Copyright 2005 Priya Shah

If you have any interest in getting high search engine rankings for your website (and who doesn't) you've probably been sold the idea that writing and publishing your own articles will do it for you.

Here's why that's not entirely true.

Imagine the following scenario...

You write an article around a keyword or keyphrase you want to rank well for.

You submit that article to all the article submission sites and directories and ezines you can find.

Your article gets published in hundreds of places.

You now have hundreds of links pointing back to your main site...

But your own site never shows up in the top ten results for that particular keyword or keyphrase.

Instead you find that there are lots of other sites carrying your article that rank better than yours.

You've completely missed out on an excellent opportunity to get high rankings for your keyword or keyphrase.

Even worse... you just handed your precious keyword-rich content on a platter to possible competitors who happened to publish your article on their website, and may have lost some of your most targeted visitors and sales to them.

So where did you go wrong?

Your mistake lay in using your article for entirely the wrong purpose. You failed to use the power of article marketing to give your site an unbeatable advantage over others.

Here's how to use your articles the right way to boost your search engine rankings.


1. Publish Unique Content On Your Website

When you make an article available for reprint, the article, by virtue of it being published on hundreds of other sites, now no longer qualifies as unique (the operative word here) content.

Google's duplicate content filter will make the more authoritative sites that publish your article rank higher than yours for the keywords your article is optimized for.

Instead of making your article the main course, use it as an appetizer to direct search engines and readers to a unique, optimized report or white paper on your website, and you'll see dramatically different results.


2. Use Your Article As Spider Bait

Think of your articles as simply the conduit that leads search engines to your website.

Publishing your articles all over the web is like leaving scraps for a puppy (a.k.a. the search engines) that follows them all the way back to the kennel (a.k.a. your website) where it can feast on the main course - your unique content.


3. Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text In Your Resource Box

Use your primary keywords or keyphrases in the anchor text of the article resource box that contains a link pointing back to your unique content.

This will create hundreds of keyword-rich links pointing back to the well-optimized report on your website, and boost your rankings for the keywords of your choice.

Follow the steps above and you can use your content the right way to beat Google's duplicate content filter.

About the author:

Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog.