Articles for backlinks - Good idea?

[ChipFlip]

I'm new to affiliate marketing in general, and relatively new to poker. I've written SEO-optimized articles in the past, however, and find it interesting and enjoyably easy. I'd love to hear suggestions on how to effectively use articles and article marketing to drive traffic to a poker-related website and create high-quality back links from high-PR sites.

Thanks in advance.

[Randy]

The most effective way is to create a unique article for a single website. The days of submitting dozens of articles to hundreds of article directories and getting an easy ranking for it are long past.

[pokaff]

is it typically a one-way link thing, or can it be two-ways in this case?

[Randy]

A lot of people use it as a one-way linking strategy, but personally, I don't think there's any reason to NOT reciprocate.

Originally Posted by pokaff

is it typically a one-way link thing, or can it be two-ways in this case?

[ChipFlip]

I was thinking of all the possibilities...maybe posting on someone's blog for a link, writing an article for an article directory, writing a short ebook and distributing it via viral marketing, etc...

[SunPoker.com]

I agree with Randy on this one. The best way to create links for your site is to have a piece of content that others will want to link to. It's more of a long term strategy because it's going to take some time for people to discover the page itself in order to link to it. If it's good and provides value to the readers, it will eventually be linked to. You do have to work at getting your site noticed though.

I think writing articles for other sites and blogs can be an effective way to get links to your site, but the BEST way would be to write excellent content and post it on your site.

Mark

[ChipFlip]

I see...so the best way is to create content for one's own site, not for others. What about a combination of both? And what about creating content for sites that have a PR of X or higher?

[Randy]

I think I might have mis-stated my point. Creating content for other people's sites is an excellent way to get backlinks.

But creating one article and submitting it to 400 article directories is so 2003 it's not even funny.

Create unique content for people with really great sites in exchange for a link, and you'll reap big benefits.

Originally Posted by ChipFlip

I see...so the best way is to create content for one's own site, not for others. What about a combination of both? And what about creating content for sites that have a PR of X or higher?

[kingcobra]

This is something I've been thinking about doing for awhile but really haven't had time yet. Something like this can only help you really although it's true that you want to focus first and foremost on your own content. I smiled at the 2003 remark - we're a lot more still back there then most people realize I should say, we're really in 2003 but the search engines want you to believe we're not

Ken
http://kingcobrapoker.com