SEO Alternatives
[NOTE: Google's Panda program has rendered some of the strategies in this guide useless. It is now available for demonstrative writing purposes only.]
It would be rather silly to list every marketing scheme invented for online commerce. If we did that, this article would probably be thirty times as long as it already is. Our purpose in describing a few alternatives to SEO Article Marketing is to point out just how effective article marketing is when it’s compared to some of the other strategies people use.
Eye Candy
Instead of attracting consumer interest, website traffic, and potential sales with quality content, for example, some webmasters mistakenly depend on things like graphics, music, and/or videos to bring forth visitors. The problem with this strategy is that unless the file names of these items are entered into a search form, the websites that host them aren’t found. Most people don’t search the Internet for file names – they search the Internet for things they can install onto their computers, ship to a friend overseas, or print out and read, etc.
Link Exchanges
Another alternative to article marketing is exchanging links. On one hand, exchanging links is never a bad idea. On the other hand, search engines are beginning to appraise the value of these links. And links from a free-for-all website or link-buying scheme (a form of search engine spam) can damage the existing value of an otherwise esteemed online presence.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is another strategy that some people try to use, but not without cost. This alternative to article marketing is definitely interpreted as spam, and search engines are now refusing to index websites that employ it.
Gateway or Doorway Pages
Perhaps you’ve run into a few gateway or doorway pages while searching for something, and considered using this strategy on your own website. Gateway or doorway pages use keywords to attract web traffic, however they contain no content – they only contain links to another website or webpage (usually the main page). Like with keyword stuffing, search engines remove these kinds of pages from their indexes as well.
These are just some alternatives to SEO Article Marketing. Although they’re obviously bad business choices, a surprising number of people continuously try to get away with them on a daily basis. They may work – but only for a little while, and the penalty of employing them is sometimes too damaging to repair (like being banished from search engines for example).
We highly suggest that you resist any urge that you may have toward using these strategies and stick with what we’ve discovered to work. When properly used, SEO Article Marketing is an effective, valuable, spam-free solution to the problem of attracting website traffic.
External Resources:
1. Strategies For Dominating The World’s Largest Search Engine
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): An Hour a Day
3. 50 Essential SEO Tips To Boost Your Search Engine Results
