Let’s see something else before jumping on to Article Marketing - One of the best and popular link building strategies to the SEO world is guest posting. It is a popular and effective strategy of increasing your blog’s traffic without the use of search engine optimization even and pay-per click advertisements. Simply, you will only write like usual but instead of publishing the post to your own website, you are posting is to another blog owners’. Creating a win-win scenario for you and the blog owner, guest posting entails a long process of prospecting, pitching and waiting.

You might think that by being a guest and offering unique content to somewhere else on the web, you are doing article marketing in parallel. That may be the case for the past conceptualization of article marketing. However, such is not the case in the 2.0 version of it. In this article, we will discuss five possible reasons why guest posting is not Article Marketing 2.0.

What is Article Marketing 1.0?

As the name suggests, article marketing is marketing your company’s products or services through your website or blog through your articles. Many webmasters are using this tactic through the years, with all their articles in competition with the rest. Only a few published posts, unfortunately, get noticed. For instance, when they publish articles in higher ranking and more trusted sites in general like e-zines and niche-focused sites, they would get more attention. Posting similar contents have been published in different sites. So when Google came up with its Google Panda and Penguin updates, regardless of how many websites you have posted your article, it will only be recognized and counted as one by the Google system.

In effect, Google has caused many bloggers and SEO professionals damage (or mortal wound, probably) on article marketing as a way of link building. This is when article marketing 1.0 died a brutal death. The rank of once trending websites had been put down below. Primarily, impacted mostly were those written with black hat SEO. These articles contain with too many repetitive keywords, causing frustration and confusion to readers and the search engine. Thus Google had policed them and made article marketing no longer an effective SEO trick. Now, from article marketing 1.0 to guest posting, bloggers should be wise enough to practice article marketing 2.0.

The Reasons Explained

 1. Article marketing 2.0 is not only about content distribution.

In an effort to boost page rankings, too many web spammers have been practicing guest posting for so long. The result is a flood of low-quality content to online directories. Only a few article directories have survived the wipe out of Google, those which have developed organically, where rich information can be sourced out.

2. Article marketing 2.0 emphasizes on quality content.

This second reason highlights what the first point means: quality and unique content is what Google looks out for. Prior to the 2.0, Google did not punish sites with duplicate content. So guest posts, despite being redundant, crap or just rehashes of the original, were shown at the top of the results page. In the past, they were accepted by Google as in the same way as the original content built with quality. Now the system has been cleaned. Your content will only be acknowledged as it deserves. Your article should have at least 500 words that are formed to convey a meaningful message to your target niche.

3. Article marketing 2.0 is reader-centric.

In most cases before in guest posting, web writers wrote to promote only their sites and offerings. The focus was not much on the audience. Part of the evolution to the 2.0 version of article marketing was the change in tone. The marketing component has been refined to that of a reader-centric voice. After all, the biggest concern here should be the target readers. They visit your site and read your article because they want to be informed. The end goal of SEO, by all means, is to answer their questions and establish trust and relationship with them to drive more traffic to your website.

4. Article marketing 2.0 is formed with emphatic expressions.

The key in writing content is to strike a chord with the readers. True, in guest posting or article marketing 1.0, you may have related your topic to address the readers’ concerns. In contrast, in 2.0, you set the bar level higher. You can do this by asking “why” five times to get deeper explanations and reveal emotional reasoning. This method gets people hooked as it resonates and stimulates the emotions within them.

5. Article marketing 2.0 requires optimized article titles.

Surely, you have read through titles in EzineArticles, Hubpages and Squidoo. Notice any semblance? Their article titles excite the readers’ minds. Similarly, you should craft optimized article titles as they serve as the initial gate pass to be read. Keep in mind that the title should be comprised of pertinent keywords. Don’t worry much about the length. Give more consideration to writing interesting titles for your articles to be clicked—and later shared or republished.

Conclusion

At this point, it should be clear that publishing the same content in hundreds of incompetent article directories or link farms will not work anymore. Since Google and other major search engines are pushing their way to refine the search algorithms and ranking formulas they have, we go to article marketing 2.0. Aim to write to give value and better help the readers on the web to land on the pages that truly provide significance to them. The integral area you should focus on is quality content. When you have this plus the power of leading your readers to trust you, then your website passes the test of quality control led by search engines.

Those were the reasons why you shouldn’t consider guest posting as article marketing 2.0. What are you thoughts on this article marketing post?