Aug 12 2010

3 New Ways to Reuse Old Articles to Triple Your Backlinks

Welcome to the Playing Field

After all this time that we’ve spent in SEO-related fields, we all have learned how important link-building is to SEO efforts. After all this time, we have all also discovered, no doubt, that one of the best ways to get an easy backlink is to submit an article to a high-quality and high-PR article directory like EzineArticles or Buzzle, an almost perfect situation.

The only problem with article writing,however, is that it’s so time consuming. For every article you write, you have to dedicate not only the time to write the article, but account creation at article directories, spinning of the article and submission to the myriad article directories you created accounts at. After that, that well-written article you put your time into just sits on your desktop or your article folder, gathering dust, useless for the rest of time.

It doesn’t have to be so! With a little bit of technology, you can bring that article back to life and get EVEN MORE backlinks out of it. The article is currently in text format, but could easily be turned into audio and video. The audio and video could then be submitted to podcast directories and video websites, many of which offer followed backlinks in their description or profile pages.

Turn it Into Audio

My favorite text-to-audio program is called Ivona text-to-speech. This is a simple text reader that offers English text to audio conversion with male or female output in an American or British accent.

Once you have your new audio output file, you can upload this audio file to podcast directories and get a little more mileage out of that same article. Some services, like Odiogo, even offer audio conversion automatically for new posts on your blog or website. The Odiogo account is updated automatically as you add new account to your blog and compiles in a feed that can then be submitted to RSS directories and podcast directories. sites that scrape RSS feeds for content will then scrape your audio feeds and host your content on their pages, lending you many layers of exposure and traffic.

Turn it into Video

Now that you’ve gotten your audio file, you can move along to the next step of squeezing more links out of your content-turning it into video. You already have an audio track to go with your video, so all you need is something for the background. You can use a screenshot of your article, the text of your article, a screenshot of your website/blog, or even just cycle through a few relevant pictures.

This kind of video is super easy to make and you can even accomplish it with something as simple as Windows Movie Maker. With your newly created ‘video’, you’ve turned your article into another media form that can be distributed, so get distributing! Submit it to all the major video hosting sites like youtube and metacafe. Make sure you insert watermarks of your website’s URL at strategic locations in the video to improve site visibility There are also a select few video hosting directories that offer followed links with anchor text in in the description, like Viddler. Keep an eye out for these especially, as your video can pick up more than just traffic on these sites, but a valuable backlink to boot!

Turn it into ‘Software’

One last step to ensure you’re tripling your articles for mass efficiency and effect is an easy PAD file creation. PAD stands for Portable Application Description and to make a PAD file, you’re basically going to be creating an executable file (with a .exe extension) but instead of having a program to run inside it, you’ll just have .pdf file with your articles. You can create a ‘software’ file of a few of your articles bundled together into a .pdf and submit them to software directories like download.com as PADs with a PAD Creator, (that’s a link to a decent free one). This is another way to turn your old articles into more backlinks and traffic without having to go through the trouble of writing new content.

In the real world, recycling is good. Re-using products cuts down on the strain to the system. The same applies to web marketing. By re-using and recycling your old articles, you are cutting down on the strain on YOU, allowing you to concentrate your energies towards new projects while ekeing every last drop of power out of the resources you already have.

David Fishman is a blogger and food enthusiast from Atlanta, GA. He especially enjoys baking and experimenting with new recipes. His most recent passion is learning how to make sushi rolls and blogging about his efforts at his new food blog, How to Make Sushi at Home.


44 Responses to “3 New Ways to Reuse Old Articles to Triple Your Backlinks”

  1. Amy Bandy says:

    Wow never even thought about that. I have a huge collection of articles I have written over the years. But will people really download my audio files? Or is this just for backlinks?

  2. David says:

    Hi Amy,

    Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to download my articles in audio form. If someone happens to, more power to them, but really, this is about the back-links for me :)

    Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment!

  3. seo-besser says:

    Too bad there isn’t a german voice available :(

  4. Bronson says:

    With the multitude of ways available to digest media today it makes sense to provide your own content in multiple formats – making it easier to consume. The backlinks are a pure bonus.

  5. PPC Consultant says:

    With Google’s universal search showing all kind of results in main results, its very important to have videos which can rank well ahead of organic results and get more traffic. Very good tips. Thanks for sharing. Can you suggest some good video making tool apart from windows movie maker?

  6. ron says:

    amazing post!!!

    Jonathan Beaton Reply:

    Take it easy Ron.

    David Reply:

    C’mon buddy, I ordered my parade without rain.

    ron Reply:

    Top 10 Websites to Convert Text to Speech Online for Free
    http://freenuts.com/top-10-websites-to-convert-text-to-speech-online-for-free/

    I think this respond was a amazingly Restraint

  7. Jonathan Beaton says:

    David,

    I thought it was a good idea for back links but then I got to thinking. If no one wants to hear an audio of one of my posts, then it really is of no value and if it is of no value, then it’s crap. So then, there really isn’t much difference between an audio post and spam?

    David Reply:

    Would you want to hear a slightly metallic robotic voice read one of your posts? If you had a working set of eyes?

    Podcast directories are no different from article directories, video directories, or RSS directories. No one cares about 95% of the stuff on there anyway.

    Is it sparkling pure white hat? Nope. But neither is offsite SEO.

    Jonathan Beaton Reply:

    Good point, it’s definitely not going to do any harm, I just don’t know if the opportunity cost is positive, i.e. time spent obtaining back-links vs. other SEO tactics

  8. John Courtney says:

    Yes, really good strategy for getting more backlinks for the same content to accelerate your internet marketing.

  9. Dealer Internet says:

    Brilliant !

  10. paul alexander says:

    Excellent!

  11. composite bats says:

    Nice article!

    Thanks for sharing this

  12. SMO-Eric says:

    interesting

    the sentence:
    “My favorite text-to-audio program is called Ivona text-to-speech”
    the link became:
    http://www.ivona.com></a%3E

    the last characters after .com is unnecessary and the link became un-clickable

    David Reply:

    Sorry Eric! I posted the link below, on comment 14.

  13. wordpress designer says:

    WOW driving in with the new ways for backlinking.

  14. Vineet Waldia says:

    Link on Ivona text-to-speech is broken, check and correct it.. :)

    David Reply:

    Sorry, hopefully Ann can take a look at it soon (I can’t edit the post anymore, i just have a contributor account). In the meantime, here’s a URL link: http://www.ivona.com/.

  15. MS says:

    Wow, really great info…. really never ever thought of that…

  16. Rdnp says:

    Really nice info…….to convert the article to video and audio

  17. StrayArrow says:

    Wow I never had it se it that way before! Thanks!

  18. HarryPotterSagaMovies says:

    Thank you very much! Now I know! Will think and use it!

  19. Dan Toombs says:

    Hi David

    Thank you very much for your post! I have written hundreds of articles and submitted them to various sites. The business I have received from my articles has been well worth the time but I have found it difficult getting the back links.

    I am going to use your suggestions. I did not realise it was so easy to turn my articles into podcasts.

    By the way, I too love cooking and will be following your food blog as well. Thanks again.

    Dan

    David Reply:

    Thanks for the kind words Dan!

    If you have hundreds of articles, just imagine what else you can do with them! You have the foundations of an article directory. You can offer them as freebies or incentives to get people onto a mailing list. Even if you’re done with them, lots of people have no problem with previously used content as long as you cede the rights to them.

    And I look forward to seeing you over at the sushi site! Drop by sometime and say hi.

  20. Beth says:

    A lot of people never think to reuse old articles. Once a quality article is written, turn it around or even rewrite it — reusing old articles are a great way for writing new ones :)

  21. albie says:

    Hey thanks a lot for this information. I will surely implement these trick. Nice share..

  22. Michael - Get Traffic Now says:

    Great post that I found useful. Really, some little things are always neglected but they definitely matters when it comes to achieving success. Thanks for this.

    Facebook Apps Traffic Secrets

  23. Splinter09 says:

    In my opinion the idea of turning old articles into podcast is by far the best one. First if you create a video from old article, who in world will want to watch it? I don’t and I bet the majority of the web doesn’t either.

    Creating .exe or pdf files and submitting them to sites like download.com sounds like a LB technique from the dark side.

    Going back to “podcasting” your articles that will also enhance the overall user experience of your site and articles as blind people will be able to read them, expanding even further your audience.

  24. Christina says:

    Very useful, I like the idea of “turn into an audio”. Thanks.

  25. reverse phone trace says:

    But the softwares which will convert them from text to other formats are not free of cost… is there any free alternative?

  26. gregw says:

    Good post.
    There is a new free Plugin for WordPress that will convert your posts into eBook format. It is called anthologize, from http://anthologize.org/.
    You can organize your post categories and articles into several eBooks and then make them available for free downloads or sell them.
    Either way if you retain your links within them to related posts, or affiliate products it will make your links viral.

    Cheers,

  27. Matt says:

    Thanks for this info. I never thought of doing these things.

    It’s true that article marketing takes time. And that makes it difficult to get the greatest link building benefit from them. But I do think that ultimately it’s all worth it because when you’ve racked up quite a few article on one subject, you can collate and edit them into a book. You can sell that off the website you’ve been promoting, and keep making extra money indefinitely.

  28. Rob Berman says:

    I have thought about the audio recording of my posts. I have only heard one that someone did and it sounded like a robot. I will need to check this one out.

    I am definitely interested in the WP plug in anthologize mentioned in comment 26. I was just discussing this idea with someone last week. Now maybe I have the solution.

    Rob

  29. simon bunting says:

    Thanks some great ideas! :)

  30. Alex Dumitru says:

    It doesn’t sound too fair, though.

  31. articles says:

    cool site..I will bookmark this blog. sorry for my bad english

  32. High Speed HDMI says:

    This is a really great article – thanks for sharing your ideas.

    Valerie

  33. Marketing Consulant says:

    I have produced a load of artilce and never through about turning them into audo and video content. This is a great idea and I will get onto it as a priority.

    Thanks for sharing, Matt

  34. 1&1 Review says:

    Good post but I think you could have gone into a bit more detail.

  35. alex@posizionamento says:

    Yes, It’ a really good idea to recycle old articles

  36. Rasika says:

    Thanks for the great info i have never think of this “recycling your old articles” methods till i read this article keep it up…