Article Marketing - My Favorite Way To Drive Traffic
One of my favorite ways to drive traffic to my web site is through article marketing. What is article marketing? Article marketing is the process of writing articles about topics related to your web site niche ideas, adding links to your web site within the articles, and submitting them to the various online article directories for distribution online. One of the really nice things about article marketing traffic is that the leads generated are usually very high quality; another nice thing about article marketing is that there is generally no cost to submitting the articles to the article directories, so for all practical purposes, except for your time, article marketing is free to use to generate traffic.
So how do you do article marketing? Here is a step by step guide to article marketing:
1) Determine what types of ideas and topics are good for your web site? An easy way to do this is to write a list of ten things that people visiting your web site might be interested in. Once you have this list, write down 10 questions someone might have in reference to each of the first 10 things someone might be interested in. This will give you a total of 100 questions or ideas about which you can write.
2) Write 250-350 word articles about each of your ideas, questions, or topics, using the formula I am teaching in this article.
3) At the end of the article, you must have a call to action. Most article directories will call this your resource box, or your bio. I call it a call to action, because it must be more than a bio and a link. It must be a very specific directive that entices people to click the link and get to your web site. If they do not click the link in the article, your article has been basically unsuccessful, so you must learn to write a call to action.
The easiest way to write a call to action is to first create a free item or product that you can giveaway on your web site. Then tell the reader to click here to collect their giveaway. This will create just about the highest percentage of readers clicking through to your web site from your article and of course that is your primary goal when you are article marketing.
Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide
Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion
Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.
Article Marketing For Bloggers - 4 Tips To Build Traffic For Your Blog
Bloggers blog. Thats what they do. A blog is short for weblog and its really an online journal that can be updated easily and frequently without any knowledge of HTML code.
Traditionally, article marketing has been used by authors who are promoting their books or information products. Lately, Ive noticed a growing trend of bloggers using article marketing to grow the traffic to their blog and you should too.
Three reasons why it makes sense for bloggers to engage in article marketing:
1) Youve already got a lot of content produced in each of your blog posts. 200 words should be your floor for each article that you produce. In some cases, you already have enough words per post to create 10-50 articles instantly. If you dont, then stitch posts together of a similar theme until you have 200+ word articles to put into article marketing distribution.
2) A blogger has the same traffic building problems that any typical website has, and therefore article marketing can help your blog in the same ways it can help a non-blog website. Benefits include qualified traffic coming to your site year round, quality backlinks being built without any messy recip-linking campaigns, and youre expanding your reach to other experts that might not otherwise have found your blog.
3) Bloggers by nature are more Internet savvy than your typical author. With this said, most bloggers already understand how to create revenue with pay per click (PPC) advertising programs. As such, you already know how to produce keyword intelligent titles for their articles. This guarantees maximum traffic impact for each of your articles.
If you are already a blogger and are new to article marketing, heres how you get started:
1) Produce a cache of 10-25+ articles from your existing blog content.
2) Submit them to the major article directories and any that are niche-relevant to your field of expertise. You may also wish to submit them to ezine publishers directly from your niche.
3) Rinse and repeat until you have 250-1,000+ articles in distribution this year. Hire a college student or editor if you dont have time to get this strategy into practice as itll be well worth it.
4) Watch your traffic counter slowly rise, day by day as your articles work hard for you delivering qualified traffic to your website year round.
Article Marketing as a strategy will not break your traffic counter on your first month of investing in this strategybut, I guarantee if you engage in this strategy, your blog will grow in traffic and popularity beyond the traffic you were already creating by simply blogging. You knows, you might even increase your sales, land a new job, or improve your rank in the search engines as a side-benefit from your article marketing strategy.
About The Author:
Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best quality original articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/ expert author community. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links intact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/
(c) Copyright - Christopher M. Knight. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Online Article Marketing - To be Thin or Not to be Thin - The Question
Should your online articles have a lot of content or be thinly written? Many online articles authors are upset that other others write trite thinly written articles and these critics of short articles do indeed make a very good point indeed. This is problematic and troubling and they have a right to be a little frustrated over this issue.
One thing I find interesting is the number of business articles that are written by folks who have never really done anything in business and yet write articles as if they know everything about business. It seems that just because someone can write a decent article with good sentence structure, does not necessarily make them a knowledge based authority or expert. Just because an author writes a good grammatically correct article does not mean they know what they are talking about.
When we talk about reader perception of an author's credentials, it seems we ought to also talk about deception, trickery or even questionable marketing ploys as well. You see just because someone has a degree in business, well it is not the same as winning in the free-market. If one can only succeed on the key board should they be allowed to give advice as if reality based to those who are searching for real answers?
Another point, I would like to make about the online article author critic's astute observation is this; often online article writer's write thin content as to not give away too much, only enough to entice the reader to click to their website. This has also been recommended in the many eBooks on Online Article Marketing and this constitutes a "Catch 22" for some authors and they will need to work this out for themselves?
Do they write thinly done articles with minimal content, just enough to wet the appetite or do they go full on and write one of my 1500 word articles and explain everything in depth. Having written many of both types for various reasons, this might also become part of this conversation between article authors and their critics in upcoming dialogues?
And also as part of the conversation, where is that line to be drawn. I mean I can probably write an entire eBook on just about any subject I have 10 or more articles in or one or more white papers on half of those categories. Yet, this is an article submission site? And the critics you have to admit bring up a really good point. Everyone wants to be thin, but is it unhealthy for your online article marketing endeavors to be too thin or too rich in content? You decide.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
Article Marketing For Massive Traffic - 3 Of My Biggest Secrets!
Article marketing is not as profitable as before. That's what 'gurus' tend to say to get you afraid. The truth is, although there are more article writers right now, the amount of people surfing the Internet has also increased. So it comes down to the same amount of traffic.
Here are my 3 biggest secrets for getting massive traffic from your article marketing:
1. Always Build A List With Your Opt-In Page
This is what I do - I always build a list by sending traffic from my articles to a opt-in page. I don't send them to a sales page - that just turns most people off. But a squeeze page offering free information is better received. List building is one of the key activities you must be concentrating on online, so direct your traffic to build your list!
2. Submit Only To The Top Directories
Although you can make submitting articles to hundreds of directories quicker with an article submitter, it's still terribly difficult. You have to register at all the directories, and most article directories are different from each other, so that makes article submitting with submitters a slow process still. My advice: submit only to the top 5 directories. Spend more time writing articles.
3. Write In A Conversational Style
Let's face it, as human beings we are emotional beings. We respond better to conversational writing (that's why blogs are so popular!) than boring, technical writing. Unless your subject calls for it, I'd advice writing in a conversational style (like what I'm doing here!) as this will generate windfall results.
Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:
"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"
Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!
How to Create Fraud in the Online Article Marketing Industry Sub-Sector
Becoming a fraudulent online article marketer is fairly easy, first pick a fake name. Second, build some websites in industries you know nothing about or even blogs if you want. Next, put AdSense ads on them - now put up some commentary that is "key word" rich. Now for the biggest secret of all; use deceptive advertising by writing online articles hyping and "buzz marketing" and write hundreds of articles, and post them online at free-submission sites, with by-lines to your various websites.
Another great trick is to "Steal" content from such online article websites and post these onto your blogs or websites, which have AdSense ads. Trust me Google does not care, as they make money too. The legitimate online article writers will never know, especially if you delete their name, add another name or kill their by-line links.
One more tip, if you are caught make sure you sign up for the Blog or website using false information so no one can catch you. If they do, simply say; "Oh, I am so sorry" then ignore them, hopefully they will go away. If they keep pestering you, delete those websites or stop using that one author's articles and go find some other ones, as you can keep that going on for years.
Why am I explaining how to be dishonest, cheat, lie, and be fraudulent on the Internet?
Well, because I am sick of it and completely disgusted that this is going on. I am tired of having my content stolen, I am tired of fraudulent hype, criminal buzz marketing activity, the fact that no one cares and that complete disregard of ethics by the human race. Further, I am tired of being a zombie slayer, there are just to many of you out there.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
Expert Panels, Quality Control Boards and the Future of Online Articles
It has been surmised that a panel may be needed to check into the credentials and expert status of online article authors to see if they pass the proper standards test or can cut the mustard. Many seasoned experts are a little miffed that some online article authors write "thinly veiled" content. A few have floated the idea of setting a panel or quality control board to serve this process.
But is that even feasible? Some of the top online article writers believe that it is not such an easy task and perhaps may not even be feasible. Indeed, I think I agree with this line of thought in that a quality board is way out of the question as some days there are well over 1,000 articles submitted in a single 24-hour period on one top online article submission website and thus it is simply outrageous how much work that might be.
Indeed I also agree that the "human innate characteristics" of small panel group participants is a given, thus a panel in itself would be problematic. For instance who watches the panel and then are their disputes on rulings, thus rules. And once you make "one rule" well you got em' lifetime job security? And even if a panel could decide what an expert is, that would be a definition. Which brings up an interesting question?
Definitions and rules is a similar process, in that if you make one definition, you are forever further redefining it and creating more. This leads to bureaucracy which is indeed leads to less fluidity of motion, and less agility, thus ruins all the good that is. If you have more definitions, rules and panels all you have created is more minutia and less efficiency, to what avail?
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
