Building Website Traffic (and more) with Articles

As well as building traffic to your website, writing articles is a great way to build an 'authority' around your website. One of the simplest and cheapest ways to build your stake on the net.

Okay … you may feel like you don’t have time to write articles, but it’s still cheaper than paying someone to promote your site – and still proves to be one of, if not the best way of building your website.

So how do you make sure you reap all the benefits of your article writing projects?

Well the most obvious one is that you are immediately are jumping out of the crowd and starting to become ‘an authority’. I’m not certain how many steps there are (and indeed what the steps are) between authority and guru … but it is most definitely one of the first steps.

The vital thing with your article is to include a proper and optimized ‘resource box’. You’ll see these on some of the articles on this site (indeed this article). This is several lines of text that promotes and links to your own website. Properly formatted, it should use keywords/key phrases that are appropriate for your site, with dynamic and inviting text that promotes your business – plus the all important link!

Remember though, don’t cheat on the article! Your article must be informative, helpful and give out useful information. People aren’t going to want to find out about you and follow your link if your article is worthless.

But I can’t write an article!

Yes you can! There are many great guides out there that have templates that you can use to guide you through writing your article. And if you want, you can always write your first few using a ‘pen name’ till you feel more confident. Remember – the first thing you must do is act! Do nothing and nothing will change …

A quick search on Google revealed:

How To Create An Article Writing Template

Effective Article Writing - How to Write an Article

How to Write Articles

Now then … remember that reticence you used to have about writing articles? Well luckily there are thousands of website owners who are too lazy to do what you are doing. Plus some of them have some great websites which get lots of traffic ... so ...

So now, with our article written we are going to submit to several ‘article directories’, who will spread our article around the net.

If you’ve read other articles on article writing – you may have come across this next step as “you submit the article to hundreds of article directories around the Internet”. NO – STOP. That is not the way to go.

There is a lot of evidence now that top article sites are getting wise to this and check to confirm that they are getting an original article. And, as we want the best coverage for our article, it’s best to stick with the best top directories.

So ,,, your next step is to make 3 or 4 versions of your article. Hey, you’ve written it down once, leave it for a few hours or a day, and simply re-write it in a different style – or add some extra info, or spin the emphasis around a bit. It really is simple.

Okay, so now you have 4 articles, suitably different from each other with great resource boxes. Next it’s time to submit them … but to where.

It can be confusing doing a search for article directory sites, so my personal recommendation would be one of these:

www.goarticles.com

www.ezinearticles.com

www.articledashboard.com

www.searchwarp.com

www.articlesbase.com

www.isnare.com

www.selfgrowth.com

www.buzzle.com

These directory sites have a solid reputation and are used by the more respected end on the internet – Remember, search engines will give you black marks when your links turn up on sites that they regard as spammy – best be safe …

You may also want to keep one version for your own site (the one that you think is the best) … that way not only are you building traffic, your building your site. Sound obvious I know, but I know of people who have built up traffic to their tiny website which simply lacks any credibility or authority … result, nothing.

Get in to the flow of this. You’ll be relieved and delighted to know that you can easily get in to the habit of this – an enjoyable habit. Write one ‘set’ of articles a week and in a year that’s 52 new articles on your site … plus potential hundreds on other sites – all pointing to you.

Imagine writing 2 sets a week and … !

Plus, more than just the traffic, your authority as an expert in your field grows – further boosting the potential of your site to rank better in those search engine results.

One thing … remember to have a ‘plan of attack’. Plan your articles around central themes using the keywords and phrases that attract the visitors you want. Use them in your article title, sub headings, and of course in your resource box. But more on this in a later article.

Happy writing!

How to Predict Ebusiness Marketing Trends

If it is your goal to increase your business over the next year, then it is imperative that you focus on ebusiness marketing trends. In order to predict what the coming ebusiness trends will be, you need to simply listen to your customers. The first thing you need to know is who your target market is and how to reach them.

In order to predict what the ebusiness market has in store for the future, take a look at today’s teenagers. Here are a few things you will see: Ipods loaded with music, cell phones that seem to be used for text messages more often than calls and wireless laptops that can connect to the internet anywhere.
Of course, what you specifically are looking for are online marketingtrends. Therefore, take a look at what today’s youth are doing on their computers. They are probably reading or writing blogs, watching and sending viral videos, checking out social networking sites, and even creating their own web pages.
Everything that these kids are doing is sending a message to ebusiness owners; it is simply up to you to listen. These kids are creating their own web experiences. They’re creating networks between people all over the world. In doing this, they are eliminating all that is irreverent to them and hanging onto only what they consider to be significant.
What are most important are the media and tools that these kids are using in order to do this. If you want to market to today’s and tomorrow’s audience, you’ve got to become a part of the network which they’ve created. This network is a web of trust which they have wrapped themselves in.
By becoming a part of it, you too can be trusted by them and open your business to them. Only by examining today’s youth can you plan for the ebusiness marketing trends of the future.
In order to build trust and a large customer base, you need to build trust within your target audience. People are becoming increasingly less tolerant of messages and advertisements that they are not interested in. That is why it is so important that you know your target audience and know what their interests are. In order to better know your audience, you must know the following:
• where they are coming from
• the specific web pages that they view
• the links that they click on.
In order to reach the audience of tomorrow, it is important that you take advantage of all of the tools that the internet has to offer. These include: viral content, internet video, mobile media, RSS feeds, and many others.
Viral marketing is a cheap way to increase your web traffic as it is basically getting others to do the legwork for you. RSS feeds are a great way to popularize your blog and get more visitors. You can even make videos in order to promote your business. The better you have learned about and planned for ebusiness marketing trends, the more successful your ebusiness will be.

Good luck!