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...but it's easily fixed.

I have been planning, establishing, monetizing and selling niche websites for well over three years now.

I currently generate a comfortable six figure passive income from my portfolio of a dozen plus niche sites, which are monetized with 7 different monetization methods.

I have tried and tested all sorts of internet marketing strategies over time, and of all that I have tried, one particular strategy has consistently delivered top results for my niche websites.

My Best Link Building Strategy

Article marketing is still my single most beneficial internet marketing initiative today.

The way I do it may have changed slightly over time, given the changes in search engine algorithms and market saturation resulting from individuals and businesses rapidly joining the space, but the overall strategy and its benefits remain sound.

Article marketing is also the single most time consuming strategy that I engage in when initially establishing a new niche website.

In fact, for many of my niche websites, article marketing is ALL that I have done to get my pages indexed and ranked higher over time on search engine.

Yes, each one of those websites ranks on page one of Google for their respective key terms.

Surprised Article Marketing Still Works?

Unfortunately, these days I have been reading more and more about how article marketing is extinct and doesn’t work anymore.

That is not the case at all.

Like I said, the methods have slightly changed, by the overall concept is still as solid as it was before.

Common Article Marketing Mistake

Many novice internet marketers engage in article marketing by submitting spun articles through automated article submission tools that syndicate the article across thousands of article directories online, each of which link back to the subject website that is being promoted.

While this strategy worked in the past, search engines have become a bit more sophisticated today in recognizing the “newness” of the underlying site being promoted or linked back to and therefore are taking caution before handing out top rankings like free cookies.

There was a time when this is exactly what I did, and for many niche websites this is ALL that I did and observed my website climb the ranks of Google over time.

However, a simple SEO site analysis shows that this strategy no longer works.

In fact I am seeing that it causes more detriment as once a website is “slapped” by search engines, redeeming it out of the dog house is quite a challenge.

What search engines are doing is very much logical, if you think about it.

It’s common sense that a brand new website cannot possibly generate thousands of back links to it overnight, can it?

But by doing so, novice internet marketers are setting off red flags, which in turn causes their websites more harm than good.

Excessive red flags can throw a website into the search engine dog house for extended periods of time.

I know that for a fact because I have experimented with this aggressive method of article marketing. While it worked just a few years back, it doesn’t work in today’s online landscape.

Article Marketing the Right Way - the Only Way

What should a marketer do instead?

Instead of building thousands of back links to the main website, marketers should build an intermediate “layer of protection”, which all back links must be pointed to.

This layer in turn can be pointed to the main site.

Before mass submitting it through an automated submission program, write a unique article and post it on a popular directory or web 2.0 property like Squidoo and ensure it links back to your website utilizing the appropriate anchor text.

Create and submit another article through the automated submission software and make all the back links point to the article in the directory or web 2.0 property.

Do you see where I am going with this?

The key is to select a layer that is already popular and credible in the eyes of the search engines.

For example, Google may not think much of it if one particular Squidoo lens was to get thousands of back links overnight as opposed to a brand new no-namer website that you created last week.

The Proof Is in the Pudding

This is not only theory.

I tested this process by marketing two brand new websites using two different approaches.

You can read more about the experiment and the glaring results in my previous guest post here.

Article Marketing Bottom Line

Article marketing is still my single most beneficial internet marketing strategy today.

It is alive and well, and has worked like a charm each time I launch a new niche website.

Try it out for yourself and closely monitor search engine response after each submission.

What are your thoughts about this “indirect” article marketing strategy - do you agree or disagree? Why?

What article marketing strategies have proven to be the most successful for you?

All the best,
Sunil