Writing and submitting articles to article banks has been proven to be one of the most effective of all traffic generating techniques. You may not actually generate any real traffic for your website in the next few days by learning to write and submit articles but this technique will serve you very well and it is worth the effort to learn how to do it and use it to your fullest advantage. You may think that you have no writing ability at all but you are probably wrong. You might not be ready to write the Great American Novel but you can write articles about the topic of your website and about the products that you are selling. You just need to know the rules for making them effective. The first and most important few words of your article are in the title or the headline. The title MUST contain the key words that relate to the topic of your website and to the products that you sell. This is the first thing that other website owners or E-zine publishers will look at when they are deciding whether to reproduce your article on their websites or in the publications because they know that the key words are what search engines use to determine the results of searches.
* Note: Search engines are used by people looking for information or products on the internet. They type “key words” in the search box and click submit. An example might be “planting tomatoes” or “growing tomatoes”. What the search engine returns is based on whatever key words were entered into the search box.
The other thing about the title or headline of your article is that it must be attention getting. You cant just title your article Fish Bait. You have to make your title interesting enough to entice the reader to keep reading. Fish Bait that Works…that isnt very good either. How about, Fish Bait from Heaven or The Fish Bait the Fish Cant Resist? Either of those titles would entice the person who was looking for information about fish bait to keep reading.
The next most important words are in the first line of the first paragraph of your articls. People surfing the internet today have terribly short attention span and mostly skim for information unless it is information that they think is going to solve a problem, make life better for them or serve a need. As you can see, the title and first line are bait and hook used to encourage a reader to continue on and read to the end of the article. Again, the first line must contain the key words and grab attention. “The women were hanging all over my car looking at all the neat gadgets I had”. If you were looking for attention from women, you would keep reading.
One more thing about your articles is that they need to be short if you intend to submit them to article banks. Very short! No more than 400 words but closer to 300 words would be more appropriate. Sometimes we can get carried away and all of a sudden have an article that is 1000 words or more. This can happen if you are writing about a subject in which you are interested and knowledgeable about. When this happens just break a long article down into a couple of shorter 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.
Take it easy on those exclamation points. One exclamation point is all that is necessary to indicate importance or excitement… 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: 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 doesnt 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.
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