Article Swapping and Trading Tips
Swapping articles is an effective way to improve your search engine rankings and at the same time attract more visitors to your site. Creating an Article Trading Center is one of the most resources you can actually provide your potential visitors. An article trading center is basically a page or pages dedicated to exchanging articles related to your web site with other article authors and webmasters, thereby benefiting all involved. The process is similar to exchanging links, but has a higher return on investment or greater results (my opinion). Benefits of including an article center to your web site's offerings are:
- Adds resourceful content to your website.
- Builds and establishes your site, as well as your, reputation as a valuable resource.
- Provides readily available ezine (electronic magazine) content.
- Improves your search engine positioning.
- Exapnds your community of professional contacts and circle of networking.
Why does article swapping/trading have more impact on page rankings than link exchanges?
- Search engines index links pages very infrequently, usually done when there are no external links to these types of pages. This means that the link swapping you just spent an hour of your day locating and negotiating will most likely be overlooked by search engines.
- Your link is usually placed a a page filled with other links. Only a small number, if any, external links will actually support that page. This means that search engines (i.e. Yahoo!, Google, or MSN) will grant very minimal weight to that link even if their spider finds it.
- The keyword content of the page linking to your site is completely out of your influence and control. Though the subject matter may be relevant, the page linking to your site may not have as aggressive a keywords strategy as your site. Hence, search engine robots may not realize that such a link is actually relevant to your unique keywords.
It is important to trade articles with quality websites that compliment, but not compete, with your web site. If you exchange an article with a competitor, make sure your's isn't located 10 clicks deep while your competitor's is located on your site 2 clicks away. Joining article lists is an effective way to find the types of articles that would add value to your site. Websites that offer article directories are another viable resource.
Article Sites:
- http://www.addme.com/nlsubmit.htm
- http://www.search-engine-secrets.net/search_engine_articles.htm
- http://www.ideamarketers.com
- http://amazines.com/
- http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/articles.htm
- http://www.boazepublishing.biz/articledir/
- http://www.lilengine.com/submit.php
- http://www.webpronews.com/submit.php
Article Lists:
- article_announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
- ArticlePublisher-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
- articlesubmission-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
- Free-Content-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
- Free-Reprint-Articles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
- Free_eContent-subscribeyahoogroups.com
First way of setting up an Article Swap/Trade:
- Swapping Articles: You must first choose a subject and agree on it together. Then, swap articles. Remember to include your site's search engine keywords into the page title and the article contents. There should also be a link to your site that contains your keywords (i.e. a resource box or byline).
- Publishing: Each webmaster can reformat the "article submitted" to more seamlessly correspond with the site's layout. Then each webmaster would integrate the "article submitted" into their site. For a successful swap to occure, the submitted article must be linked to and from a page that is already indexed in all the major search engines.
- Linking: Each webmaster can then post a text link on their website which points visitors to the newly submitted "guest article" on each other's sites. This text link must also consist of the necessary keywords. Since search engines may not consider pages that point to each other as relevant, your article must not be on the same page that you are linking the "guest article" to. This way, you're pointing to your own article from your site and making sure it will get indexed.
Second way of setting up an Article Swap/Trade:
- Better known as an article link swap, you are just following
the basic structure and idea of a link exchange.
- First, setup a trading center letting your visitors know you welcome article link trades.
- Second, set up a guest article page which will have all your guest article links.
- Third, start looking for articles on the web and offer to link to that article if the site owner is willing to link back to any one of your articles from your index.
What An Article Swap/Trade Achieves:
Because each article has both internal and external links directing users to it, major search engines will eventually locate these articles and add them to their databases.
Links that search engines locate possess much more weight in rankings because the articles only have one to two links on them, while the actual article has external links pointing to it.
Additionally, search engines also consider links of your aricle as substantially relevant to your site's keywords since these links were located on a page with optimized keywords for your site.
Once the desired article has been found, contact the article's author to explain the advantages of exchanging articles. It is recommended that you be selective when browsing and choosing articles. Obviously, you want them well written and to consist of helpful information that will provide value to the internet community.
Developing a broad and selective Article Center will not only attract greater traffic to your web site, but it will also improve your site's search engine rankings. While having your own articles published on the internet will build your own personal reputation as a valued resource in your field, it will also lead to an increase in your site's online success.
A great software application tool that makes managing Article Swap Exchanges so much easier is provided by 123LinksManager. 123Linksmanger helps you identify unethical partners that are hiding your referral links on their pages, validates links daily for reciprocation, has the ability to manage multiple domains and directories at once, manage one way, two way and three way link opportunities and more.