Part 4g - Article Marketing - Track Your Success
Some article directories don't offer much in the way of tracking tools. But my favorite site, EzineArticles.com, gives you the ability to track your page views (the number of people who click on your article title to read it) and also your publisher clicks.
"Publisher clicks" refer to the number of people who click on the "Ezine Publisher" button on your article page. Normally, people who click on this button are interested in publishing your article on their website, blog or ezine. The tool lets them copy and paste the article in either HTML or text format.
These tools give you the ability to measure the performance of your articles. When you have several articles posted, your article report will reveal some key information. For instance, you can review your list of articles and see which ones had the highest page views. This helps you understand what kinds of titles are performing better than others. That's one of many reasons I use and recommend EzineArticles.com. As of this writing, none of the other article sites offer that feature.
You can also track your article's success by using a search engine. I recommend using Google, which is the most frequently updated of all the major search engines. Google will give you a better picture of where your articles are popping up.
There are a couple of ways to go about this:
1. Google Your Website
If you Google the word "website," followed by a colon, followed by your website address, you'll be able to see all the inbound links to your site from other sites. Here's what I would type into Google to find inbound links to my website:
website: www.onlineequailzer.com
You could also use Yahoo's Site Explorer tool to perform this function, but Yahoo has more of a lag time with regard to finding new links to your site, new article placements, etc. Site Explorer is located here: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
2. Google Your Article's Title in Quotes
You can also enter your article's title into Google with quotes around it. The quotes tell Google to match the exact phrase and ignore variations. If the part you put in quotes is too general (like "home buying"), you'll get back a lot of returns that have nothing to do with your article. The quotes will help you narrow the query to your exact article title.
You could also include your last name in the search query, which will make the results even more specific (and will give you a good idea of where your articles are popping up on the web).
For example, I could enter the following queries into Google to see where some of my articles have appeared:
- "What Articles Can Do That Ads Cannot"
- "The Written Path to Online Visibility"
- "SEO Tunnel Vision"
Searches the titles above (with quotes included) would give me an instant snapshot of where some of my articles are appearing across the web. The articles above have even found their way onto some high-quality / high-traffic sites, so those article placements are giving me direct traffic as well as SEO / search engine ranking benefits. Nice! And all it took was a little time and effort.
3. Measure Your Web Traffic Before and After Publishing
All of the strategies in this book, including article marketing, will help you increase your web traffic. So if you don't know how to measure your website traffic, it's a good time to find out. Most website hosting companies offer some form of "stats" page where you can view the number of page requests, unique visitors, and other vital information about your website.
You could also install Google Analytics for free, if you'd like. This product used to be called Urchin, until Google bought and renamed it. Google Analytics will give you such information as number of visitors per day, top sources of traffic, key phrases people use to find you through search engines, etc.
Learn more at www.google.com/analytics/
Make a note of your monthly website traffic before your article marketing campaign. Then compare that number to your monthly traffic after launching your article marketing campaign (maybe a month or so after you've begun, and after publishing at least five articles online). Compare the two numbers, and continue to compare each month over the last.
4. Google the Key Phrase / Topic You Wrote About
This is perhaps the most important way to measure you success (or lack of it), because this puts you into the shoes of your prospects. If you followed all the steps I prescribed in this chapter, you'll have written your article with a certain key phrase in mind. That phrase will be part of your title, part of your first paragraph, and spread naturally throughout the body of your article.
For instance, if I wrote and published an article focused on the phrase "direct mail marketing strategies," I would wait about a week after it was published and then begin to Google that phrase. Maybe my article would show up on the first page of results. Maybe it would show up a few days later. Maybe it wouldn't show up at all. It doesn't always work, and sometimes you won't know the reasons why. You just have to keep trying. But it's exciting when it does work! And more importantly, it has the potential to drive qualified prospects to your business website.
If you use EzineArticles.com, and you follow all the search engine advice from Article Marketing Step #3, sooner or later (probably sooner) you'll hit the mark and get an article on the first page of results for your key phrase. And if you see it there, your prospective customers will also see it there.
Now multiply that by dozens of articles over time (and the many websites where those articles will end up), and you can begin to understand the traffic potential of an article marketing campaign.
What I want you to understand from this section is the ongoing nature of article marketing. You must write, publish, track and evaluate, and then repeat the process. It's not a one-shot deal. The best article marketers — those who enjoy the most rewards — treat it as a regular part of their business. They set up an article publishing schedule, and they stick to it.
In fact, repeating the process is the next and final step!
Articles Continued >> Step 7 - Repeat the Process