One of the most effective methods of generating traffic to your website is writing articles and submitting them to the article publishers. The efforts of the next few days may not drive any real traffic to your website but writing articles and submitting them will serve you well in the future and it is in your best interest to use this technique to your advantage. While you may not think you have any writing talent, you are probably incorrect. You may not be the next John Grisham, but you can effectively write about your website and products that you sell. Of course you need to know the rules for writing articles effectively. The number one rule is that the headline or title HAS To contain keywords pertaining to your website or product. This will be the determining factor when E-zine publishers or website owners decide if they want to publish your article. This is because they are aware of how much importance the search engines place on keywords in searches.
* Note: The search engines are the method by which people find products or information that they are looking for on the Internet. To find those products or that information, they type key words into the search boxes of the search engines. For example; they might type in fish bait or fishing lures. The results that the search engines provide are based on the key words that the searcher uses.
Another thing of importance regarding the headline or title of the article is that it MUST draw attention. Using something simple like Car Parts won’t do. Your title MUST be interesting enough to grab the reader’s attention and keep him reading. “Car Parts for Your Mercedes”…well, that isn’t really great either. How about, “Car Parts for your SL-600″ or “Car Parts For Your SL That The Women Can’t Resist”? These last two headlines should encourage someone looking for parts their Mercedes to continue reading the article.
After the title, the next most important words in your article are in the first line. Experienced internet surfers are well known for having a short attention span and rarely read anything word for word unless it is information that they think will meet their needs, solve a problem they have or make life better for them. So…the title…and the first line become the bait and the hook that is used to lure the reader to truly read the complete article. If the first line contains the key words it must also be be attention getting. “The customers were begging for more tips after the first line!” If you were an internet marketer, wouldn’t you keep reading?
The article banks want short articles. Brief, in fact! The longest an article should be is 400 words but closer to 300 is better. You can get carried away and end up with an article that is 1000 words or more when discussing a subject in which you are interested and know a lot about. If you wind up with a long wordy article just break it down into three or four short articles.
Keep in mind that short attention span we discussed earlier and use short sentences and paragraphs. And don’t use big words or run-on sentences. Make your article pleasing to the eye and it will be read.
Excess punctuation shows a lack of respect for the reader. Especially exclamation points - one can be used to show excitement or importance but any more are just plain rude.
Your resource box at the end of the article is the part that is most important to you. Other website owners or E-zine publishers who download and reproduce your article are required to include your resource box. This box needs to contain your full name, your contact information and, most importantly, a link to your website. That link is the little thing that is going to help increase traffic for you.
Warning! Do NOT word-wrap this link! Type it out in full, http://www.whatever.com. All email programs that E-zine editors use to send out their newsletters and E-zines do not support word-wrapped links so you can defeat your own purpose by word-wrapping the link to your website.
Submitting Articles: You can find article banks and article repositories on the Internet by simple doing a search for them using your favorite search engine. When you have located them, you must submit your articles according to the guidelines that each site sets forth.
You will likely be told that you can use software that is available to automatically submit your articles to banks and repositories…and in fact, there is such software. But the problem is that most of the larger banks and repositories do not accept automatic submissions. While the software does in fact save you time when submitting to the smaller sites, it doesn’t help you much with the bigger sites.
Of course, submitting articles yourself is boring, tedious and time consuming work but it can provide you with a lot of targeted traffic. Each person reading your article will also be exposed to the link to your site. If your article is helpful and it provides good information, then these people will visit your site. Some may buy what you are selling or opt-in to your mailing list… or maybe some will do both. It is possible to find services that will submit your articles for you. For a fee of course.
One solution I use is Unique Article Wizard. UAW can submit unique articles to hundreds of article banks at the click of a mouse. Spend one to two hours setting up your article, click Submit and sit back and watch the traffic build to your site.
Author Porfirio G Krasternak uses theUnique Article Wizard to ensure each article submitted is distinctly different. For more information on how you can submit unique articles to all the eZines, go toUnique Article Wizard.
