Article Marketing to Boost Traffic and Build Business Backlinks

So What’s Article Marketing?

Article marketing is when you write (or outsource the writing of) an article and distribute it out over the internet. Your ultimate goal is to drive traffic through your article to your website.

When you’re using article marketing as your method of traffic generation, the idea is to let the content be viral. You ideally want as much coverage as possible with the articles you distribute.

Instead of allowing one publisher to broadcast your content, you want dozens or hundreds of people to pick it up and expose it to their audience. Publishers like to use other people’s articles even if it means giving them links to the author’s site because they’re in desperate need of content.

You get traffic either from links within the body of the article, if it’s allowed, or through the Bio box, which is also known as the ‘About the Author’ space, usually positioned at the very bottom of the article. The bio box can contain a quick fact about you, such as ‘Published author of five books on…’ But you’ll also want to include a sentence like, ‘To find out more, visit [author’s name] site at www.[domainname].com’

How Are Articles Used By Publishers?

Publishers have various needs for articles being marketed online. Some own AdSense websites, where they fill hundreds and thousands of pages with text to lure in readers. The text is surrounded by AdSense ads and whenever a reader clicks on them, the publisher makes money.

When they can put free content on their site and reap the rewards of AdSense profits, then their only overhead is the hosting of the domain each month, which is a negligible cost at best. Others have a newsletter where they’ve promised information to be distributed about a certain topic each month to their subscribers. If they’re busy with other areas of their business, they like to stop in and pick up free content from article marketing sites and ease the pressure of having to write unique content.

Article Generation – Outsource or Do-It-Yourself?

If you have time to write the articles yourself, along with the skill to put some sentences together that intrigue the reader, then you should take the self-writing course to success.

Outsourcing only tacks on an additional amount to your expenses, and in the beginning, you want to keep costs low. Whether you do it on your own or hire someone to do it for you, you’ll want to make sure they (or you) adhere to some guidelines for the creation of the articles.

When a publisher has success with articles under your name, they’re going to come back looking for more, so you want to provide good quality. The higher the quality, the more exposure you get, which equals more traffic and ultimately, more sales.

Many people try to focus only on keyword density. Although keywords play an important part in your traffic ability, you also want the articles to be readable and enjoyable.

You also want the article itself to be a teaser. Let’s say you have a business where you create a personalised weight loss plan for people. You can write an article for distribution called, ‘Weight Loss 101’ and send it out online to be picked up by other publishers.

These people may be your competitors, but they also need content in the same niche, which you’ve fulfilled for them. Your article should be informative enough to make the reader feel it was good, but not give all of the details away.

Your bio box will then drive traffic to your site.

If the reader found your first article good, then chances are they’ll click through on your link because you’ve positioned yourself as an expert in that subject matter. I also offer something free in my bio box. Giving something away for free has a much higher click through rate.

Make sure your headline captures the reader’s attention because your first reader will be the publisher searching for content. If they feel your headline is interesting, chances are they’ll follow through to read the entire article.

Where to Distribute Articles for Marketing Purposes

There are many places on the net where you can upload your articles so they’ll get picked up by publishers. Some are free and some make you pay for exposure. Let’s look at the most common article marketing depots:

Ezine Articles: When you get an account at www.EzineArticles.com, you’ll start out having to go through a process where your articles take about a week to get approved. After 10 accepted submissions, you get faster approval because you’ve proven yourself to the editors. You’re only allowed to link to your site in your Bio Box.

It’s free to get an author’s account with Ezine Articles. Publishers love the articles there because they’ve been carefully reviewed so that they don’t appear like Spam or blatant self-promotion. Never refer to your business in the article, write purely from a informative point of view. Once your article is approved, it stays in the cycle of articles for six months.

Ezine Articles has an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed to alert website owners and ezine publishers that there’s new content available within their niche. Plus, many are on an email list to receive notification right to their inbox.

Go Articles: A faster way of getting your articles available to publishers is to use www.GoArticles.com. This is also a free service, and unlike Ezine Articles, you’re allowed to post links directly within the main text of the article.

Article marketing will spike your traffic temporarily, but you always want to continue providing fresh content to the various article directories. You should have your site ready to convert the traffic into sales.

This coverage isn’t just about getting the one time conversion, however. Becoming an expert author in your field means branding yourself as the primary ‘go-to’ person in your niche. This lends credibility to you and allows you to partner up with others in the industry for joint ventures.

Other Article Distributors: New article directories are popping up all the time. Some are gaining in popularity. You can use a combination of directories to saturate the market with your text and ultimately maximize your potential for traffic and sales.

Here’s a list of more article directories you can use:

www.isnare.com
www.snaparticles.com

http://www.a1articles.com/

http://www.content-articles.com/

http://www.earticlesonline.com/

http://www.free-articles-zone.com/

http://www.getyourarticles.com/

http://www.iwantcontent.com/

http://www.justarticlesonline.com/

You can perform a Google search for the key phrase, ‘article directory’ and find out what new sites have sprung up that you can become a contributor of content to. Some authors like to slightly change each article for individual sites rather than submit the same one to every directory.

A Last Word About Article Marketing

The best thing about having your articles distributed is that they usually stay online forever. With other advertising, such as Pay Per Click marketing, your exposure stops when you stop paying the fee.

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