SEO Techniques: Article submission

Article submission is a powerful internet marketing service in which we write articles related to our industry and then do manual submissions in quality article directories, relevant blogs and content rich websites. For which our website link will appear faster in the Search Engines because these directories are regularly crawled, also get more amount of visitors and backlinks as well which indirectly helps for ranking well in search engines.

But remember Article submission is only helpful if we are submitting unique content on high quality article site.

There are various benefits of article submission including advertising, marketing and publicity of your business on the World Wide Web. Two of the main benefits are:

• Article submissions can enhance and improve the ranking of your online business in search engines byincreasing the quantity of backlinks and PR.
• Another benefit that article submission offers is that of establishing the particular website owner as an expert in their industry. By providing valuable detail and information within articles, it builds the trust of potential customers thereby giving them a reason to visit your website.

5 key points to consider while writing articles

During the process of article submission do not forget to consider below 5 key points. Following these points will meet the purpose of both i.e. your target audience and search engines.

1. Articles should be original and information rich.
2. Articles should be keyword rich but not excessive to the point of keyword stuffing.
3. The average length of articles should be between 500 and 700.
4. Give a unique title to your article with main keyword into it so as to make it easy for web crawlers to identify and classify the topic of your article.
5. Giving subheadings, bullets and numberings to articles make it presentable and easy to read for potential customers.

Article Submission sites list:-

1. http://ezinearticles.com/

2. http://www.articlesbase.com/

3. http://www.articlesnatch.com/

4. http://scriffon.com/

5. http://slashdot.org/

6. http://www.articlebiz.com/

7. http://www.articlecube.com/

8. http://www.articlealley.com/

9. http://www.amazines.com/

10. http://www.articlesphere.com/

11. http://hubpages.com/

12. http://goarticles.com/

13. http://www.articlecity.com/

14. http://www.isnare.com/

15. http://www.articledashboard.com/

16. http://www.articlecontentking.com/

What are hashtags and how we use them?

Hashtags are everywhere. You can see them on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, at events, or even on commercials and movie trailers.

To understand why hashtags are important, you have to go back a few years.

In 2007, Twitter users began using the # sign in front of words or phrases to create groups within Twitter. Then in 2009, Twitter took a cue from their users and began hyperlinking all hashtags in tweets. Now, in 2015, all major social networks(excluding LinkedIn) hyperlink hashtags because the adoption rate has been huge!

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are a word, or group of words after the # sign (like #hashtag, #seo, #digitalmarketing or anything else). If you’re more technically inclined, you might know them as a metadata tag. For marketers - you’ll know them as a way to engage your brand with your market.

But what does hyperlinking have to do with the importance of hashtags?

When someone clicks on a hashtag on any of these social networks, they’ll automatically be shown all other public posts that include the same hashtag. This is incredibly valuable for a small business because it can expose your content to a wider audience, and help your business get found. If someone does a search on a social network, or Google, for a hashtag you used, your post — and potentially even your profile — can be found by someone you never would have reached without hashtags. This happens all the time. Hashtags are widely used to search for content within social networks and search engines, which mean hashtags, give you a great opportunity to get your information in front of potential customers without paying a dime!

How to Create a Hashtag?

Hashtags are simple things.  There are just a few technical requirements to know:

    No Spaces Allowed

A hashtag can be a single word, an abbreviation, an invented combination of letters and numbers, or a phrase.  If it is a phrase, there can be no spaces between words. All letters and numbers must run together without spaces in a hashtag.  You can’t have punctuation or symbols in your hashtag (other than the # symbol at the beginning).  Numbers are OK, but you must also have at least one letter with the numbers — hashtags cannot consist entirely of numbers.

    Start with the # Symbol

A hashtag always starts with the symbol # followed directly by letters and sometimes numbers.  Fun factoid:  depending on where you are in the world, the symbol # is called various things.  In the United States and Canada, it is called a number sign or sometimes a pound sign.

But in other places, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, that # symbol is called a hash sign.  So you see, that’s how these labels came to be called “hashtags.”  In essence, a hashtag is a label that consists of a word or phrasetag with a hash symbol in front of it.

How should I use hashtags?

Use hashtags on all social networks you have a presence on, but don’t go overboard! Too many hashtags can hurt your engagement and can get you unfollowed. In fact, when you use more than two hashtags, your engagement actually drops by an average of 17 percent. You’ll start noticing funny hashtags, people using lots of hashtags, and even #FullSentencesTurnedIntoAHashtag. But if you’re using hashtags to help your business, it’s best to hashtag the keywords that are related to your business and industry.

How to Use a Hashtag That Already Exists?

Rather than creating your own hashtag, sometimes you want to enter a discussion around a topic where a hashtag already exists. You would simply add that hashtag somewhere (usually at the end) of your Twitter tweet or other social media update.

By doing so, you are sharing your content related to that same topic.  By adding the hashtag to your content, you are saying “Hey, I want to chime in on this discussion.” Others interested in that topic will see your content.

Black hat SEO, Gray hat SEO and White hat SEO Techniques

Various techniques are used for search engine optimization, or SEO. One way to group these techniques is with hat terminology: white hat SEO, black hat SEO, and gray hat SEO. White hat SEO is considered ethical SEO, while black hat SEO is considered unethical SEO. Gray hat SEO walks the line between the white and black hats of search engine optimization.

For eg: anyone can get famous either by doing very good things or by doing very bad things. Both will make you popular but in different circumstances. The situation is very much similar here as in SEO also you need to make your website popular among users and search engines. This can also achieved in two ways: one is the right way that is by following all the guidelines of search engines and then optimizing accordingly. Second one is the wrong way that is going against the guidelines and trying to pass through some of the loopholes in search engine algorithms.

So based on their procedure they are categorized into Black, Gray and White techniques. Let’s get into the details of that:

1) Black Hat SEO

It is the wrong way of getting famous by doing something against the rules. In other words Black hat refers to the illegitimate way of optimizing your site going against the guidelines of search engines. It is intended to trick search engines to rank particular pages higher in search results without considering the actual value of the page. Its only aim to rank higher no matter what it takes to do so.

Examples of Black Hat SEO Technique:

• Link Stuffing.
• Hidden Content.
• Keyword Stuffing.
• Paid Links.
• Doorway Pages.
• Cloaking.
• Parasite hosting.
• Manipulative redirects.

Pros 

• It works for all major search engines (till search engines do not find out).
• It gives fast results compared to other techniques.
• Black Hat services are much cheaper than other techniques.

Cons

• It is a short term strategy (will work until you are not caught by search bots).
• If you are found by search engine your site might be banned.
• Bad User experience.
• High Risk level.

2) White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is the ethical SEO. It is best and the honest way of optimizing your site by following all the guidelines of search engines. These are targeted to improve the position in search results keeping the user prospect in mind, that is the site should be valuable to the user following all the guidelines. It is a time consuming process but long term results are good and permanent.

Examples of White Hat SEO Technique:

• Guest Blogging.
• Link baiting.
• Valuable Content.
• Internal Linking.
• Title tags and Meta tags optimization.
• On page keyword optimization.
• Adding fresh content regularly.
• Sitemap creation.

Pros

• It is a long term strategy.
• It provides the best user experience.
• No risk is involved as all the guidelines are followed.

Cons

• It is a time consuming process.
• White Hat SEO Services are the costliest of all techniques.

3) Gray Hat SEO

As the gray color falls between white and black, this technique also lies into the questionable category of search engine optimization. I called it “questionable” because neither it involves the high risk of site banning as Black Hat nor does it get into complete valid search engine guidelines. It is a shady approach to optimization which does not break any rules but bend them to say the least. This would not give you a serious risk like a Site ban but might curse you with a penalty. Any technique which is considered Grey might become black in future.

Examples of Gray Hat SEO Technique:

• Three way/ Reciprocal link exchange.
• Buying links for Page Rank.
• Duplicate Content.
• Irrelevant links.
• High keyword density that sounds unnatural but of level of Black Hat.
• Article Spinning.
• Purchasing Old domains.

Pros

• Time-frame involved is not very high.
• Good user experience.

Cons

• It is also not a permanent strategy.
• Medium level of risk is always involved.

Conclusion

After reading out the definitions and the Pros and Cons of different SEO Techniques, you might think that White Hat is the best and should be followed for all sites irrespective of their domain of business. But this might not be true in every case. For eg: if you are trying to promote phone accessories, you need to promote your site as soon as the phone gets launched. As we all know mobile industry is the most frequently changing industry so deploying white hat SEO techniques might take up 4 to 6 months which might not be give you the value for money which you invested in White Hat (because a new version or its competitor might overtake). For this we need a short term and quick technique which might be Black or Gray.

Do you agree with my conclusion or you have some other opinion on these techniques. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.