Articles - Why bother

[ChristianOC]

Well, I don't recall using the word 'sloppy' to describe the articles that should be submitted. Of course an article should be worth reading. That being said, if you can breakup a 1,500 word article and write a three-part series instead, the series-format gets you two additional links for the same amount of work.

The perspective is what's different here. I am not a real estate agent or broker. I help brokers/agents dominate their farms offline, and I do my own marketing online. I am a member of a few online forums that discuss nothing but SEO, IM, and blackhat strategies. If you want to learn the hard-core techniques that forces Google to establish all their rules, then I recommend you join one of those forums. Some have monthly fees, some are just a bonus to buying a book. I'm not going to push any particular one, because that's not why I'm here. If you really want to get ahead in the game of internet marketing, do a Google search and look around.

I haven't seen Squidoo mentioned on this forum yet. Squidoo is extremely powerful at the moment, ranking right up there with Ezine, and there is no approval process. If you have keywords that you are trying to dominate, like "newport beach broker", then you should go to Squidoo and make a lens with that name. In fact, I recommend you make many lenses that revolve around that same name. Google and the other search engines look at lenses the same way they do a webpage: they have a page name, keywords, a heading, and are then analyzed on keyword-richness.

If you have articles elsewhere on the net, re-post your own articles into your Squidoo lenses. So let's say you have fifty articles at Ezine. Go make 25 lenses at Squidoo. Post two articles into each one, and make sure you include your links like you are supposed to! You just earned 50 backlinks from a high PR site, and that's going to help your main site finish higher in SERPs, which is the overall goal.

I've been analyizing Squidoo lately because I'm about to start an online campaign for a broker here in Orange County. From what I see so far, Squidoo has been grossly overlooked by real estate professionals.

Anyway, that's a long post...and thanks for the 'welcome' !

And sorry if I came across like a hammer on my first post. Article writing (and especially multiposting) is a wonderful and easy-to-use tool for getting higher in the SERP. Anyone who wants better traffic should be submitting articles.

[Ryan Ward]

Squidoo is talked about here:

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread13121.html

and here:

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread16040.html

I personally try to stay awary from the BH stuff as it's not worth my time when there are so many easy ways to create good links, but, your point about marketing yourself online through various methods is important. Self promotion works online just like it does offline....

[avonreal]

sometimes articles are published on forums or blogs, when comments are added, depending on how many, it can become unique in its own right.

[myrealtyfeed]

Personally, I think mass syndication of articles is getting to be less and less meaningful, but limited use of articles on meaningful websites or Squidoo lenses, can be helpful.

Tend to get more traffic nowadays from a few well-placed articles than those mass-submitted to the directories.