If you're wondering how Dede Hoffman got her website to the #1 position for the term, "Saint Louis Business Writer" with only 5 article, here's what she did. And while I was editing this article I also discovered that Dede's site currently ranks #4 for the term "Saint Louis Marketing Writer" too.

As I mentioned in my blog post, Dede and I collaborated on this project. She offered to ghostwrite 5 articles, and I offered to upload those articles to my Article Marketer account for distribution, and share the anchor text links in the author block with her. (The anchor text link in the author block is the key to getting to the top of the search engine results page.)

The reason Dede had to ghostwrite the articles was because Article Marketer only allows one author per account. I would have been delighted to attach Dede's name as the author of the articles, (which has no impact on getting either of our websites to the top of the search engine results page) but the Article Marketer Terms of Service did not allow it.

Before we started this project, I ran a keyword search using our Market Samurai account for the term "marketing writer." The three most commonly used terms people were searching for were, "marketing writer," "business writer" and "copywriter."

And since Dede wanted to focus her attention on the St. Louis market, we did another keyword search for that term, and discovered that people were using "St. Louis," "Saint Louis" and "STL." The most commonly used term was "Saint Louis," so that's what we used in the keyword phrase.

With 450,000+ web pages competing for the term "Saint Louis Business Writer," I knew we had a chance to take the top spot for that term, and we did.

Our goal for Dede was to try to take the top position for the two most commonly searched for terms her prospects were using when they were looking for a writer. Those terms were:

Saint Louis Business Writer
Saint Louis Marketing Writer

... you can click on the links above to see where www.Wordscapesllc.com is currently ranking for each keyword phrase.

It's important to note what when we started this project, Dede's website, Wordscapesllc.com, did not show up on Google for any of those terms.

I wanted our website, RecognizedExpert.com, to place high for the term "Article Marketing Forum." This was going to be a little tougher since there were over 7,000,000 pages competing for that keyword phrase. Again, when we started this project, RecognizedExpert.com did not show up on Google for that term.

Here's what we did.

Dede wrote 5 articles on the subject of article marketing, which she was eminently qualified to do. She sent them to me in a Word document and I uploaded them to my Article Marketer account.

Once uploaded, I added the following information,

1. Keyword rich titles for each article.
2. A compelling one sentence description for each article.
3. A call to action in the author block using the the keyword phrases that Dede and I wanted our websites to place for in the search engines.
4. Selected the appropriate categories for each article.
5. Selected the keywords and keyword phrases for each article.

Here's a link to three of the five articles as they appear on the ezinearticle.com website. Keep in mind that each article is currently showing up on hundreds of different websites, ezinearticles.com is just one of those sites.

Article Submission Guidelines Help You Get Mass Distribution

Article Title Tips For Massive Traffic

How Article Marketing Drives Visitors to Your Website

This is the text (with the clickable keyword rich anchor text links) that appeared in the author block below the article.

Notice how we shared the clickable text in the author block. It's OK to have as many as two links in the author block, and in this case I directed one link to RecognizedExpert.com and the second link to Wordscapesllc.com.

This is how Dede got her website to show up in the #1 position for the terms "Saint Louis Business Writer," and "Saint Louis Copywriter." It's also how I got RecognizedExpert.com to show up in the #3 position for the term "Article Marketing Forum."

If you look at the articles Dede wrote, you'll find that we used the anchor text, "Saint Louis Marketing Writer," "Saint Louis Copywriter" and "Saint Louis Business Writer" for Dede, and "Article Marketing" and "Article Marketing Forum" for me. It's important to mix up your anchor text and direct the links to differenet pages on your website. (You can learn more about this in our Article Marketing for Professionals video program.) Soon Dede and I will be ranking high for those terms too.

If you have any questions or comments about how we accomplished this task, and how you can too, please feel free to ask us in the "Quick Reply" section below.

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Hey Bob,

I have an Article Marketer account for several years now. But I stopped using it when the duplicate content discussion became lively. I now only submit to EzineArticles and a few other bigger directories.

From your post I understand that Article Marketer is still very valuable.

Is that really the case? And do you want to share how you use it?

Kurt

Hi Kurt:
Article Marketer has been great. I'm not concerned about the duplicate content issue because I don't post the articles on my website. I only use them to drive traffic to my site and for the benefits offered by the author block.

I have to assume that their distribution network is the reason I'm getting such good results.

I'm happy to share everything I know about using Article Marketer with you. It's a very simple tool and I've answered most of the questions in our Article Marketing for Professionals video program. Please feel free to ask me anything you would like to know about article marketing or Article Marketer.

Aloha, Bob

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I wouldn't view article marketing as a "duplicate content" issue. I'm sure the Associated Press isn't being penalized by Google because they syndicate to more than one source.

Duplicate content takes place on a single website. For example consider the following (fake) links

http://website.com/
http://www.website.com/
http://website.com/index.php
http://www.website.com/index.php
http://website.com/index.php?p=PrintableVersion
http://www.website.com/index.php?p=PrintableVersion
http://website.com/index.php?v=MobileVersion
http://www.website.com/index.php?v=MobileVersion

There are eight links above that in essence are the same. I believe that is what is being called Duplicate Content.

Sure, having your article on 5000 other sites will make it more difficult for your article (that is located on your website) to be at the top of the SERPs, but that doesn't matter because they are all your articles. The link back from your author block is all that really matters in the long run. Just my 2c.

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Great Post Bob, one quick question...

What happens if down the line you have submitted many articles using this service and a year from now you decide you no longer want to pay for the subscription?

Do your articles go away? Or are they permanently posted on all of the sites the article was picked up on?

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That's awesome how you were able to get all of those terms in just 5 articles. It really shows the power of proper article marketing, especially in local niches like that. Good stuff!

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Hi William:
Great question. Let me start by telling you that the articles will stay posted on the sites that accepted the articles for as long as the site owners choose to keep them.

All Article Marketer does is distribute the articles. They have no control beyond that. I've been so impressed with Article Marketer that I purchased a lifetime membership ($600).

However, if I were starting out with this service, I would purchase their 90 day service and use it to the hilt. Unlimited article distribution for less than $100. This is a great way to test their service.

The other article distribution service I tested was iSnare. They only charged $2 per article, but they didn't have anywhere near the distribution and they took weeks to authorized my article. But, I would definitely choose the iSnare $2/article service over the free Article Marketing service, only because the free Article Marketer service has a very limited distribution. You have to pay to get wide distribution.

Please keep in mind that getting a high ranking for a keyword or keyword phrase and adding a local prefix like "Saint Louis" is certainly easier than targeting the term alone. But there are additional benefits to owning the local term. The greatest benefit is being seen as the local expert in your field. And remember, while you're targeting a keyword or keyword phrase with a local prefix, you're also targeting the keyword or keyword phrase without the prefix too ... it's just going to take more effort to get to the number one position for that term without the prefix.

Thanks for the comment mactyrrell.

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ArticleMarketer streamlines the account creation on all the article sites they publish to. Meaning you can skip the thousands of "please confirm your account" emails

Once your article is summited though it is out of ArticleMarketers hands and they cannot recall it. It's permanently out there.

ArticleMarketer will continue to submit your article to new sites as they come on board for the life of your account too.

They have by far, the worst customer service on the planet, but I still have yet to find any other service that comes close to what they offer. They have always produced amazing results for me. iSnare as an example is a distant 2nd.

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Thx Guys.... You both are always very helpful

I am very curious to see how these types of sites play out in the future with Universal Search, Personalized search, behavior-based search, intent-based search in 2009

Interview with Bruce Clay: Ranking Is Dead!

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Thanks William:
I had an opportunity to talk with Jeff Melcher yesterday via Facebook, and he thinks the world of you ... as do Josh and I. How did you get that reputation? :-)

Other than that, I read the interview with Bruce Clay (thanks for posting it) and I agree. The key, as we both know, is to continue to provide better and better content to our target markets. When you take into account personal search results, each niche is going to get smaller and smaller and more and more valuable. This is all very good.

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