1. The reader sees an article title that interests them
2. They open the article and start reading it
3. They read all the way to the end
4. The reader then clicks on the link in the resource box because they want to know more and…

Arrive at your site, likes it, and opts in to your list and/or buys your product.

Simple! So here are some tips to help you create great Articles:

The Title is everything.

If the title doesn’t catch a readers attention, they definitely won’t read the article. In fact, they probably won’t even see your

article in the list of articles they’ve seen… Your title needs to offer them something – What’s in it for them? How can it solve their problem?

Your title should evoke curiosity. “The Number One Mistake New Parents Make” would certainly gain the attention of new and first time parents, “How To Double Your Sales In 6 Weeks” will gain the attention of a business owner seeking to grow their business.

Words that are considered to be curiosity triggers are words like “Top 10 Tips”, “Secrets To…”, and “How I…”

Your title must contain your keyword phrases, not only for Search Engine Optimization, but also so that the people who would be interested in reading your article can find you.

The first paragraph is also very important.

The first paragraph needs to grab the reader’s attention so they will continue reading. When writing the first paragraph, you should identify with your reader by explaining the problems your article will be discussing. It is also important to write in a way that connects with your Target Audience.

Consider the length of the article.

There is a lot of discussion about the length of an article. Many readers will not read long articles however, the articles have to be informative and contact enought information to encourage the reader to want to learn more. On average, a 400 word article seems to work – it gains readers and will also allow for your article to be ‘syndicated’ on other sites.

Be informative, but incomplete.

First of all, you need to give valuable information in your article to encourage people to keep reading however, you don’t have to give it all. For example, your article can include 3 of your top 7 tips and the other 4 can be found on your website or in the product on your website.

Link to the correct page.

When you create your author resource box, make sure you have the right page linked. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on the a link in someone’s bio box and being sent to a ‘page not found’ page, or worse – to a page that has nothing to do with the subject of the article.

If you’re linking to a specific topic on your blog – make sure you link to the article on your blog, not just the front part of your blog.

Make your bio box work for you.

Your author resource box, or bio, can be the conclusion of your article. Bring your article to a graceful close in the body, but use your bio area to invite the reader to learn more, get a free report or a free gift by visiting your site. Of course, use your keywords for the article as your anchor text (that’s the text that is clickable) for better Search Engine Optimization.

From experience, Article marketing is an effective tool to bring visitors to your site and help make you sales, but only if implemented correctly. Take these tips and use them to grow your article marketing efforts.

Have you signed up for my Free 3 part Article Marketing ECourse?

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Now, I knew that Free For All (FFA) sites are frowned upon…. so why would link building packages like this be any different.  So I haven’t personally used the services myself.

However, on reading this months Net Effect I see that they have some cautions to consider when using these services.  What they do say is the following:

1. Backlinks are a MUST to improve the rankings of your site in the Search Engine Results
2. You don’t need hundreds, or even thousands, of backlinks to your site though
3. You need highly targetted, high quality, well placed links back to your site.

Sure, you can pay for backlinks to your site — just be careful about where those links are from and how they link to your site.

Many link building services will offer to submit your site to directories.  The team from Stompernet advise the following on using directories:

Aside from the major directories like DMOZ, Yahoo! and Best of the Web, very few get any real traffic today.  In my [Jerry West, Stompernet Faculty Member] testing, I have seen a HUGE drop off in the quality of directories that are currently available.  Many directories are being sold to marketing firms and the current listings are either being dropped or the links are worthless.  Google has also removed the “submit your site to directories” in their Webmaster guidelines, so Google is “cooling off” in giving value to directory submissions.

So, if you’ve found a service that offers only directory submissions as their submission service – it possibly isn’t worth the effort – do your homework.  You can manually submit your site to DMOZ, Yahoo! and Best of the Web without much effort.

In following posts, I’ll discuss these services a little more.  For now, I wanted to share some great strategies that I’ve found work really well for my sites… and are relatively easy for anyone to implement….

1. Use the blogging facilities on high ranking social networks
Use the correct anchor text to link back to your site.  The anchor text — the text that shows as the link — should have your keywords in it.

Link to pages on your site, not just your home page.

Sites that seem work really well are Ecademy and, if you have a BlogTalkRadio show, the Blog Talk Radio blog.

2. Article Marketing
Using articles, with the Author resource box correctly set out, is incredibly effective.  The best directories to post on are:

• EZine Articles
• Qassia
• Associated Content (and you can earn some money here)

You should take one article and post variations of this article to these directories.  That way you avoid any duplicate content penalties.

If you want a wider distribution, I use the Free submission service for Article Marketer as well.

3. Blogging
My favorite! Create a blog and generate high quality content.  Use your blog to link your sales pages or website.

Better yet!  Make your website on the blogging platform.

To really juice up your blogs indexing, if you’re using WordPress, install Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger and notify these directories at least when you add a new post:

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://rpc.wpkeys.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.britblog.com

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

Of course, one of the great strategies is to take your blog posts and write a short article about it and submit it to the article directories, directing readers back to your blog post for the whole story.

If you’re not sure how to install your blog and don’t want to pay someone (like me) to do it for you, check out WordPress Unleashed….

4. Create Squidoo Lenses and Hubpages
Another favorite of mine…. I’m not as active on Hubpages, but I really like Squidoo.

Create a Squidoo lens about your topic and link back to your website, pages or blog.  Squidoo ranks well in the Search Engine results and I found that my site was often found for my lens before it was found for itself.

Hubpages are the same — they use a different interface and system.

These are just 4 things that I use to help the rankings on my sites and they are very effective.  In my next post, I’ll talk about other methods I use including Social Bookmarking.

Please let me know what works for you by leaving a comment – you’ll also get the benefit of the backlink from my site.

I have to say, the results were pretty amazing.  Within a couple of days I started receiving traffic to my website and my blog from articles I had written.

It wasn’t however, as “simple” as it is made to look in the documents I read. This was because of a number of reasons, which I’m going to discuss today.

Reason 1:   Unique and/or Original Content

As with your website and blog, your article has be original and contain unique content.  With article writing, this is even perhaps even more important than with your website or blog.  There are a number of articles directory that will check your content and refuse to accept it because of the duplicated content.

This means that you need to write your articles from scratch.  This in itself can be time consuming and if your not confident with your writing skills, or just don’t like writing, writing your own articles can be a real problem.

Personally, I love writing and have been writing for publications since I was about 13 years old, so I don’t mind writing my own content.  However, there are any number of services that will write articles for you.  One that I am familiar with is, Article Marketer.

2.  Using links within your article body

Many article directories do not accept articles that contain links within the article body.  As many of us use articles as a method to drive traffic to our website, this is a challenge.

I have found it beneficial to have at least two versions of my article for submission.  One that contains links and one that doesn’t.   This is where the Authors resource box comes in to play.  The Authors resource block is generally allowed to contain links and I use this to link back to my blog or website.  Here is my standard Authors resource box:

—————————————————————————–

About the Author

Charly Leetham has worked for over 20 years in the IT industry, specifically in the area of data communications and local area networking.

Charly is a qualifed “tech”, holding an Associate Diploma in Electronics Engineering. Her experience with Personal Computers ranges from building computers to providing 2nd level user support.

Charly also holds a Masters of Business Admin (MBA), specialising in Internet Marketing.

Her Blog can be seen at:
http://arvoreentreasures.com/blog/

————————————————————————————————

Managing multiple copies of an article could prove problematic.

3.  Submitting Your Articles

There are several literally hundreds of article directories, article forums and the like that you can submit your article to.  How do you manage submitting your articles to ensure the best, or widest, distribution?

Firstly, I use the following two directories to submit my articles to. These directories submit articles to other directories and the like:

EzineArticles

Article Writer

In addition to these to manual submissions, I use an Article Directory submitter.  This submitter allows me to enter my article, set up my author resource boxes and step through the article directories to submit my articles.

I use Article Submitter to submit my articles.  Once I have set up my login details to the directories that require login, I can then submit my article quickly and easily.  The general process is still manual, but at least I don’t have to navigate to each directory, login and then submit my article.  Check out Article Submitter, here.

Summary

Writing your articles to drive traffic to your site is a great technique.  However, if you are going to use this technique, make sure that your content is unique and appropriate to your topic.  In addition, make sure that your article is informational and not an advertisment.