43 of the top social bookmarking sites with just one click.
Strategy #3
Create Authority Backlinks: Backlinks are incoming links that point back to your website. The more authority backlinks your site has, the more importance the search engines will attach to your site. Google loves backlinks. Getting authority backlinks can be hard work though and there are programs that will help with automation. I have not personally used these sites, but one that comes highly recommended is BackLinksAutomation.com. If you prefer to work on the backlinks yourself, go to Backlink Watch. Enter the URL of a high ranking site and you will receive a list of that site's backlinks and you can get to work.
Strategy #4
Free Press Releases: For a list of the 20 best press release sites, go to MasterGoogle. Some of these are paid options, but there are plenty of free sites to submit press releases to. Just make sure you include a link back to your website, otherwise it renders the whole exercise worthless. Again, this will create quality backlinks to your site.
Strategy #5
Video: Take advantage of the power of video marketing and take your Article Marketing SEO to the next level. Make a short video about your article and use a video distribution site such as TubeMogul to distribute it to multiple sites. TubeMogul distributes your videos to 30 sites including YouTube and Viddler. Make sure you point to your Ezine article or blog post in the description box and mention the link in the video itself.
In Summary

1. Write your Article
2. Post it to your blog
3. Send the link to your blog post via Onlywire
4. Submit your article to top Directories. Automate using Article Submit Auto if you wish
5. Submit your article to the Search Engines via Submit Express
6. Submit your article to press release sites
7. Make a short video about your article and submit via TubeMogul
8. Repeat the process at least once per day

Step eight above says repeat the process at least once per day. But clearly writing more than one, say three to five articles per day will have a far more significant impact and would lead to a marked increase in traffic to your website.