Article marketing can promote your website and protect your website from competitors. You can strengthen your article marketing strategy by evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your article submissions.

Article marketing provides you with an opportunity to optimise your website for search engines, promote your website’s visibility, and keep your website strong in the face of competitors. Applying a traditional SWOT analysis to your article marketing strategy can sharpen your strategy to capitalize on opportunities that might have otherwise gone unrecognized. SWOT is the acronym for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats" that has been used in business development, organisational development, and competitive marketing strategies for decades. This highly acclaimed strategic method for planning can be applied to your article marketing strategy.

Your article marketing strategy should analyze the strengths of your website, your knowledge and your content. Analyzing your strengths positions you to create content that capitalizes on your greatest strengths and can keep your articles central to your primary content. Your article marketing strategy should also analyze the strengths of your competitor's website. By researching the articles on your competitor’s websites and blogs, the articles submitted to article submission directories, and the topics the competitor typically writes articles on, you can plan to write your content to surpass your competitor and position yourself as the more knowledgeable author.

Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the websites that you are submitting your articles to is critical to your reputation. Your article marketing strategy should specifically plan to submit articles only to quality websites. If your competitor has a relationship with a link farm, not being everywhere your competitor is will protect your website. It also important to look at your weaknesses and your competitor’s weaknesses. If your competitor has neglected to post pertinent information or has posted incorrect information, capitalize on that opportunity in your article marketing strategy.

Article marketing strategies should always look for opportunity. You should be where your competitor is, (unless they are linked with the wrong crowd), and where your competitor isn’t. You should also look for opportunities to submit articles with sought-after content. Top tens, recent news, sharp or contradicting opinions, how-to’s and reviews always offer opportunity to submit articles. Social bookmarking websites can be researched for popular topics and be made a regular part of your article marketing strategy.

Threats are an unavoidable aspect of an article marketing strategy. New competitors constantly enter the market, and ethical and unethical competition seeps through every link that is posted on the web. Avoiding links that search engines disrespect, keeping up with your competitor’s article marketing strategy, and optimising your website for search engines will add protection to your website’s viability.

Article marketing requires strategic development to optimise its success. Applying the SWOT analysis to your article marketing strategy will serve to refine your article submissions for optimal search engine positioning and website protection. Take the time to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are an intricate part of your article marketing strategy, and your marketing will surpass your competitors and reach search engine success.