Bridge the Article Marketing Gap - Reconciling Two Theories of Article Marketing

Article marketing should be an energetic and highly utilized part of any web-business strategy. The two primary ideologies of article distribution - wide array mass-distribution versus focused, small-scale distribution - seem at first to be irreconcilable. However, bringing the two methods together can multiply web traffic by exploiting the best aspects of each, so you can have your cake and eat it, too.
Conservative Distribution Theory
Recently, the most widely accepted theory of article marketing has been to use a focused technique of distributing articles to a handful of quality article directories. The primary reason this method became popular was that search engines began downgrading or penalizing websites that consisted of duplicate content. The search engines had good reason for that. It is not fair to rank cut-and-paste content the same as content created by the hand and mind of dedicated, interested people. The down side of that change of policy is that those of us who wanted to spread our homemade articles out to numerous sources found that our hard work was suddenly viewed less positively. The result was that the good, ethical article marketers set to work writing more articles and distributing them to ten or fifteen highly ranked article directories, while the black-hat guys searched for new dastardly schemes.
The benefits of the new rules were twofold:

1) Instead of spreading a few articles over a very wide area, we were creating more articles on our topics, which helped to bolster our image as experts in our field. Even if we got a bit less traffic, the traffic we did get was of a much higher quality.

2) Submitting to fewer directories meant that we could focus on getting our articles into the proper categories on the higher tier article directories. Once again, this seemed to result in better traffic.
Liberal Distribution Theory
This technique evolved quite naturally from the early days of internet marketing. As soon as we were capable, of course we submitted our articles to as many directories as possible. The more links we had floating out there, the more traffic we received. Much of that traffic was of lower quality, but that was not as important. As long as our servers could take it, we wanted it.
The benefits of the old way were, coincidentally, also twofold:

1) We were able to cast a much wider net. We could throw out the garbage and the small fish, and we kept only the fish we wanted. (I know it is a hackneyed metaphor, but it is true.)

2) With the advent of automated mass-distribution technology, we could get our message and our links out there with one click of the mouse. Maybe our articles were not always placed in the best category, but there were so many instances of our work on the internet that it did not drastically affect our results.
Then, in a story that seems to keep repeating itself, the spammers ruined it for everyone. Of course, they only ruined the easiness of article marketing, not the effectiveness. I must reiterate that these conditions forced us to work harder, which led to our increased knowledge, which then led to our being even better in our niches. Take that, spammers.
The New, Centrist Distribution Theory
Very simply, this is a combination of the two previously described theories. This method was created because although search engines downgrade duplicate content, they do not discount it entirely. If an article marketer today were to use mass-distribution alone, his work would not draw traffic to the level it would have a few years ago. However, his net would still be cast wide, with little effort required after writing the article.
It is now becoming clear that these two techniques can coexist. The trick is to find the right blend.
Some very successful article marketers use mass-distribution services for ten to thirty percent of the articles they write. The rest are submitted by hand (though there are software programs that can simplify this process) to specific categories in article directories that publish high quality, original content. This gives them two nets - one wide net and one deep net. They get long-lasting backlinks that bring them targeted traffic from the manual submissions, and they get volume from the mass-distribution.
The last remaining task is one that never actually ends. Successful article marketers never stop experimenting with which articles to mass-distribute, and with how many to mass-distribute. Start your campaign today, and watch your traffic skyrocket in a few short months.

Article Ranger is a free submission article directory where authors may post articles about subjects of interest, and publishers may pick up articles for use in ezines, newsletters, etc.
Michael Rasco is the Owner and Chief Editor of Article Ranger.