Tag Archives: article

How To Increase Your Website Traffic With Article Marketing

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How To Increase Your Website Traffic With Article Marketing

The concept of marketing your website with articles has gained popularity. Many site owners are having articles written and published on various article directories. The reason is simple, traffic.

Why Article Marketing?

The demand for quality content online never ends.

Smart webmasters realize that by providing this quality content and giving permission for other webmasters to republish their articles results in an excellent opportunity to expose their website to their target audience.

Each article that you write and distribute gives you the chance to plug your site or newsletter in the about the author section. You can typically link directly to your site, and sometimes even can use HTML and link your primary keywords in the anchor text. This gives you some nice, relevant backlinks.

Its not uncommon to receive thousands of unique backlinks for each article submitted, as over time your article will continue to be picked up for redistribution by other webmasters.

That’s why article marketing is so popular, its a winning situation all around. Other webmasters can add your quality articles to their sites for free, and you get exposure and links.

Everybody is happy.

Writing a good article is actually surprisingly easy, especially if you are already an expert on your topic. Articles only need to be about 300 – 500 words, and be well written and without spelling and grammatical errors. Even if you are trying to write about a topic that you are not as familiar with, you have options.

Many webmasters outsource the creation of articles. If you visit any web freelance site, such as elance.com, you can usually find someone to write articles for you on any topic for between $10 to $40 per article. As with anything, buyer beware. Its best to give a prospective writer a small assignment first of only a few article to get a feel for the quality of their writing. Remember, the articles that you submit are representing you and your website. Quality matters.

How and Where to Submit Articles?

So, you have written your article, checked it for spelling and grammar and its ready to go…now what? You need to distribute your article to Article Directories, Article Announcement Lists and you can even submit your article directly to industry specific sites.

Many article marketers find that using an article submission software can speed up the time it takes to submit your articles. Article submission software also can help with the “where do I submit to?” question as well. The article submission sites and announcement lists come pre loaded with directories and other sites that accept submissions. You can also add your own sites to the list.

I highly recommend using an article submission software package to submit your articles.

The time savings alone is substantial. You can use the article submission software to submit to the “basic” directories & portals. Then, you go to Google and type in your topic and “submit article”. Usually, you will have tens or even hundreds more sites that cater specifically to the niche you are promoting. Then submit to those niche sites as well.

This technique is not something I see being widely done, however, so there’s a good tip for you!

The traffic from articles submitted to niche sites as well as the directories is substantially higher than the traffic from articles submitted to directories alone.

There you have it.

Marketing your website with articles is a great way to get traffic, links and expose your website to new visitors. Its easier than it sounds, even for those that think they cant write. Just try it! Chances are you will be adding Article marketing to your standard internet marketing tips and tricks!!.

4 Easy Ways To Write How-To Articles

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4 Easy Ways To Write How-To Articles

You want to get your e-mail newsletter started, but you don’t want to be burdened with writing articles every time you turn around. Fact is, writing how-to articles isn’t that much of a hassle once you have a system for it.

Creating short, how-to articles allows you to:

– connect with your audience

– position yourself as an expert, and

– increase sales

Bottom line: Give clients information they need and you’ll be the first person they’ll think of when they run into challenges.

Consider creating a template for your e-mail newsletter articles that will fit the needs of your audience. Ask yourself if they want detailed information, or if they’re happy receiving broad ideas that will allow them to tailor the information to meet their specific needs.

If they want specific info, you could always include a teaser paragraph in your newsletter and then provide a link at the bottom of that paragraph. The link can lead to more detailed information about the subject your that audience is interested in.

Once you understand the needs of your audience, place your information in article format. Here’s a system I’ve often used to produce quick, informative articles.

1. Begin with an identifier paragraph.

This is an introduction to the subject. Just let people know exactly what you’re getting at.

2. Tell them why they should be interested.

This is where you just get into the reader’s world. You will what you’re talking about help them do their jobs better? In essence, that’s all people really want to know.

3. Give short, realistic pieces of advice.

You have so much to say it’s hard to fit it into short bits of info, but do it you must. Otherwise you’ll lose your audience’s attention. Try to stick to the points that have the most impact or the ones that are completely opposite to what people in your industry are currently doing.

4. Wrap it up.

One of my mentors used to always say to me, “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em. Then tell ’em. Then tell ’em what you told ’em.” No, he wasn’t senile. His advice actually worked. At the end of every article I just wrap up what I’ve said by reviewing the key points of the article. It’s called a “takeaway.” What’s the one thing you want the audience to take away from your article and implement in their daily work lives? Once you’ve answered that question, you have your final paragraph.

Whatever you do, keep it short and simple. Sure we may want to use sophisticated language if your audience craves that, but you’d be surprised. When reading e-mail especially, readers won’t mind short, concise words and phrases. And that’s especially true if those words and phrases add more to the bottom line and/or help them become more efficient.

4 Steps on How to Write Great Articles

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4 Steps on How to Write Great Articles

Whether you’re a professional writer or not we all draw a blank when we want to write a great article.

I’ve found an answer to that dilemma that will get you writing in no time so that you can publish your article and begin to receive that new wave of subscribers you’ve been hoping for. Here are the 4 steps to follow.

1. Write your action steps first.

Forget about the catchy headline and attractive lead paragraph for now. There’s no use in cleverly leading a reader into an article that has no real value to them. So start where you build your credibility, right in the action steps. Of course you want to identify your subject and then tell them how to make their lives easier. For instance, plumbers are always going to have to fix pipes, it’s the nature of their business.
2. Save the best for last.

There’s something called takeaway or take-home that should be in every one of your articles. It’s your last chance to tell your audience, “I know my stuff.” Try to put that key piece of information in the last paragraph of your article and you’ll want it to be something your reader can do as soon as he or she finishes reading your article. If you’re writing to accounts payable clerks, you’d tell them ways to get each department to get approvals on all purchase orders before submitting them. A/P clerks would just eat that up. It’s their number one gripe. Bottom line: Give your audience something they can do immediately at the very end of your article. They’ll remember your name and become devotees for life-hanging from your every word.

3. Get excited about the benefits.

After you’ve taken care of the credibility building portion of your article, you have to draw the reader in and whet their appetite for all this great information. By the way, if you write the action steps and take-home first, this part will be easier because you’ll be so excited about the information you’ll see the benefits of it. And that’s what writing lead paragraphs and headlines is all about: benefits to your readers.

4. Your final take-home advice
No matter what you do, when you’re writing to an online audience, always include an “About the Author” blurb (some call this a sig file, short for signature file) and a plug for anything new you’re into. To do this, determine what you want the reader to do after he or she is finished reading. Do you want the to subscribe to your ezine? Buy your new ebook? Or just visit or site? Whatever the benefit to you is, identify it before you write your “About the Author” section. And you can write this at any time because it’s separate from the article and you can use the same “About the Author” blurb for multiple articles. As a matter of fact, you could write one right now.

3 Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

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3 Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills back.
With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are also getting popular.

There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles more easily. Though this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure, which is only half of the story.

Take a look first at the common mistakes that some people make before submitting their contents to article directories:

1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.

In article writing, there are three key benefits why you are promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.
But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, it will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them.

You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better contents.

2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same articles?

Mention keywords at strategic places. Just be sure not to overdo them. Some are even using anchor texts which is also an effective method. But it is important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this.
Remember that is not only about the links back to your site. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large number of audiences and gaining the ability of leveraging other brands because of the quality of your work. Better search engine results also are great benefits.

But these things do not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings. Not just increase the number of visitors to your site.
Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have.

3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.

Maybe in the process of writing articles, you are thinking that all that is you wanted is links back to your site. And any visitors it can generate are fine.

Guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. Oftentimes, they have some guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting.
You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight.

Write the articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work the most effective way for you. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, spell checks, researching on a good topic and even hiring a writer to produce a good content on your behalf.

In the end, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back but on a very basic level. Or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra time making quality contents.

It will be your choice. You may not be aware of the fact that an article submitted on directories is not meant to have the same level of exposure as highly-targeted content ones geared on a narrow group of people.
Learn the difference between these two and it will surely help you know what kinds of articles to write and to submit.