Article marketing is the most effective, FREE way to drive traffic to your website there is! And…it is one of the most durable forms of Internet marketing available because articles are displayed online literally for years. It is a marketing strategy you can do once and reap the benefit literally for years to come.
In business, there is no more powerful position than to be considered an expert. When a person reads articles you have distributed and learns something from it you become an expert to that person. That’s a strong incentive when it comes to buying from you.
One of the best parts of article marketing is you never pay for advertising-your article is your ad if you do it right. And if for some reason you don’t feel capable of writing an article or do not have the time there is an abundance of copywriters eager and available on Craigslist or on the forums of Digital Point.com.
Writing your article :
Begin by deciding on your topic. Write about a part of your business that you are passionate about and can give specific solutions to a problem or aspect of. Be clear and concise and try to entice the reader to want find to out more about you and what you have to offer. Also, be a specialist and don’t write in generalities.
Keyword research :
Now that you have your topic the most important step is to do the necessary keyword research . keywords are the words and phrases that someone would type into a search engine to find information about your topic. This is an entire subject unto itself but bear in mind you want to work the main keywords you’ve uncovered into the body, subjects and especially the title lines of your article. Why is that? Because the first 3-5 words of your article title determine the success of how much traffic your article will generate back to your website.
So, creating keyword rich article titles that match the most commonly searched keywords for your topic is absolutely critical to effective internet marketing. Here are three keyword research sites to explore.
freekeywords.wordtracker.com
searchmarketing.yahoo.com
hexatrack.com
Clear and concise:
Now, that we have our topic, keywords and title it’s time to write the body. Articles should be between 300 and 700 words roughly and then have a four to five sentences at the end talking about why they should visit your website.
Strive to cover one complete concept. Something that stands on it own and is a valuable contribution to the reader. As the saying goes content is king. For example, Internet marketing, article marketing, and generate website traffic are three keywords I’m using in this article. It has to read natural though don’t over do it. By the way ,consider if it’s appropriate to use some controversy in your article to create interest. A little controversy may go a long way to generate website traffic and be entertaining.
And, remember your keywords. Those same keywords you used in the title should be sprinkled judiciously throughout the body of the article .I suggest you keep a list of them in front of you as you as you write. Wrap up the body of your article leaving the reader with a desire to know more of what you have to say. Entice them.
The authors response box or byline.
The last part of the article is the all important authors box or byline. Never write an article without one. This is where you sell yourself and your site. It should contain the following: Your name and optional title. Your website URL (preferably in a clickable link) and a call to action. In other words “ask for the sale”.
It’s often an effective Internet marketing strategy to offer them a free gift such as a newsletter or audio course etc. as a “bribe” to visit your site.
Ideally you want to send prospects through an opt-in page which you can track through a tracking link and auto responder. This way you can stay in touch with people to build trust and further demonstrate the value of the services and products you offer.
You now have a compelling keyword rich article that gives valuable content to your reader and represents you for the expert you are in your chosen field. That’s It. Well, not quite. It’s now time to submit your article.
Submitting your article :
The greatest article in the world is meaningless if it’s never read. You could of course submit it yourself, however a much faster ,more effective way is to submit it through one or more of the available article submission sites. They will have your articles in front of thousands even hundreds of thousands of people a lot faster than you could do it yourself. One word of caution though ,search engines do not want duplicate content all over the web. So , you’ll want to vary your article each time you submit it to different submission sites. A different title, vary the content etc. and one article can become many.
