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 way people find products or information on the internet is by the use of search engines. These people use key words to find what they want by entering them into the search box and clicking „Search“. One such search may be for „car parts“ or „car tires“. What is returned by the search engine is based on whatever key words the searcher used.
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 isnt 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.
Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Remember that short attention span that we talked about? Dont use big words and dont use run-on sentences. Make your article easy to read.
Go easy on the exclamation points, as well. One exclamation point indicates importance or excitement… a half a dozen are just 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 your url! It must be typed out in full, http://www.whatever.com. Not all E-zine editors send out their newsletters and E-zines using email programs that support word-wrapped links so it is possible to ruin your own purpose by word-wrapping your website url.
Submitting Articles: Once you have found article banks and article repositories on the Internet by simple doing a search using your favorite search engine it is time to submit your articles. Every site has their own guidelines for accepting articles which you must follow or risk rejection.
Software is available for use in automatically submitting articles to the article repositories and banks. The problem here is that most of the larger, more effective repositories and banks will not publish automated submissions. So even though this software can save time when submitting to smaller sites, this doesn’t help much with the bigger more well known 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.
The best solution and one I use is Unique Article Wizard. UAW can submit unique articles to hundreds of eZine publishers at the push of a button. Spend a few hours creating your article, Push Submit, sit back, and watch the traffic to your site increase astronomically.