Using Articles To Drive Traffic To Your Website Or Blog

When it comes to getting traffic to your blog or Website, enough is never enough. In fact the more traffic you get, you directly and indirectly make more money. There are tons of ways to get more traffic to your sites, but one of the most effective is to write and publish articles related to your market.

The trick to writing articles is to write them constantly, which really sounds easier than it is. If you’re not outsourcing the articles, you need to write and publish at least one new article every two weeks. If you’re new, chances are your articles will only be picked up by a limited number of publishers, but when you write constantly, it gets easier to be published since your name gets more recognizable.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to look back at some of the posts you’ve written and turn these into full-fledged articles. Generally, this would mean anywhere between 500 - 800 words. Anything shorter and you’re likely to be rejected by most article directories. Anything longer is still ok, but would mean your readers could get bored.

How To Write Powerful Articles

Although logically you can write just about anything you want, certain types of articles have proven to be superior. These are:
Versus articles—In a “versus article,” you compare between two different products, ideas, methodologies or even companies. The logic behind writing this type of articles is to ignite conversation and attention to debates that have been raging on forever and are unlikely to be solved in the near future. What is the purpose of writing on something that can’t be solved?

There are a lot of topics that people love to argue on for the sake of arguing, and you can capitalize on this for your own benefit. Examples of various articles are:

• Yahoo vs. Google - Who's Better Converting Traffic?
  
• PC vs. Mac for Video Editing?
  
• Windows vs. Linux
  
• Private schools vs. Home schooling
  
• Fender guitars vs. Gibson guitars
  
• Republicans vs. Democrats
  
• Intel vs. AMD

As long as the topic is still debatable, you can always write about the latest development on the topic and ignite the fires again.

How-To articles—A “how-to” article is instructional in nature, and basically teaches someone how to do something in a step-by-step process. How-to articles are popular because people search the Internet for solutions to problems, and if your article can help them solve their problems or at least give a rough guideline on the solution, chances are your article will be published in most popular ezines.

Controversy articles—In a “controversy” article, you make a strong statement that is contrary to what the market agrees on. For example, if you found out that something doesn’t work as well as most people claim it does, you can write an article about “Why … Doesn’t Work” or “5 Reasons Why … Is Not the Solution to Your … Problems”

When writing these types of articles however, make sure that you have your facts right and that you can present a strong argument and defend your case against would-be critics and nay-sayers. If your argument is weak, your opinions will quickly be discarded as rubbish or a silly marketing ploy.

Cheat Sheet or "Top 10" Articles—A "cheat sheet" article reveals short cuts, and everyone loves short cuts (although not everyone will admit it). If you can help someone save 15 minutes a day with your own short-cut, this can be turned into a killer article that gets passed around more than a dollar bill.

A "Top 10" article, on the other hand, serves as a reference list on current affairs related to your niches. People generally read this type of article out of curiosity and the need to be up-to-date with information. You can write an article about:

• "The Top 10 Reasons..."
  
• "The Top 10 Mistakes..."
  
• "The Tops 10 Ways..."
  
• "Top 10 Checklist for..."

Of course, your article can easily be "Top 3" or "Top 5" articles, but in general, it's a bad idea to go beyond 10 main points. Make sure that the top few points relate to your product or Website, which you will mention in your author profile at the bottom of the article.

Publishing Your Articles For Maximum Exposure

Writing the article is really just one part of the traffic building campaign. You still need to publish your article to as many sites as possible. To publish your articles effectively, you’ll need to use article syndication services, as well as manually submit your articles to a handful of effective ezines or article directories.

Some of the best article directories around will help your articles spread like wildfire across the Internet. Most people who run any type of ezine will search these article directories for content, so by listing yours here, you’ll effectively letting them find your article instead of actively going to individual ezine publishers.

Here are some of the best article directories that are free but require manual submission, followed-by human-based approval of your articles:

Ezine Articles (all categories)
Go Articles (all categories)
WebProNews (Internet, ecommerce and technology)
Site-Reference (Internet, business and marketing)

Although it’s quite tedious to submit your articles manually to those sites, they usually have a high search engine ranking that helps your articles get found by the search engines. As long as you have a good author bio at the end of your articles with a link back to your Website, it’s worth the time and effort.

Now after you’ve submitted your articles to those directories, you can also use automated submission services to reach further into the less explored corners of your target market. Automated submission services are great because the moment you submit your articles to them, it appears on their site and also on thousands of other targeted Websites that syndicate content from these sites automatically.
Although you may not get much traffic from these “second-tier” directories, the reach of these services would mean that you can get a lot of links back from all the syndicated Websites that publish your article. Getting links back to your Website is a very important part of

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies

Here are a few article submission services you can use:

ArticleMarketer.com—One service I currently use to publish and syndicate all my articles is Article Marketer. The service will syndicate all your articles to other article directories, and depending on your niche, this could mean 20 - 300 instant back links to your Website. Some of your articles, if they are good, will end up in other people’s ezines and blogs.

With a free account at Article Marketer, you will not only get distribution on the “partial list,” but an upgrade for a reasonable amount of money will give you unlimited article submissions to a list of more than 5,000 Websites.

Each article you submit comes with reporting features, so you can check exactly how many sites have published your articles.

All your articles will be examined and approved by a human editor. If you don’t upgrade, it takes up to two weeks, but upgrade authors can expect 24-hour approval of their articles. You can post as many articles as you want, using any name you want.

Some of you may have many Websites and not be comfortable with using your own name for some of the articles you publish, so this is the ideal service for you. If you’re marketing a lot of content-based sites and you’re looking for long-term results, Article Marketer is the cure.

iSnare.com—Works the same way ArticleMarketer.com does, but instead of paying monthly or quarterly for full distribution, you have to buy “credits.” Each article you submit to the full distribution list will take up one credit, and you can use up all the credits whenever you want.

There are no time limit or monthly requirements. If you don’t submit articles frequently, iSnare.com may be a more worthwhile investment. You can also publish for free, albeit only to their basic distribution list.

SubmitYourArticle.com—This is a paid monthly subscription service, and I have used it before with great results. This service not only syndicates your articles to Yahoo groups and other Websites, but they also help you to submit to sites that accept only manual submission. By saving your user name and password in the system, you can activate submissions to these sites, although not all submissions are 100% automated.

Building traffic to your Website or blog by writing and publishing articles is not an overnight process, so don’t expect overnight results. The results will come with consistency, and the best part is that any links and traffic you get from publishing articles is permanent and residual. I have some articles that continue to get traffic for two years, all from one day’s hard work!