What You Can Learn From Your Most Popular Articles…
Do you look at your stats for your articles?
If you don’t I’d like to teach you a way to generate more article topic ideas based on how well your previous articles have been received.
Look at your article list.
You can do this in our article directory or by logging into your membership account and going to Article Manager => Article Statistics.
Now keep in mind these are the stats for your articles as they appear on our own article directory, so this is not an overall view of your articles’ views or publishes, but it’s still a great way to determine an article’s popularity.
Which articles have gotten the most views?
If you’ve been submitting articles for a while, you have to take into consideration that the longer the article has been published, the greater likelihood that it will have higher pageviews and publications.
But even so, I bet that there are probably some articles that you’ve submitted that are outperforming others.
What types of articles have been your top performers?
How can you use this knowledge to generate new article topic ideas?
From my own list, I’ve discovered some interesting things from my top performing articles:
EXAMPLE #1: Link Building: When Will Backlinks Show Up In Google?
This article of mine is doing really well in comparison to other articles that I submitted at the same time.
Why is this article doing so well?
=> This is a common question that people ask me, and it appears it’s a popular question all around.The article provides the answer to a popular point of confusion.
=> Maybe my title was better crafted in this article. I put the keywords first in the title, and then after that the specific topic of my article.
=> Link building is a popular topic, and the title was very clear that the article was about an aspect of link building.
=> The title asked a question in the same way someone would write it if they were doing a Google search.
How can I use this info in future articles?
- Write more articles on link building
- Write articles that approach this same question from a different angle
- Be sure to put ‘link building’ as the first words in the title
- In articles on other topics, try to put the keywords as the first words in the title
- What other questions do people ask me all the time? Write articles on those topics.
- Use “question” titles more often
EXAMPLE #2: Top 15 Article Marketing Tips
This article was incredibly easy to write because it was basically just a list of Article Marketing tips that I threw together.
Why is this article doing so well?
=> It’s a list article, and list articles are easy to read and digest.
=> It’s lots of tidbits of info on an overarching topic. This article goes broad, rather than deep. I think that makes it more appealing to a wider audience–beginners as well as more advanced folks could easily understand the article.
=> It’s a “Top Tips” article, and having “Top Tips” in the title probably contributed to the article’s popularity.
=> The title is keyword rich–I decided to write this article after doing keyword research.
How can I use this info in future articles?
- Create articles to satisfy keyword searches
- Use the keywords in the title
- Do more list articles
- Try writing some articles that go more broad than deep. The broad articles are more friendly to beginners.
Let your past success guide your future pathways.
From looking at just these 2 outperforming articles I’ve generated several ideas for future articles. If I went through my entire article list I could come up with enough future article topics to last me a long time to come.
I encourage you to look to your previous articles for a gauge of what’s working. You may find a gold mine of information that will help steer your article marketing campaign.
Question for you: How do you determine what topics to write about?
PS. Free report! Grab a free and comprehensive blueprint on how to attract sustainable, dirt-cheap, long-term targeted traffic through the power of article marketing - just click here.
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Comments on What You Can Learn From Your Most Popular Articles…
I usually consider the most important keywords of my site and the categories related to them. Then, I try to address something that is needed or ambiguous for some. based on that, I create an appealing title that can convey the message that it’s going to address the issue widely questioned.
Keywords are important too, but I’d rather focus on the overall meaning of the title first.
I am using article marketing as per your guidance to promote my website. I am little confused that how much articles should I write and should I sybmit a single article in many article directories. May you kindly guide me?
Regards,
Hi Rajesh,
Sure, thanks for your questions.
How many articles should you write: I write 8 articles a month, and I submit that many every month. Some people submit fewer with excellent results, but the key is consistency–you must do it every month over the long term.
If you are not up to getting 8 articles written in a month, then start out with a lower goal–do 3 to start with, and then get used to submitting every month. When you are used to doing 3 a month, then keep on adding on another article a month until you get to 8.
I submit my articles through my service, SubmitYOURArticle.com, which is an automatic article distribution service. Each article is submitted to an extensive distribution network of targeted publishers.
There is much benefit to getting widespread exposure for each article–this is actually the idea with article marketing. The power is in the momentum–you want the article to be picked up for publication on as many sites as possible.
If you submit to one article directory, you will likely be picked up by some other publishers (this is what article directories are for).
If you submit to several article directories, you will increase your likelihood of your article being picked up by more and more publishers.
If you submit to hundreds of publishers at the onset, you have a major jump on your competition, and you are getting much more mileage out of each article.
This also means you do not have to submit as many articles as you normally would if you were manually submitting to directories.
I recommend submitting through SubmitYOURArticle.com to get maximum results with minimal effort.
Thanks for the advise. I am new to article marketing and find your site loaded with helpful information for us beginners.
This is a great brainstorming idea! Quite practical and convenient too.
The timely question and generous answers really are quite enlightening.
Thanks!
In response to YOUR question, Steve:
Question for you: How do you determine what topics to write about?
I begin by looking at niches with which I am familiar and especially have some experience. Thereafter, it’s niches that interest me, but that I might not know much about.
Once I know that, I search for keywords related to those niches and write articles around those keywords with the best numbers: high searches / low competition. Sometimes, I write based on something I read in a book, in someone else’s articles and on other people’s web sites. Other times, I write straight from experience and personal knowledge, with a bit of research to fill in the gaps with updated material.
I do, however, aim to find an angle that everyone else is not writing about. If there are tons of articles out there about low carb diets, I’ll probably choose a different approach or diet so that my articles are unique and not just duplicated content. In other words, I try to provide content that is truly original.
Sylvia
Steve, how would you measure performance? Is this number of directories which pick up the article (and hence back links), number of click-throughs via the resource box or number of views/impressions? Or all of the above?
@Data Quality Tools
Thanks for your question–I have a very specific way that I measure performance, and I have written a post that outlines the different parts:
5 Things To Do Before You Start Article Marketing…
When measuring success, you cannot look at any one aspect–there are several indicators to keep in mind. In a nutshell, here are the things that I measure:
*Website traffic
*Backlinks
*Search engine ranking for keywords
*Google PageRank
All of these indicators play a role in revealing the success of an article marketing campaign, and they show up at different times. For instance, you may notice backlinks increase and PageRank go up before your SE ranking for your keywords improves.
Each month of your article marketing campaign some elements may take two steps forward where other ones take a step back. Things are always in flux, so it is helpful to have multiple stats to measure to get a clear picture of how you’re making progress. I keep track of all these indicators each month. Please read over that post I linked to for the full story on how to measure your performance.
I hope that helps!
It pays good dividends to look at your article “statistics” to see how well each topic is received. I have had as much as an 80% and more republish rates for some topics, and yet others only at 20%.
After you have written about 30 to 40 submissions, it will be fairly easy to get great article ideas by looking at your “stats” for your next submission.
You will learn how to incorporate the major keywords into your titles, and use them to their maximum effectiveness.