The submission of articles to the article banks is a well known method of generating traffic. While you may not accomplish much in the near future by learning how to write and submit articles, knowing how can serve you for a long time and is well worth the effort of learning and using to your greatest benefit. Though you may not feel up to writing Moby Dick because you don’t have any writing ability but you are likely wrong. You can provide information about your website and your products because you know exactly what they are. All that is necessary is that you know the rules for effective article writing. Of most importance is the headline or title. This MUST have key words relating to your website and your products. The first thing that eZine publishers or other website owners look at when deciding to publish your article are the key words in the title because they know that the search engines look at those.
* 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 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?
Another thing about writing articles that you plan to submit to article banks is that they need to be short. Very short! They should be a maximum of 400 words and closer to 300 would be better. Its easy to get carried away and suddenly have an article that is 1000 words or more when you are discussing a subject that you know a lot about and are interested in. If you start writing and forget to stop, break long wordy articles down and make three or four articles out of the one long one.
Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Remember that short attention span that we talked about? Don’t use big words and don’t use run-on sentences. Make your article easy to 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! Your link should NOT word wrap! It must be complete, http://www.whatever.com. Not all email programs that are used by E-zine editors to send out their newsletters and E-zines support word-wrapped links so you can defeat the whole purpose of writing the article by word-wrapping your website url.
Submitting Articles: Article banks and article repositories are easily found on the Internet by a simple search using your favorite search engine. Once you have located them you must follow their guidelines to submit your articles.
You will likely be told that there is software available that you can use to automatically submit your articles to banks and repositories…and there is, in fact, such software. The problem with the automated submission software is that most of the larger (and more effective) banks and repositories don’t accept automated submissions. So, while this software can in fact save you time by submitted to the smaller sites, it isn’t going to 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.
Another solution which I use is Unique Article Wizard. UAW submits unique articles to hundreds of article publishers at the click of a mouse. Spend a couple hours writing your article, click Publish and watch the traffic grow to your site.
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