7 Ways That Writing and Publishing Small Articles Can Explode Your Online Business
By: Donovan Baldwin
In today's highly competitive, yet multinational, Internet universe, the importance of attracting highly targeted traffic to your Internet business website cannot be overemphasized.
Directing focused web traffic to your site can be your only means of survival, especially in today's cutthroat world of ecommerce. Achieving a high search engine page rank can be very difficult.
Fortunately, there is veritable plethora of website promotion strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website.
While it is true that there are a wide variety of strategies you can adapt, from paid advertising to affiliate marketing, there is one that is the darling of Internet marketing professionals. Despite its adoption by the best of the best, it is freely available to anyone, professional or amateur, who desires to drive targeted visitors to a particular website.
However, unlike most Internet marketing techniques which require you to pay someone, this is free, effective, and damn near foolproof...if done properly. While there are many ways to promote your website, and increase your website traffic, without spending large amounts of money, people, especially those building a business on a budget, agree that writing and publishing small articles is one of the best and most effective website promotion strategies you can use, And, if you want to discuss cost efectiveness of this form of advertising, how does the word "free" grab ya?
However, if you have not used this free advertising method yourself, you may be wondering how writing articles can help improve your web traffic.
Well, I have been writing articles and using them to promote various Internet businesses for years, and here are what I consider to be the top seven ways in which "article marketing" can help explode your online business...or even an offline one!
1.You reach more people with an article than with an ad.
When you write a good article on something you know and care about, it would be a shame not to share this gem of your soul with other people.
You can post your articles on your own website, of course, or you can submit it to other sites such as e-zines and online article directories. By submitting your articles to these types of sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website.
How?
You simply include a link back to your website or include your information in what is known as the "resource box".
In the newspaper and magazine world, this is known as the "byline".
With this simple act, you get both exposure and free advertising as well. You can submit your best articles to popular e-zines and take advantage of their popularity. Other sites who find your article, or website, relevant may also link back to you. Thus, you increase your backlink popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the Internet advertising world. Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your quality article; you may reap the benefit of more exposure and higher web traffic...especially if a few other webmasters re-publish your article on THEIR websites.
2.An informative and/or entertaining article is one of the best forms of free Advertising
Submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees...or appearing to be trying to "sell" anything.
Professionals agree that one of the best forms of advertising is to give something of value away for free. In your article, you are providing free information that somebody, somewhere needs and would like to have...and will be grateful for getting!
However, note that although you should avoid the direct use of marketing language in your articles and strive to make it informative and useful to your readers, you can stil always include your website link in the resource box, or perhaps even get in a plug in the body of the article.
In addition to gaining your readers' gratitude and respect, by making your article relevant and helpful to them, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space...although writing small articles is good training for writing good ads...and vice versa!
With a well crafted and properly presented article you have a very special opportunity to presell your product or service to your prospective customer...and in many cases, you presell yourself as someone in the know whose advice should be heeded.
3.Article marketing can gain a high search engine rank for your website.
Suppose you create a new web page for your article in your website, and then optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly.
You do this by using high ranking keywords and appropriate Meta tags to make your website more attractive to search engines (and people) and give your website a high search engine ranking.
Once you upload your new article as a webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking based on the value and structure of the content.
Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results. If you are not familiar with SEO, or search engine optimization, you may want to bone up on the basics of search engine optimization.
4.Increasing link popularity is a major outcome of article marketing.
Instead of following the old-school advice of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your site, you can simply submit your article to other sites. However, do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publishes your article, you automatically get a link partner. While the goal is to try to get as many link partners as you can, the best way to do this is to continuously publish new articles relevant to your website.
Remember, link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. With this goal in mind, make your article especially useful and appealing to a specific and targeted audience, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.
5.Even a very small, but well written article, can be used to optimize your website for better search engine ranking.
By initially making your article keyword rich, you can greatly improve the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site.
However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information, not simply a loose collection of words or phrases. Avoid the temptation of overusing keywords. That worked in the earlier days of Internet marketers with many successful Internet marketers increasing their page rank by repeating keywords over and over again in the same color as the background so they would not be visible to the naked eye but would attract the search engines of the day.
These days, however, searh engine spiders, robots, and algorithms are much more sophisticated and simply thowing in a lot of relevant keywords just to gain a high ranking may turn off most search engines...and impair your level of respect from your website visitors.
Relevance and quality are still the most important things to consider when writing articles, ads, or constructing web pages, and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make sure your articles are search-engine optimized.
6.A well constructed article creates a good impression and enhances your reputation as an expert.
By writing a few excellent, original, and relevant articles, you not only give your website exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. The reputation you will establish as a trusted and reliable expert, through your articles, will encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you.
Become seen as an expert in the field and you will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.
By the way, many who don't like to write and publish highly structured articles have found a writing niche in the blogosphere. They run blogs related to their particular likes and interests and use these to generate incomes ranging in size from gas money to luxury vacation money. One expert in this field is Rob Benwell, and his service, Blogging to the Bank is considered by those who are interested in this sort of "article writing", to be the ultimate reference on the topic.
7. A good article writing campaign enhances your Internet credibility through references and testimonies
Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedback and testimoniy when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites.
Record these positive feedbacks and comments and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts. Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by publishing this feedback, as it will add to the good impression your articles create in the minds of prospects as well as your existing customers.
In this highly competitive world, credibility and trust may not be the only things you need to attract new customers or make loyal patrons out of your existing customers, but they can be the most important.
In the long run, original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and explode your online business
About the Author:
Donovan Baldwin is a freelance writer and Internet marketer living in the Dallas - Fort Worth, Texas area. He is retired from the U.S. Army after 21 years of service and is University of West Florida alumnus (BA Accounting 1973). Since retiring from the military, he has worked as a restaurant manager, optical lab manager, and has run his own successful Internet business. His passion is health and fitness and his report, Why Diets Don't Work, has been published on many websites, including his own at http://nodiet4me.com.
Article Source: http://xtramoney4me.net/internetmarketing/articles/7-ways-to-explode-your-online-business.html
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