Recently I came across one of the best written articles I have ever found. The SEO Tip was about article marketing and it's effect on a web site's traffic and ranking. They clearly pointed out the success they have had with article marketing and what they did to make it work. After reading the article, I thought I would start a case study using some of the ideas mentioned on the SEO tip article.

As part of this case study, I will detail every action I take for this project and then list and track the results. If done correctly, I will be able to show empirical evidence about the effect article marketing can have on a website.

The goal: To use Article Marketing to increase links and traffic.

The Metrics: I will be using Google Analytics, and Google SiteMaps to track the results. Any increase in links, search engine rankings, and traffic will be easy to monitor.

Step One: The Landing Page

Step one of the process is deciding upon, or creating, a landing page. In this case, I have made a new page targeting some of the long tail keywords around the keyword "eBay store." I used the the keyword difficulty tool over at SEOmoz to help select what keywords to target. I ended up choosing the following keywords for the landing page:

Open eBay Store: Per SEOmoz, Keyword Difficulty 32% Slightly competitive, top rankings require well optimized on-page use and moderate link strength.

and

Starting an eBay Store: Per SEOmoz, Keyword Difficulty 29% Low competition, top rankings achievable with well optimized on-page keyword use and light link strength.

Notice I chose relatively easy keywords, as opposed to make money online, in order to better demonstrate the results of this study.

The landing page was created a week ago and therefore has no links or traffic (as I have not done any link building..yet). As with all my pages, I've optimized on page factors to be more search engine friendly and will use off-page optimization techniques. If you are curious about some of the on-page optimization techniques I used, just right click and select view page source on the landing page. I also used the W3C validator to ensure the page was XHTML compliant and used Copyscape.com to ensure the content was unique.

Step Two: Writing / Submitting an Article About The Landing Page

I am in no way a professional writer, I don't even like writing. But, it's necessary and once I put my mind to it, I can usually come up with something. In this case, I already had a topic ( and landing page ). All I needed to do was write an article that expand upon the landing page and make it unique enough that I did not run into any duplicate content issues.

Using a great article at WilsonWeb.com as a reference, I decided upon and submitted my new article (one different than the landing page) to the following article sites: EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.com, ArticlesBase.com, SelfGrowth.com, ArticleCity.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleAlley.com, SelfSEO.com, Amazines.com, ArticleTrader.com, ArticleFactory.com BusinessKnowHow.com, PromotionWorld.com, URHowTo.com and ExcellentGuide.com. In addition, I also used the article submission service over at Article Marketer.

Step Three: Write a Press Release

After careful consideration, I decided to skip this particular step and my topic article and landing page were not consistent ant with a suitable press release. However, I highly suggest doing a release if your topic warrants it.

Step Four: Monitor Results *results shown for landing page only*

It can take months for articles to be picked up on various websites and it can take up to six months for an article to "exhaust" itself on the internet. I will post weekly updates including stats on this case study.