Let's take extra care in building relationships with the leading high traffic sites in our niche. Getting our articles published on these authority sites can yield substantial traffic for years to come.
On the last page of this seven page article we explored using article directories to efficiently share our articles with thousands of other webmasters.
This is great, but exclusive republishing arrangements with carefully selected sites can be effective too.
Getting our articles published on popular high traffic sites is a goal well worth investing some extra time in.
In this case we are focused on finding and partnering with that handful of "authority sites" that are the recognized leaders of our niche.
Building a relationship with such sites is important because these leading authority sites may have more traffic than hundreds or even thousands of smaller sites on the same topic.
Finding Partner Sites
To pursue this strategy we need to understand our niche well enough to know where the most popular sites on our topic are.
Entering common keywords for our niche in to the search engines, and seeing which sites have the highest listings is a good place to start on this research.
We're looking for well done sites whose home page has a PageRank of 5, 6, 7 or higher.
Once we've identified some relevant target sites, let's look each of them over more closely.
Understanding Partner Sites
First, is this a quality site, do we want our article and name to appear on this site? Sites with high PageRank are usually pretty well done, but not always.
Second, does this site republish articles from outside writers?
If they do, let's look through many of the articles already published to get a feel for what the editor of the site likes to publish.
How long are the articles? What topics do they cover? Who are the writers? What's the typical page rank of the pages where these articles appear? What kind of credits are used at the end of each article?
Can we provide an article that makes a unique contribution to this site, and adds new interesting useful information that hasn't already been discussed?
If we don't find any articles by outside writers then we know we have to sell the editor both on the value of our article, and on the value of using outside writers in general. That's a tougher job, but not impossible.
The key to success here will likely be high quality articles, some gentle polite persistence, and luck.
Approaching Partner Sites
Once we've identified industry leading sites that might accept our article, we'll approach them to begin a conversation, and a hopefully long term relationship.
The owners of high traffic sites are busy people so our mails to them will be brief, polite, professional and to the point.
In the fewest possible words, we'll let the editor know we have carefully examined their site, and have found an uncovered topic area where we believe we can make a unique contribution.
A sample article might be included at the bottom of the email, or attached as a plain text file. (We won't attach Microsoft Word docs, PDF's, or any other file format the editor may not be able to immediately open.)
The signature line of our email should contain a few links the editor can use to learn more about us.
Sweetening The Offer
If the potential partner is appealing enough, we can offer to give the editor exclusive rights to the article. That is, we are promising not to publish this article on any other website except theirs.
This violates our strategy of reusing articles in variety of ways, but it may well be worth it if it means one or more of our articles get published on a respected well trafficed site with high page rank.
Applying Polite Persistence
The editor of the popular site may not accept our articles, or even reply to our email. This can be discouraging, but there's no recourse other than to keep on moving forward in a determined and disciplined way.
If the editor doesn't accept our article or show an interest in partnering with us we can respect the answer, for now.
Let's refocus our efforts on competing sites, and try to establish a relationship with one of them. Once we're being published on one leading site, we can use that to get our foot in the door with other leading sites.
Unless we've received a firm forever no from an editor, we can try again in a few months. Maybe we'll catch the editor on a better day, or maybe we'll reach a new editor.
Leveraging Other People's Audience
Becoming a well known regular writer on a popular website can be a very effective way to convert content in to free advertising.
The owners of the leading sites in our niche have probably invested years in building their audience.
Their audience can become our audience over night if we can bring something useful and interesting to these sites that isn't already there.
Ok, so far we've discussed three ways we can put our words to work for us. There are three more strategies to go, so let's continue to the next page.
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