What To Do With Quality Articles?

[JamesMason67]

I have written, and have had written a number of quality articles pertaining to my trade etc. and was wondering what was the thing to do to make the best use of them?

I have a blog on my site and could of course stick them there and hope they do well, but what are my other options? I mean in as far as getting some benefit for my website..

Thank you,
James

 

[UKSBD]

Find freelance journalists who write on your subject on the big news sites.

Alternatively, if you wrote them and didn't copy them from elsewhere ask if any member of UKBF want to use them, and grant them the rights to.

 

[JamesMason67]

Thanks UK

I doubt if anyone here would be interested in stonemasonry articles, but if I'm wrong please get in touch. They are 100% original.
Thanks again,
James

 

[UKSBD]

I blog in the old traditional way.

ie. I just write anything about anything and then post it on whichever of my blog sites I feel like.

Not necessarily for SEO purposes, business purposes, just for something to do.

I have 50+ nonsense sites and never enough time to post on them.

Send them to me and I will scatter them about on random sites.

You'll get people saying this is a bad thing to do, but if they want to think like that they are welcome to

It's up to you to decide.

I also have an article site that I never have enough time to use, you can create an account on there if you like - http://www.articlesites.co.uk/ very little on it at the moment.

 

[JamesMason67]

Thanks UK, that's a very kind offer. I appreciate that and might just take you up on that.

In your opinion would that make more SEO sense than them sitting on my blog?
Thanks again
James

 

[UKSBD]

Ask a question like that and you will get conflicting answers.

Some will say, leave them on your own site and get the benefit.
I say that's all well and good if you have a regular readership and some of those people might share or link to them.

If they are just on your site for the sake of it and may possible attract half a dozen visitors, you may as well distribute them instead.

Your site should be strong enough that it is seen as the original source, if it isn't and the articles get booted in to supplemental, the benefit of the articles being elsewhere outweighs that, just be a bit more careful if they are articles that you genuinely want to attract people to.

 

[JamesMason67]

Hello Sir
I am not looking to buy or sell links and I cannot help you I'm sorry.
James

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Pitch to quality renowned magazines and online publications in your niche. Spend some time on writing an original pitch and send targeted emails. Phone if necessary. If done right, this bring TONS of recognition to your business, links, authority and hopefully business inquiries. Well done for not publishing the articles anywhere else [otherwise it would be duplicate content, banned by Google]. Consider hiring professional pitch writer to prepare great pitch and send it to magazines. Good luck!

 

[stevebrownlie]

Is there a trade press in your industry? If so you could become a contributor for one of them.

Alternatively you could publish a couple on your blog then spend about 3-5x as long as it took you to write them promoting them. I have no idea in your space how many people share content, or even if there are any 'influencers' that would be relevant (maybe there are some tangentially related niches too?).

I guess some google searches like "stone mason links pages" "stone mason blogs" etc will let you see if there is much about to promote your stuff to.

 

[The Byre]

There are UK building mags and several stone mason mags in the US ( http://www.masonrymagazine.com/ ) and Natural Stone Specialist in the UK ( http://www.stonespecialist.com/ ).

But as nice as it is to get your by-line at the bottom of the page or into an insert box - and the better mags will pay you for a decent article - the commercial result is zero. Customers do not read masonry magazines, so you might like to put those pieces onto your won website, where customers will read them!

 

[Krystsina]

Hi James,

you should definitely go for specific magazines on your topic to get remuneration for your articles. To add to the list of @The Byre: http://masonrydesignmagazine.com, http://www.stoneworld.com

Another idea - you can contribute to the book on stones topics, for example, here you may find some books issued by Mason Constractors Associations of America http://www.masoncontractors.org , maybe you could contact them or look for similar associations or authors who is into publishing such types of books.

Concerning your question how your articles will benefit you if you publish them at your website - Google will have more links to your website -> if you will promote your blog post, you will get higher positions on Google search -> it can bring you more clients.

 

[JamesMason67]

Hi Guys
Thanks very much for this information, and apologies for late replies to your kind help. Have been extremely busy.

I will certainly contact these people and see what they say. I dont want any cash payment for them, just a little seo benefit for my websites.

Stonemasonry isnt the most sexy, exciting subject in the world, I understand that, but these are ideas I hadnt thought of.

Once again, thank you very much.
James

 

[JamesMason67]

Alternatively you could publish a couple on your blog then spend about 3-5x as long as it took you to write them promoting them.

This is the part Im struggling with. I dont know how to do this, but Im confident the ideas above will be a good start.
Cheers Steve

 

[The Byre]

Stonemasonry isnt the most sexy, exciting subject in the world,

You would be surprised! In my days as a trade journalist, we had to churn out articles on waaaay more boring subjects than that! Try writing 3,000 words in the action-packed topic of digital wet-gate tele-cine-scanners! That made writing a thousand words about a new time-division-multiplexing compression algorithm for mobile phones positively action-fribbled!

In fact, I remember watching a two hour documentary on the stonework for the Dresdener Fraunekirche (the big cathedral in Dresden that was totally rebuilt a few years ago) and it was really fascinating!

 

[JamesMason67]

Oh dear. That sounds like a long day.

I havent seen that documentary. Will have a look online.

I follow the progress of the Gaudi designed Catalan cathedral Sagrada Familia in Barcelona which is due to complete in the next ten years. On a recent trip there, I got to speak to a couple of the stonemasons working there who could speak English, and yes it is fascinating.
Thanks Byre
James

 

[The Byre]

Here's a short video done by one of the master stonemasons of their work on that gig -

The programme I mentioned was on German TV several years ago and I can't find it easily.

 

[JamesMason67]

Thanks Byre, I enjoyed that.

Yep. Thats what we stonemasons do..
Thanks again,
James

 

[The Byre]

Thats what we stonemasons do..

Excellent for the physique, bad for arthritis!

 

[Hospitality_king]

Find freelance journalists who write on your subject on the big news sites

Journalists and big news sites won't waste their time publishing random articles - weve dealt with the media ourselves, and know what we are talking about. Forget posting articles about, its a dead marketing tool, now ineffective as its too small time for any success.

Why would someone read a 500 word article to just find a stonemason? Can't see it myself.

Best bet for you, is the video promotion method, previously posted in this thread - its the way to go for sole trader types. Unfortunately, there aren't enough video sites you can post them to, which is a problem. The main ones are:

YouTube
Dailymotion

although cant comment about other video sites as no experience of traffic generation from them.

Might be worth setting up a video database for your own site, where you can make tons of stonemason videos - a series of tips, actual work you've done for clients etc, but in video form.

 

[JamesMason67]

Thanks very much HK, I will look into that.
Cheers

 

[Impounded Car Insurance]

But once you have the video, what's the best way of promoting that?

 

[Amy POPContent]

Hi James,

I'd recommend a couple of things:

1. Make sure the content is going to be of interest to your customers and online searchers. If it's not genuinely valuable to them, it won't get very far unfortunately

2. Post them on your blog, (as long as it's not separate to your website) probably not all at once as this will look a bit odd to search engines.

3. Do some keyword research, probably on Google's free keyword planner tool at first if you've not done any before. Find out which terms draw in traffic in your niche.

4. Try to edit your content to reflect those keywords if possible - think about your url, your headings and you page title as well as your body content. Over 2.5% is too much. Under 0.5% is too little.

5. Pick a good title - for SEO you want your keyword close to the beginning, but it's more important really that your title attracts people to click. Don't be afraid to be a bit controversial.

6. Promote your articles via social media - this is very broad, but it's important; each platform is different, so you'll have to approach it differently. I'd only post once on a Facebook page, whereas on Twitter if your content is interesting enough, you can post multiple times in one day - not the same article, but in general.

7. If there's particular websites you think might be interested - pitch your article to them. Check their 'domain authority' first. The main reason you'll want to feature on another site, other than exposure, is getting a good back link to your website. If they have 20+ it might be worth it - your call, and depends on your current website's DA. Make sure they're also willing to link back to you.

Hope that's of some help. Pop me a message if you have any further questions!

Good luck.

 

[JamesMason67]

Amy, thank you very much for this very detailed and helpful reply.

Sorry it took a while to get back to you I haven't been on for a wee while.
Thanks again,
James

 

[Amy POPContent]

You're really welcome James, happy to help in any way I can! Hope it all goes - would love to hear an update once you've got going with it

 

[EcomAlistair]

James, I agree with everything that @Amy POPContent said except points 3 and 4. Doing 3 and 4 is essentially editing your work for a robot, don't do it unless you really can do it naturally.

I think you should definitely publish these on your own blog, spend some time promoting them and measure the response.

If you did give / sell / place them on other sites, you might get a short term gain ... but great content compounds over time, so it's best on your site. I imagine that in your industry (of which a cousin of mine is in also), there aren't many practitioners writing about the work ... so there's an opportunity.

Your blog is the engine in long-term, sustainable online growth - so take time to build it well.

As you publish content there, you can see how it performs - which articles get the most engagement, get the most shares and drive the most leads - then do more of what works, and less of what doesn't.

This will all help you to understand the content that your potential customers are seaching for, giving you greater insight to be able to pitch the bigger profile sites in your industry to write pieces for them ... this will help you to build your own profile a bit.

Most of these sites allow contributors to include a link or two back to other online resources - if it is helpful for their readers. Thus you could include a link back to your site.

Other thoughts:

1) find questions on Quora which fit with articles you've written, answer them and link back to the relevant article (quora com/topic/Stone-Masonry - just add the ' . ')

2) in order to fulfil point 1 in Amy's comment, ask your customers to tell you what they want to know (or wanted to know before buying from you) about stone masonry ... your content needs to reflect their challenges / questions / doubts .... etc

There's my 2 pence worth,
Alistair

 

[Amy POPContent]

Hey James!

I agree, you don't want it to look unnatural or your content will ultimately put off the reader and then rank badly anyway. Best thing to do is write a useful article first, and then adjust/edit it for search engines. Which is what I intended to suggest, but maybe wasn't clear (my bad).

If you don't attempt to in some way indicate the keywords you'd like to attract, you're not going to rank well in any search engine though; unless you're a massive authority like Wikipedia.

Totally agree with the Quora comment too - there's a gold mine in there for everyone!

My extra two pence anyway

Amy

 

[HazelC]

The risk with putting your content elsewhere online is that Google will class it as duplicate content, although this is apparently not the case with LinkedIn Pulse Posts, so may be worth posting there with a link back to your website.

Then contact industry magazines and publishers, maybe create your own newsletter too.