Quick Start Guide
Video Transcript
In this quick-start guide to Article Samurai we’ll be covering the basics of article marketing and I’ll show you how to get up and running with Article Samurai as quickly as possible.
It starts with a web property
The basic process of article marketing begins with a web property that you want to promote in the search engines. This web property might be your affiliate website, a youtube video or perhaps your blog.
Article marketing in a nutshell
To improve the search engine ranking of your web property you write good quality articles that relate to your niche and submit them to a syndication network.
Members of the syndication network then review your articles and publish the ones they like on their websites. In return for providing them with high quality content, you receive backlinks to your web property.
Over time the backlinks generated to your web property improve its authority and rank in the search engines.
Example
To see exactly how this process works, let’s take a look at an example.
Imagine for a moment that you own a web property in the craft niche that focuses on patchwork quilting.
The main theme keyword for this site is Patchwork Quilts.
There are a number of post categories such as Introduction to Quilting, Quilting Tools, and Quilting Tips.
Individual post
Within each of these categories are individual posts that target specific longer tail phrases. For example in the Introduction to Quilting category there might be a post entitled: Quilting for beginners.
OK, let’s now see how we can use Article Samurai to help build relevant backlinks to this website.
Opening Article Samurai
When you open Article Samurai you'll notice that the process of setting up a project is identical to that in Market Samurai. You select "New Project", enter your project details and then click "create".
Syndicate Article module
You’ll also notice that the first 4 modules in Article Samurai are the same as in Market Samurai. This means that you can perform your keyword research, conduct competition analysis, find reference material and track your rankings without having to swap between different tools.
For this example I’m going to assume that we’ve already done our analysis, so let’s jump straight to the new "Syndicate Article" module.
Browse articles screen
The first screen you'll see is the browse screen, and here you’ll see an overview of your articles.
So going from left to right, first we have the title of article, the status of the article; i.e. whether it’s a draft, pending review, awaiting syndication with the scheduled date of syndication, syndicating or syndicated.
Next we have the date that the article was submitted. And finally we have a list of action icons for handling the article at each stage of the process.
For a draft article the action icons available are, "edit article" and "delete article". You’ll notice the "track article" option is greyed out because you can’t track an article until it has been submitted.
For an article that has a status of "pending review", "awaiting syndication", or "syndicating", you have the option to "view" the article, "track" the article or "withdraw" the article from syndication.
And for an article with the status "syndicated" you have the option to "view" , "track" or "delete" the article from your project.
Creating a new article
Now what we want to do is create a new article that we can syndicate in order to generate backlinks to our Patchwork quilting website.
To get started I’ll come up here and click the new article button.
Basic interface
Looking at the basic interface, here you have a section for the article title, body, resource box, and tags.
Formatting options
Up here you have all the basic text formatting options...
Spinning tools
...and over here on the left hand side you have access to tools for spinning which we’ll talk about in a moment.
Copy and paste title, body, resource box and tags
Depending on your workflow you may wish to write your article from scratch in this editor, or you might cut and paste your article from a wordprocessor. Alternatively you could pay an outsourcer to write an article for you.
In this example, I’m going to copy and paste an existing article.
So I’ll just copy and paste the article title.
Then the article body.
And the bio box which contains details about the site and author.
Next I’ll add some tags which are additional words that are associated with the topic of the article.
Links
OK, now it’s time to talk about links.
Each article you submit with Article Samurai requires exactly three links. Two links should come from your resource box and one link should come from the body of your article.
The distribution of links that we recommend is as follows:
One of the links in your bio box should point to the home page of your website and use your site’s main theme keyword as its anchor text.
So in this example I’d highlight the words ‘Patchwork Quilt’ and add a link to the home page of my patchwork quilt site.
The second link in your bio box should point to a deep page in your website and its anchor text should be relevant to that specific page. So in our example I’d highlight the phrase ‘Quilting for beginners’ and add a link to the quilting for beginners post on my patchwork quilt site.
And finally your third link should be placed in the body of the article. A good way to use this link is to point to the relevant category page on your website. So in the Patchwork quilt example, I’d highlight the words Introduction to Quilting and add a link to the category page of my website.
Link Recap
So just to clarify. One of the bio box links points to the homepage with the site theme keyword as its anchor text. The second bio box link points to a specific post using the post title as the relevant anchor text and the third link points from the body of the article to a category page, using the category phrase as the relevant anchor text.
Spinning an article
OK, now it's time to spin the article.
The reason for spinning your articles is so that you can provide each of the websites in the syndication network with a unique version of your article.
To spin this article all I have to do is come up here and click the automatic spin button.
Check spin credits
I then see a dialog box that gives me details of my spin credits and I usually leave this box checked so that Article Samurai will not spin any words that are contained in my tags. And now I’ll just click the ‘Spin Article’ button.
Article spins
You'll now see that over here on the left I have 3 different versions of my article.
Spin blocks
You'll also notice that many of words and phrases in my article are highlighted. The highlighted words are my individual spin blocks.
If you click on some highlighted text a drop-down box will appear for you to check and edit the spin block.
Highlighting
Now if I go down to the third version of my article, you’ll notice that there are two different kinds of highlighting. The light brown highlight indicates that the spin block is full and has a different variation for each version of the article and the red highlighting indicates a spin block that is not full.
Light brown highlights
So if I click on a light brown highlight you’ll see a full spin block with 3 variations...
Red highlights
...and if I click on a red spin block you’ll see that it only contains 2 variations. I can increase the uniqueness of my article by filling as many spin blocks as possible.
Uniqueness Rule of Thumb
A good rule of thumb is to aim for at least 30% uniqueness for each article.
Importance of reviewing article spins
Now at this point we are almost ready to syndicate, however first we need to check that the article reads properly.
It is extremely important that every version of your article reads well. There are two main reasons why the quality of your article is so important.
First - If you submit poor quality articles they will most likely be rejected by the human reviewers who assess every article before it is accepted for syndication.
And second, even if your article gets past the reviewers, if the quality of the article is poor, very few website owners will want to feature the article on their website so your acceptance rate will be low and you won’t generate many backlinks.
Access first spin
So the key to making article marketing really effective is to make sure that every version of your spun article reads well and makes sense.
There are 2 different ways that you can review your article spins.
1. You can read each version of the article and make amendments where necessary. Or
2. You can read through 1 version of the article, clicking on each spin block as you go, and making sure that each variation is valid in the sentence.
This second approach is how I like to review articles so let me show you how this works.
To begin I'll make sure I'm looking at the first article spin of the article by clicking the "No.1" over here...
Review spin blocks
...and I'll click on the first spin block to reveal the variations. Then I'll read each variation in the sentence to check that it makes sense. If it does, I'll move on to the next spin block, and if it doesn't I'll stop and fix it. This one is fine so I'll move onto the next one.
Make changes where required
When I find one that I want to change, I can edit and/or remove words as I see fit. I then continue doing this until I've checked the entire article.
Manual spin
You can also add a spin block to a word that has not been automatically spun. To do this, simply highlight the word, click the manual spin button over here...
Add spin
...and then click the "add spin" button down here. You can then type in your spin variation, and when you're finished just click the finish button.
Ready to syndicate
Once you have checked the entire article and made sure that every version is readable and makes sense, all you have to do is click the syndicate button down here.
Select syndication networks
On the syndicate screen you can select the networks that you want to syndicate to up here. (I usually leave both of these checked to ensure maximum distribution)
Syndication checklist
We now just need to make sure that we have met all the criteria specified by the syndication checklist. As you can see down here I currently have one red item which indicates that I need to select a category.
Category selection
By default Article Samurai will suggest a category based on the tags you have specified for your article, however if you disagree with the suggested category and would like to change it, you can either scroll down the list or enter a term into the search bar. When you find the right category just click on it to select it.
Set syndication date
You can also select the syndication date. If you want it to syndicate your article immediately, just accept the default date, however if you'd like to schedule your article to be syndicated at a later date simply click on the date and select when you would like your article to be syndicated.
Author name
You’ll also need to make sure that you include the authors first and last name in the name field, and then you're ready to syndicate.
Syndicate
All you have to do is come down here and click the "Syndicate" button.
Successful submission
Article Samurai then notifies you that the submission has been made successfully, so now I can click the close button.
Tracking
The final part of the process is tracking, Article Samurai has automatically taken the links from the article and the anchor-text keywords, and prepared them for rank tracker.
Options to remove tracking
If you'd like to edit or remove these you can either, (1) uncheck the "track with rank tracker" box up here, (2) uncheck the individual links...
...or modify the keywords by clicking the edit links over here.
Update Rank Tracker
But for now I'm just going to accept the defaults and click the update rank tracker button.
Update Tracker Data
Article Samurai then automatically populates Rank Tracker, and all I have to do is click the update Rank Tracker Data button up here. And that’s all there is to it.
Sit back and relax :-)
When your article has been reviewed and is accepted for syndication it will be made available to website owners around the world who will publish your content on their websites.
In this way your site will gradually start receiving genuine back links from a wide range of websites distributed across the Internet. As time passes these links will help to improve the authority of your site, which in turn will improve your rankings in the search engines.
This looks great, but I thought that including a link within the body of content was against some terms and conditions?
This looks like a great investment. could you tell me why the copy and paste does not work is there something i need to do extra, over and above the normal cut and paste.
Hey! Loving the program so far...it is actually really quick and easy! I have two questions.
1. How does the program calculate uniqueness of a spin? Because the program will say 33-38% and when I export the spin other programs all say around 18%.
2. How long does it take for articles to go through review? is there a typical wait time? I'm just anxious to be sure everything is done right and want to see if my articles get approved before I start putting more in.
Cheers,
Niamh
HOT DAMN!
The Samurais have done it again. I signed up and am very excited about this product as it is exactly what I was looking for. BRAVO!
Another amazing video training from Noble Samurai! Many thanks. Very exited to be a foundation member of Article Samurai and just about ready to syndicate my first article. Onward and upward! Thanks again.
Looks great, wish I got in the first 500.
EXCELLENT presentation!! REALLY appreciated having this 'quick start' guide to get up to speed quickly--- definitely answered all my basic questions.
I wanted to see what you thought would be a good schedule to experiment with to begin with. If I'm trying to rank for a KW that's not very competitive (adsense and amazon sites), with just a few thousand searches per month...
Should I try posting an article a week until reaching the top 10?
I remember the case studies from the earlier videos but wanted to get your input on this.
Thanks so much!
Lance
The usual stunningly clear and complete information on the new Article Samurai and I can't wait to start using it! I was up at 2:30am and somehow managed to get myself a subscription which I'm very happy about as the server was struggling with the demand.
Thanks to the whole Market Samurai team for all your hard work in getting to this point and I'll be sure to let you know my results over the coming months.
Jason Nethercott
Is there a recommended length of article?
Great presentation as usual Dr Anthony. Article Samurai appears to be very simple to use.
Looking forward to using this new product and watching the results.
Nice startup guide guys... Looking forward to using it.
This tool looks awesome and i am really glad i managed to get in.
I noticed you sold out really quickly and i hope all goes well.
Market Samurai has been an invaluable tool for me and i guess that article samurai will be as well especially as i am building a new site as we speak so this couldn't be better.
Will it be possible to copy and paste an article with syntax already in place at some point {for instance|maybe|perhaps}like this,
Rgds
Ben
I am so amazingly impressed with this material above. Excellent work.
I am so very SAD that I was unable to get a copy of "Article Samurai" . I am looking forward to getting my copy and am waiting patiently for that moment. Please let me know immediately when they become available. I WANT A COPY OF ARTICLE SAMURAI. Sincerely, Kevin Sager
How long does the article review take. I know you guys are probably swamped by the launch but I've had 2 articles sitting in the pending queue for about 24 hours now with no movement.
Brilliant software guys.
I've used a bunch of different submitters in the past and this is by far THE BEST of the bunch. Add to this that it's integrated beautifully with Market Samurai (AND) you give such great training webinars... I'm now dropping a whole lot of subscriptions to other training programmes and focusing completely on the Noble Samurai suite...
From one Aussie to a another I love the Samurai NO HYPE policy you guys subscribe to, You still have some marketing fun in there though, which I enjoy.
Just with out the junk.
Love your work and am Totally thrilled to be in this Tribe...
Pete.
Hello
Are there any further Article Samurai subscriptions available as yet?
I have been placed on the waiting list.
I purchased Market Samurai in Sept 2009 and wish to be able to utilise the full suite of Samurai products.
Regards
Ric & Rosa
@Jim RE: Link in body.
The form that the article is submitted in is automatically modified for each submission location to bring it in line with terms and conditions for the site.
@Richard Colum RE: Copy and Paste.
Sometimes the 'right-click' copy/paste doesn't work in Adobe AIR. If this happens either retry or use 'ctrl-c'/'command-c' to copy and 'ctrl-v'/'command-v' to paste
@Tom O'Reilly RE: Length of Article
Just over 300 words is the length we recommend.
@Ben RE: Importing spun article.
Yes you can do this by using the 'import' function in Article Samurai.
@Jon RE: Approval time
Around 24 to 48 hours is typical for the approval time. The human reviewers also don't work on weekends to you're looking at 1-2 business days.
To bad they didn't incorporate the functions from the article module into the original version that I bought. It sure could use a spinner and rank tracker and such. is this in the works?
@Digital Ark
A red number/plus in the ranking results means that the position is worse than it was last time Market Samurai checked the rankings, a green number/plus means that the position is better.
I am very exited to use this program. Can you recommended someone or somewhere where I can get unique articles based on my keywords.
Very nice product and the tutorials are awesome as well. Thank you for providing another great service for marketers.
@Gert
We've set up an Odesk group for this purpose.
If you've purchased Article Samurai you will receive an email with more details about this group soon.
Hi Guys,
What is a reasonable interval between articles with the same keywords? For example I am going for something with 500K SEOC should I be syndicating an article once a week twice, every day? What is the best interval? Maybe you covered this but I can't seem to find anything on it.
Thanks,
Nik
@Nik.
The most important thing here is to choose a submission schedule that you can maintain so that you don't get major spikes in link-building.
If you have a limited number of articles it is better to space them out rather than submitting lots at once and then having a big gap before the next lot.
Somewhere between once a week and once every two days is a good guide.
Just started using my Article Samuarai. Can\'t wait to see my links climb.
what is the thinking on having the third link going to a category page? why not to a YouTube video or an other one of my sites...please help me understand...Thanks
@Dan
Check out this video for more information regarding links:
http://noblesamurai.com/dojo/articlesamurai/38730-smart-syndication
Hi,
What do we do if we need to change an article after it has been submitted? I realize that I did not create a link properly in one of the bio boxes. I submitted the article and it's currently being syndicated. If i choose delete will this stop the syndication and allow me to edit the article or do i have to delete it and start over from scratch?
Thanks Dr. Anthony!
That was a good tutorial. I like to read most of the time instead of watching videos all the time.
I just read the entire article here on the Article Spinner. I have Market Samurai and I came here to get some information on Article Samurai because I'm thinking about getting that as well.
Thanks again Dr. Anthony!
David
http://relentlesstraffic.com
What is the cost of article samarai? It looks interesting. I need a copy ASAP.
@Pete - I'm sorry, but Article Samurai is currently sold out! We're only able to offer a limited number of licenses at a time, in order to be sure we (and our syndication network partners) can keep up with the support demands.
You can find out more and sign up to be notified when more licenses will be available by going to http://www.ArticleSamurai.com/
Great video!
I am really enjoying market samurai. Can you please recommend a source for unique,well written, high quality articles based on my keywords. Thank you.
I have a question.Do we have to manually sign up for each of the article and blog networks or is this done already by Article samurai?For ex. Go articles , Ezine require you to join up first,john
@john
This is done automatically when you become an Article Samurai subscriber
Hello, I bought Market Samurai thinking to do syndication, but newest version doesn't have it. This software has money back?
@Mais - drop an email to support@noblesamurai.com - they will be able to help you
Great video. BUT NO LINKS to purchase!!