Articles 101: Writing Articles For Traffic and Profit
Not too long ago, I did a review of Brad Callen’s free directory submitter software — great software you should download now. Brad’s now come out with a free article submitter, which I’m going to review in the next posting. But first I thought it would be good to recap some article writing basics. What follows is an introduction to article writing: why it’s useful and how you get started. It’s based on a series I wrote in October, 2005, which were originally published as separate posts on why article writing can drive traffic to your sites, how to get started with article writing and how to submit your articles to article directories. Here, I’ve combined the series into a single post and make some minor updates to the content. Please note that if you’re looking for more information about article writing (including bum marketing) then the ebook I currently recommend is Secret Article Profits, which despite a hyped-up name and a focus on affiliate marketing has good step-by-step directions on what to do.
Compelling Content
One of the best ways to attract traffic to your site is to write compelling content that makes them want to visit your site once they’ve seen what your writing is like. But how do they discover you in the first place? Search engines are the obvious traffic generator, but they’re not the only way.
What many people don’t realize is that you sometimes have to write compelling content for other sites in order to get traffic back to yours. The idea is simple: you write an article and allow it to be distributed for free by anyone, provided they keep your copyright notice and provide a link back to your site. Other people then post the article on their sites/blogs or send it to their newsletters (or “ezines”).
Pros and Cons of Article Publishing
There are three major benefits to publishing articles for free in this manner. While you don’t get paid directly, you do get:
- More traffic to your own site because some readers click the link at the end of your article to see what else you have to offer
- More links to your site in the search engines when the other sites/blogs/ezines add your article to their archives
- Reputation enhancement as an expert in the subject matter
The main disadvantages to article writing are that you lose out on exclusivity (your content is now available in multiple places, not just your own site/blog) and that it takes time away from other possibly important things. So you have to balance the article writing with updating your own site. Note, however, that the articles you write also make good content for your own site — nothing prevents you from placing them on your own site in addition to distributing them far and wide for others to use.
Also, not everyone writes well. A poorly-written article can be a turn off, even if you have some great ideas in the article. So it may make sense for you to hire someone to either write the article (based on your ideas) or to proofread it for you. You should have a good idea of your own skills in this area and adjust your expectations accordingly. Then again, if you’re writing compelling content for your site you should be trying to write well anyhow, so this shouldn’t be any different.
Article Writing Guidelines
Here are some general guidelines to follow:
- Each article is a small essay that should stand on its own. You can write a series of articles, but try to write each part as independently as possible.
- Keep the articles short, between 400 and 1000 words is pretty normal. Ideally, the text should fit comfortably on a single web page.
- Provide some real content. Don’t fill the text full of links to your own sites or to your affiliate programs. Keep links to a minimum, in fact. You’ll get the chance to link to your own site in the biography or resource box at the end of the article.
- Use proper grammar and check your spelling. If you need help, check out sites like Guide to Grammar and Writing.
- Choose a catchy but descriptive title.
You end the article with a biography or resource box, which contains the following information:
- A copyright message.
- The conditions under which the article may be reproduced.
- A short biography.
- How to contact you.
- A link or two back to your site.
Article Formatting
Many people find it easier to write the article with a standard word processor like Microsoft Word, because then you can use built-in features like spellchecking and word counting. But you won’t distribute the word processing file as the final form of the article. (Note, however, that one of the main article directories — EzineArticles — actually lets you create drafts articles and includes basic spellchecking abilities with its online article editor.)
In fact, you need to create two versions of the article: one in plain text, one in HTML. Many article submission places accept only articles in plain text format, so you absolutely need a plain text version, which is basically a version that consists of nothing but alphanumeric characters and punctuation: no HTML tags, no special codes, nothing. You can normally save these quite easily from within a word processor, look for a “text” format and make sure that the file you save ends in a “.txt” extension. (Alternatively, you can just write your article using a simple text editor — on Windows I recommend you download the free NoteTab Light editor and use it instead of Notepad, it’s full of useful features.)
To put links in a text file you have to write out the link explicitly using the “http://” prefix, as in “http://www.EricGiguere.com/”. These are normally automatically converted to links when you submit the text version of the article. Even if they’re not, the reader of the article can just copy and paste the link into their browser — not as easy as clicking the link, but still doable.
Now, some sites do accept HTML, so it’s good to have an HTML version of the article available as well. For these, you can create normal links in your text and use additional formatting tags for paragraphs, bold text, and the like. (Most article sites, however, limit how many links you can include in the body of an article, and may have other restrictions. EzineArticles doesn’t allow affiliate links, for example.)
Article Distribution
Now you’re ready to start submitting the article to the various article submission sites. There are two approaches you can take:
- The Rifle Approach: Submit the article to one or two sites.
- The Shotgun Approach: Submit the article to as many sites as possible.
Which approach you take depends on your goals for the article. Are you looking to dominate search engine rankings for a given keyword term? Then because of duplicate content issues you’ll want to minimize the number of submissions. Are you just looking for a large number of links back to your site? Then you’ll want to maximize submissions.
If you don’t care about duplicate content, put a copy of the article on your own site. If you can, put both the HTML and the plain text versions on your site. You can then have the articles provide links back to the “original” and “alternate” versions on your site.
Article Submission
After writing your article, you want to distribute it to as many places as possible. The idea is to have the article posted on other websites and in newsletters and “ezines”. Remember, the article has at least one link back to your site/blog, so it benefits you in many ways to have the article in wide distribution.
If you already have a mailing list with a large number of subscribers, then obviously you can mail your article to them (if the topic suits the mailing list). But most people don’t have such a mailing list. You can also post the article on your own site/blog (and you should) and hope that people find via standard searching techniques, but that’s not the way to drive traffic.
What you want to do is submit your article to as many article repositories as possible. These are sites whose sole purpose is to warehouse free articles. Owners of websites and mailing lists comb these repositories for new articles that they can then repost on their own sites/lists. Well-written articles accepted by these repositories are almost always reposted elsewhere in a matter of days, plus they benefit just from being listed in the repository itself — the repositories are usually fertile ground for search engines to find new content.
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of article repositories out there. Sites like EzineArticles.com and SearchWarp.com are just two examples. Consult this list of article repositories for even more sites.
The biggest problem with submitting articles is that it can take a lot of time to submit your articles to all the different sites. Each site has slightly different requirements. Some accept HTML, some accept only plain text. (This is why I told you to write your article in both formats.) Some require you to separate the resource box (your bio and link) from the article text. Some require editorial approval of the article before they’ll accept it, and may request changes. It’s a lot of hassle. You may consider buying software to do it for you or even hiring a third party to submit them for you.
The good news is that it often only takes a few article submissions to get the ball rolling. Article repositories often scan other article repositories for new content, especially on hot or niche topics. Like a virus, your article may end up “reproducing” itself (quite literally, in this case!) without much intervention on your part.
You do need to submit it to some repositories, though. The best thing to do is set aside 15 minutes a day and submit an article to one or two repositories. Do this regularly over the course of a few weeks and you’ll be surprised at how many places your article shows up. You can use Brad Callen’s free article submitter to help with the process.
Don’t forget, however, to go looking for specific mailing lists and e-zines that are devoted to your topic and contacting them personally about reprinting your article. Often, it’s the personal touch that gets your content distributed, especially when there are a lot of articles being written about a topic.
Conclusion
That’s pretty much all I have to say about article writing. It’s not hard, it just takes time and effort. Just like anything!
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Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
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Comments
2 Responses to “Articles 101: Writing Articles For Traffic and Profit”
I’m just starting to venture into this area in terms of marketing for my sites…so I don’t have enough experience to make an informed comment at this point.
However, if publishing off-site content is one of the better low-cost ways of drawing traffic, I’m good with that. I don’t mind writing, and whether using Callen’s Article Submitter (which I downloaded earlier today) or some other, I am happy to hire that work out to someone who has the time to do it. It’s easy work and need not cost much.
Hello peopled3c4ab24f94fcefc0f262d26550d9e27