Get Good Karma
How to Get More Eyeballs in Front of the Same Content Without Being as Smart as a Ninja
I got an email from someone a few days ago who took me up on my advice about targeting very general, high volume keywords in his article titles – but, he told me he’s getting no views.
Now, I’m a big believer in targeting the "ocean" rather than the "pond" when it comes to off site article submissions.
Why? Very simply – there is pretty much NO phrase that EZA doesn’t have a decent shot at giving you front page and center rankings for straight out of the gate.
I’ve done this over and over in just about every niche out there, including the "make money online" niche and for phrases that THIS blog would have no chance at ranking for immediately, for example – simply by piggybacking off of the default page trust that a high ranking directory gets, you can get your personal message out in front of the masses in a hurry. ( mine is one of hope, peace and back to back Phillies world series rings)
Your rankings may not "stick" for a super long time, but if you are list building, which you should be, you only need a few weeks at the top of the engines with a huge volume phrase to kick start your business in a major league way.
I’m going to give you two quick, sort of different, but equally effective strategies for doing this a bit – both are quite simple and – one takes a little more work than the other for self evident reasons – and one is more of an "online" phenomena specifically related to article marketing ( and maybe SEO if you have a high volume site and a bit of time to play) but they both work really well for very for getting more eyeballs in front of your offers, which is my middle name, baby.
Take very general phrases that you want to target – and then "flag" a specific subset of the broader marketplace in the second part of your title -
For example -
Credit Repair Secrets might be the phrase you want to "own" – yet – putting a qualifier in the article to specify a subset of the market who this is "best" for:
- 2 Credit Repair Secrets You Must Not Miss ( Only for People with a 620 FICO or Below)
- 2 Underground Fat Burning Tips You Will Love ( Must Be 10 Pounds Overweight or More)
- How to Get Your Girlfriend Back Fast ( Best For Guys Desperate That She’s Gone Forever)
Etc – This isn’t rocket science of course, nor is it really super "ninja" psychology, because let’s be honest, ninja’s were largely NOT a very smart group of people in general and would have sucked at article marketing anyway.
Quick Sidebar: I know this isn’t politically correct to say, but I hate all of these "NINJA article marketing references &E books"….I mean, "stop him – he kill teacher" ain’t the kind of poetic prose that’s gonna get your stuff on the 15 most viewed articles in your niche list any time soon.
And if you saw Enter the Dragon 12 times like I did, you would already know that peaceful negotiation is a far more powerful persuasive tool than that flying boomerang thingy, which doesn’t even work in real life. Plus Kareem Abdul Jabar won a few fights in that movie, and he was a basketball player with no real martial arts training, and later admitted to being stoned the whole time he worked on that film – and if you’ve ever been in a fight while high, you already know it’s not easy, especially if you’re throwing kicks and stuff. So those Ninja guys are highly over-rated in general in my view, and I sort of wanted to get that out. End Sidebar.
Anyway, the point is, you’re just trying to get a few more people to raise their metaphorical hands while they’re reading your stuff, and the key to doing that is just target very HIGHLY desirable keywords, and create "islands of inclusion" within the titles themselves.
In general of course, you want to set the baseline level of the second part of the equation to be as "general" as low as possible, to be as INCLUSIVE of the largest part of the populace as possible.
For example – if you said – "only for people 50 pounds overweight or more" – you are going to lose a lot of interest, and most people will assume you are talking about some drastic procedure that they wouldn’t be interested in….or simply isn’t relevant to their specific needs.
Alternatively – most people, obviously, who are finding and reading an article on weight loss, probably find themselves 10 pounds too rich on the chunk-o-meter already, so the " this is for me" threshold is easily met.
Same thing for credit scores – for example – when I screwed my own credit for the 8th time years ago and was looking for ways to fix it – I saw and ad that said – "Credit repair techniques guaranteed to work for anyone with a FICO score of 550"…. or below. My thought was – "what kind of deadbeat has a credit score of 550, or lower?" I wanted no part of that part of the American landscape.
If they would have said, instead – "credit repair techniques for anyone who got rejected for a Value City credit in the last hour", I would have been all hands in – in a hurry.
That was probably a bad example, but I think you get my point.
The key takeaway – and I PROMISE this works, so try it ( it also works great on blogs and for "link bait" style stuff ) is use broad, highly desirable 3 word phrases on the front side, and then use power or persuasive WORDS to target a very specific, YET, research relevant subset that’s going to represent the broad majority of your demographic.
The other technique, and this does work pretty well for EZA articles is that’s your thing – is the "bully" technique, where you simply pick a really high volume, highly desirable keyword phrase and simply hit it hard with lots of submissions, where you keep the FIRST part of the article title the same, and simply change the second part of the article title to suit.
I do NOT do a ton of this, simply because I bore relatively easily and, well – life is short, but I know people who do really well with this approach, and I’ll bet if you do a little bit of keyword research on your own niches…..you’ll see that at least a few of the SUPER desirable phrases are owned by aggressive article marketers who do this well.
So – in the above example – you would simply keep the credit repair secrets part of the article static, and change up the second part of the title accordingly.
- Credit Repair Secrets – The 1 Underground Method the Credit Bureaus Fought To Ban Forever
- Credit Repair Secrets – 6 Reasons Why Chicks Dig a Guy With a Super FICO score
Etc – I’m getting tired, as was probably pretty obvious by the second paragraph, but – this stuff works, and works really well for attacking the wide open spaces where most people fear to tread….and if you are assertive with them, they’ll work for you as well!
18 Comments to "How to Get More Eyeballs in Front of the Same Content Without Being as Smart as a Ninja
very good info!!
Thanks, Joe!
Ah, yes! I remember doing a few articles along these lines about personal aircraft quite a while ago and dominated the keywords I thought were impossible… forgot all about it since, though, and was really not sure what I was doing at the time. Thanks for reminding me and clearing up the uncertainty I had about it! ^_^
Glad to hear – and yes, this does work very well. ( and you can “prove” it simply by doing your own research – i.e. – simply type in the 4 or 5 phrases you *think* are impossible to “own” – more than likely, at least 20% of them will have an EZA article in the top 3 positions – often by people using this particular strategy, too.
Ian, I too am a big fan of your blog. I also have written several articles which haven’t gotten many views. I am anxious to try your suggestions mentioned in this post.
Hi Frank – Thanks – and if you are doing some pretty good research, give the above a try – I think you’ll find it will help ( and pretty fast, too!)
Great Stuff! I Have been reading your posts religiously and really look forward to them. You are in an elite class as far as internet marketing info goes. Keep up the good work. And, please, get more rest. LOL
Thank You, Lin – I appreciate it..:-)
Thanks for the continuous efforts Ian! Really appreciate it..
EZA works pretty well for a short period of time, but like you said, send the traffic to your opt in page and them get continuous repeat traffic.
I want to know from your side, if you submit an article to EZA, how long does the articles gives you traffic? a month or more?
Coz usually my articles gets heavy traffic (but not as big as yours I believe) but it only last for a month… so I need to know how’s everybody else is doing..
Thanks!
Hi Raimi – I agree – and this is a big reason why list building is SUCH a major factor with article marketing – and the differentiator between moving from “article marketing” to business building.
That said – I have articles that are at the very top position in search results today, that were written up to 2 years ago – especially in the “nichier” type markets. ( although still have many in more competitive markets as well – and that date back quite a long time – I honestly don’t even pay that close attention)
A good way to answer the above – is to simply look at the results for your niches in those top positions – as they show up from EZA listings – and then date check the articles. Often you’ll see stuff from 2005 still live – at the top – and obviously generating premium traffic on a daily basis.
What I do *occasionally* is this – and I’m not going to *swear* it works – because I simply don’t reverse engineer it well enough to be sure – BUT – I’ll set up blogs that are “news” style sites in the niche that we’re writing a ton of content – and as part of normal linking strategy – I’ll pick out 5 or so important EZA articles that we have in the results – and simply *point* to those using tools – or just linking to them normally – or exercpting them as a “source” of further info, etc and linking with proper anchor text, etc.
The bottom line is that with EZA, part of the process is NOT knowing – having a ton of factors outside of your control and being cool with that – and simply using the stuff you already KNOW works well ( i.e. – building a list) to take advantage of each and every day they DO show up where you want them….:-)
Hi Ian, I found you through PPG – OWM. I am a newbie and going through OWM Coaching and have just had me 1st 6 articles indexed and am starting the articles for EZA. Above you show how to do your titles with very general phrases and then add to this. If I already have my lenses done, then am I going to just use my KW for that particular lens or can I go find another KW phrase that generates more traffic?
Thanks for your input,
Carole
Hi Carole – I’m not 100% sure I understand the question……BUT, this approach is best for off site directories – to drive traffic to your primary pages or offers – and will work equally as well for driving traffic to lenses, rather than squeeze pages, blogs or affiliate offers, as is my preference. That said, Squidoo * may* come close, in some niches, to emulating EZA for pagerank “piggyback” style strategy – i.e. – you could try these techniques for trying to get your lenses themselves ranked very highly for the general keywords ( rather than the articles on the directories) which is obviously your ultimate goal. I don’t do a ton on Squidoo lenses – so I dont’ know how well ( or not well) they do for ranking fast using this approach.
Ian, thank you very much for everything you share with me and thousands other marketers. I’ve seen so many scammers, liars, outright idiots, preying on people and going after their hard-earned money… Reading your stuff seems like a miracle. Your honesty, integrity and style are amazing. Every time I think, ‘ok, this is going to be a catch’, I never see one. My only complaint is that you sometimes assume everyone is a brilliant writer, just as you are. So even most of your advices seem very easy, it’s impossible to get same results, because a few possess such a brilliant style and wit. Anyway, thank you very much for your insights and advices, they are worth millions, indeed.
Thank you, Vlad! Very, very nice of you to say, and I do really appreciate it!
(I usually start out with a “catch” and just lose it somewhere along the way..:-)
Hi Ian,
I found this post to be entertaining, but I usually do.
I like the educational element, too. You have EASY to understand and implement tips!
I have to confess that when I started reading your articles on Ezine, I began to copy the style of the headlines for my own article headlines.
Thanks!
Scott
Thanks, Scott – I aim to entertain! Don’t worry – I’ll copy some of your dog training tips to get even..:-)
Ian,
You-re a breath of fresh air. thanks for sharing.
Ramon
Thank you, Ramon – I appreciate it!