When I started my websites, I spent a lot of time and energy in writing articles for ezines. These are websites that allow you to publish articles on their sites in return for a link back to your site. Overall, I think ezines are an excellent way to help your blog / website get established.
These are some of the benefits of Writing For Ezines
Increase Number of Links
Firstly, you get a link from the ezine. But, more importantly your article is invariably copied by other websites looking for free content. Some articles have been copied by 20-30 other sites, therefore, you can quickly build up a range of inbound links. Many of these links are of low quality. Sites which just scrape content are not valued by Google. However, sometimes your article may get picked up by a good quality website in your niche. These links are more valuable than the initial ezine where the article was published.
Choose Anchor Text Keyword
- When writing ezines it is important to carefully choose the most useful anchor text keywords. Don’t just link to your home page. But, link to specific articles with the most valuable keywords.
- For example, quite a popular keyword at Net Writing is ‘writing good email’. Therefore, I will include this anchor text and link to the specific article. The important thing is to focus on particular articles and vary the anchor text.
Traffic.
One of the most surprising things about the ezine articles is that they have provided a good source of traffic. It is not a huge amount, but, to my economics site, ezinearticles may send about 50-60 a month. It is quite a small % of total traffic, but, the traffic is quite targetted and google analytics suggest the traffic from ezines spends a long time period at the site. By linking to my blogs, this traffic can help to build up RSS subscribers. True I have written quite a few articles, but, if you write 1 article per week, you are constantly adding to your traffic sources. There is a powerful cumulative effect. Just don’t expect to write one article and then sit back.
- This is always the sign of a good link – does it send traffic? If a link is sending traffic, it is likely that Google is valuing the site and therefore more likely to value the link.
- Tip: Make the link relevant. If I write an article “Why the Dollar is devaluing”. My link at the end will be something like For more detail on the consequences of a falling dollar”. This will significantly increase the click through rate of the link. Basically, I try to make the link as relevant and interesting so people are encouraged to come to my site. If you have an unrelated link, the click through rate will be very low.
What Kind of Article does well?
My target article is 400 words, with a clearly defined structure. It is usually broken down into sections using bullet points and subheadings. Scannable content is always more likely to get copied by other sites. The important thing with ezine articles is to be able to write good quality articles quickly. Choose a topic you know well and write as simply as possible. Also choose good keywords for the title so the article will get good rankings and traffic in google
Do You Publish Ezine articles on Your Own Site?
No, I write articles specifically for ezines. This means my site is not associated with duplicate content. My theory is that the link is more valuable because the content is not on my site. In the beginning I did duplicate some articles but now prefer not to do it.
Limits of Ezines
I’m not entirely convinced how valuable ezine links are. Google is trying to crack down on duplicate content. However, I feel ezines have helped grow my sites especially in the beginning.
Time Consuming to write articles. It is time consuming to write articles. Also you may feel it is more worthwhile to publish articles on your own site. But, in the beginning, I think it is definitely worth publishing 10-20% of your articles on an ezine. As your site gets more natural links, this % might fall. When your site is very big, there is no need to use ezines any more. The articles will be more valuable on your own site.
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2 comments ↓
[...] sites will copy and give you more links. Use article titles like 10 tips for getting links. More on ezine articles here. e.g. vary the link text. The benefits of ezines may have become devalued because everyone is doing [...]
I just got my first E-Zine published on “how to apply proactiv.”
E-Zines are great for shorter articles and then Squidoo is great for huge informational resources. Either way, these are both great ways to build links to your site.
Also, don’t forget to promote the E-Zines that you write through youtube, your blog itself, and social networking services.
PS. Thanks for the article. Great information… Just what I was looking for.