How Writing Articles Can Increase Your Business
By Stephanie Davies
Well, for starters, you are reading this right? Many online business owners use article writing as a way to spread the word about their business and their website, and if you aren’t doing so, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers!
In this article, I will show you some very simple yet effective ways to write articles easily to increase traffic to your website.
The first thing you need to do in order to write an effective article is to write about what you know. If you don’t know about the internal combustion engine, you shouldn’t be writing articles about the internal combustion engine. Hopefully, you already know a lot about what you are selling, so that part should fall right into place. For example, if you sell advertising, write articles about advertising: how to advertise effectively, ways to advertise, how not to advertise, how advertising can help you, and so on. You may also write article on other topics you have knowledge about that may not relate to your business. For instance, I have written a lot of articles about cats, housecleaning, and religion, yet these have nothing to do with my business. However, writing articles that are related in some way to your business will only help to attract visitors that are interested in what you sell.
Another thing to keep in mind is where your articles are being published. Are you submitting them to search engines? What about to article directories? Are you publishing them on your website or in newsletters? There are dozens of places you can place your article to get others to read it. Of course, the more places you submit your article, the more chances it will have of being read. Just be careful to make sure who your target audience is. You don’t want to submit your article to a gardening website if your article is about flying airplanes. Not only is the chance that your article will be declined larger than normal, but even if by chance it does get published, people at that site generally won’t care about the topic.
I highly recommend article-publishing services to submit your articles to article directories. The best I have found on the internet is Article Marketer, however there are alternative submission services as well. I also recommend submitting your articles by hand as well, as not all publishing services can cover all the article directories out there, not to mention you will be able to direct your article better as well. Another great place to get your articles seen is to swap or exchange articles with newsletter publishers. If you don’t have a newsletter for your business, you are missing out! (But that is a topic for a whole other article!) And finally, doing a simple Google search for “Submit Your Article” will net a huge amount of places for you to submit your articles.
When you actually go to write the article, here are a few simple tips to get your article noticed:
1. Grab the reader’s attention in the first paragraph. If your article reads like an instruction manual (unless of course, that is what it is), people will get bored quickly.
2. Have a sense of humor. If your article isn’t meant to be humorous, you can always make small quips, or include something offhand in your bio.
3. Speaking of which, always, always, ALWAYS make sure you have a clear, concise, and well-written bio at the bottom of your articles that simply tells a little about you and the URL of your website.
4. Proofread! When you are done writing your article, look it over and make sure it reads easily, fluidly, and contains no grammatical or spelling errors.
Absolutely anyone is capable of writing good articles that can bring in more traffic to their website. With the right knowledge, and the time and effort to do so, effective articles can benefit your business as well as the article directories and places you submit to. If you follow these simple strategies, you will see a marked improvement in your traffic stats.
About The Author
Stephanie Davies is a 27 year old Missourian with a loving husband and an 8 year old son. She currently owns her own business, Mystickal Incense & More, and sells handmade candles, incense, bath & body products and more at Posted in Online Marketing July 25th, 2006 by Sellportal | No comments
Writing Articles Can Drive Traffic To Your Sales Page
By Gary Muller
When we design and build our websites we work hard to make sure our site looks great, the font matches throughout the page, the colors work together rather than competing with one another. We want our readers to enjoy our website and come back. Most importantly we want our sites to make money. It’s amazing how little thought we often put into actually getting visitors to our site in the first place.
There are many options for driving traffic to your site. Some of them are quite costly and some of them are surprisingly cheap. You have probably heard that writing good quality content is necessary in order to achieve good page rankings and obviously to receive repeat visitors, but did you know that by writing articles and submitting them to content sites with your byline and website address you are accomplishing two very important advertising strategies?
First by doing this, you are presenting yourself as an expert in the field. Whether you built your website as a one stop shop for any kind of widget on the planet or if your site is about a very specific widget writing articles about widgets and distributing them to the various content sites that can be found all over the internet will gradually establish you as an authority in the field of widgets. You are also creating links into your website. It’s always a good idea to have several incoming links to your website as this information gets picked up by the little bots that decide what your site is worth.
Second, free advertising. These free content sites are actually quite widely read and the more people that see your article with your byline, the more potential visitors you have to your site. These are much better than going to one of those surfing sites in order to generate traffic and it is much less expensive than beginning a pay per click campaign.
Ultimately, the more your name is seen in association with widgets, the more credibility you gain in the great big world of widgets. Using a content site to drive traffic to your widget sales site is actually a very intelligent business decision. It’s also a good idea to branch out beyond the world of widgets in your content writing. It could be that by writing an article on something that appeals to a broader market will lead to the selling of even more widgets.
It’s really amazing the way things work out. There have been business cards that have made it around the world and finally resulted in a sale. Your sales page is essentially your business card on the web. The more you get people to see your page, the more opportunities you have to make a sale. Putting out articles wherever you can think of to do so will result in your article being seen and conversely your website address being seen by a much broader audience. Also by establishing yourself as the quintessential widget expert in many circles, you’ve ‘branded’ yourself and people will think of your name when they think of widgets. Way to go!
About The Author
Gary Muller is the creator of Success Voyeur. An inside look at how the mentoring process can quickly improve your online income. He can be reached for more information at Success Voyeur