Get more traffic sales and subscribers by submitting your articles to directories

If you have a website you're no doubt constantly wondering "How can I get more traffic to my website?". As web owners we constantly want more traffic, especially if we're doing business online. It's just the nature of things because without traffic a website can't survive. Whether we want more subscribers, more customers or just more visitors to read our content -- and possibly click on our AdSense ads ;) -- it's what we crave: More traffic.

Well, how CAN you get more traffic to your website? There are various methods available, some cost money, some are free, some take a second to do and some can take a long time. What I'm doing to talk about is writing and distributing articles - submitting articles to article directories to be exact. Because it's 100% free and doesn't have to take a lot of time.

No matter what market you are in you should be able to find a subject to write about that your potential subscribers, customers or visitors would be interested in -- and if your article gets read you will most likely get traffic. Plus, you could also get some nice backlinks to your website which is of course always good for search engine rankings. I'll explain the reason behind that later on.

Now, you might not consider yourself a writer but writing an article doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't even have to be long -- 300-400 words per article could be enough if you get your point across even though 600-900 words is more common (but 1200 is usually the maximum).

If you know your market and you're passionate about what you're doing then writing an article shouldn't be a problem. If you need ideas go to forums and blogs in your niche or just see if there is anything in the news you could write about. Also, one trick is to do it like you're writing a letter to a good friend where you're telling him about something specific.

Another solution, if you have no interest in writing an article or just don't have the time, you can let someone else do it. You could go to freelance sites like elance. com, rentacoder. com or guru. com and pay someone to write an article for you. But you should have some idea what it should be about.

Let's assume that you have your article. Next thing you want to do is find article directories that accept articles on your topic and submit to as many as you can find. To find article directories you can go to your favorite search engine and type in "article directory" or "submit article". That should give you a few general directories.

These are some of my favorite directories:

goarticles. com

ezinearticles. com

But if you want to find an article directory that is specific to your market you should search for "X article directory" or "submit X article" - where X is the market you're in (like "gardening" or "health").

Then, when you're on the site look for "Submit an article" or "Add article". Make sure you read all the submission guidelines - some sites allow HTML codes and some don't, some places allow affiliate links and some don't, etc. Usually the article directory is organized into many categories and even subcategories. Try to select the category that best fits your article - it'll help with getting your article approved as fast as possible as well as giving you more targeted readers.

If you're not experienced in article marketing you might not realize the benefit of publishing your articles. First of all, you'll get your name displayed all over the internet - people will start to recognize it and trust you.

But the main reason so many people want to get their article in as many directories as possible is because of the "resource box" or "about the author" that is displayed at the end of the article.

That resource box can contain the name of your business, your mailing address, web address (to your main page or an opt-in page, etc.), e-mail address, phone number or however you want people to contact you or learn more about you and your business. For some people the link to their website is the most important part of their resource box.

Most article directories allow "active links" in the resource box that people can click on. You definitely want to submit to as many of those directories as you can because for each one you'll get another link back to your website - and that will help you rank higher in the search engines.

Another benefit of this is that if you've written a good article that people like they'll be more likely to click on the link in your resource box - hint, hint ;). They might also feel like they've gotten to know you a little and trust you - which means they're more likely to do business with you.

A well written article will probably also be picked up by more website owners and newsletter editors - giving you more exposure and traffic. But you don't have to write a masterpiece the first time - just get started and you'll get better with each article you write.

So, to get more traffic, sales and subscribers you should get yourself an article about a subject related to your market (either write it yourself or have it written for you by a ghostwriter), find article directories that accept your topic and submit to as many of them that you can find.

Article marketing head start your business

It is easy to win a race and be on top but the same saying does not go with keeping yourself at the top. Having a head start in the business of Article Marketing would require dedication and skill. Aside from persevering in the market, you must be in the know of what makes other article marketers fail and devise of ways to avoid it.

Failure in article marketing is not new. Many have tried and many were beat. Where did they go wrong? Perhaps, they had the wrong audiences targeted. Maybe they didn’t make articles that were good enough. There are a lot of reasons. However, when businesses fail in Article Marketing, several crucial factors can be pinpointed.

The greatest evil in Article Marketing is plagiarism. The issue has long been addressed but hasn’t been avoided as well as it should have been. Let it be known that plagiarism is illegal worldwide and several technologies have been created to quickly identify plagiarized work. Subsequently, if your article is found to be plagiarized, search engines would give you a low rank, hence traffic to your site will be minimized. To some extent, your articles and other entries may be deleted and you will not benefit as much from your endeavor, or worse, not benefit at all.

There are surefire ways to avoid plagiarism. If you want to write an article about a certain topic, you start of by researching for common contents. The most favored site for research is of course, through the Internet. Once you have found the articles you want to use, instead of copying and pasting them on your empty document right away, take time to read the article first. Make sure you understand what the articles say, highlight point s you agree with and want to address in your own article. You may also want to bullet or summarize the article you have read. In this way, it is ensured that you won’t have a plagiarized product. The next step would be to write in your own words, what you have understood from the research you’ve done. Do incorporate the important facts you’ve discovered in the articles that you’ve read but make sure that they are still written in your own words.

In Article Marketing, originality may just very well lead you to success. This is because search engines that analyze your work and find no discrepancies with regards to plagiarism or duplication then the rank they will give you would be higher. What is the advantage of a higher rank? Not only will it generate traffic, it would also lower the cost of the pay-per-click of your article or website.

Another factor that usually leads to failure in the domain of Article Marketing is the failure to write enough articles of interest. Many of those who start out in Article Marketing usually begin with just a few articles and think that that is it. But it is not it, because a few articles would not accomplish a name or even a reputation for your business. You have to write as many articles as you can. Though tiring, it is very well worth it.

The job of having to write articles may be made easy by writing topics of your own interest. Choose products to advertise whose interests are similar to your own and who you know so much about. The greater the interest and the greater the body of knowledge you hold for one particular topic, and then there will be no limit to what you can write.

Failure of your articles to be exposed would also result to the failure of your business. If you do not expose your articles to as many consumers as possible, your bank account would not change a cent. The lesser consumers you have, the lesser your rank will be and you will be lost among other business in line for Article Marketing. You will have to work hard for your articles to be circulated. This can be done through article directories, link partners, forum sites, newsletters, the approaches are not at all limited, what with the capacity of the Web to reach different audiences. If the means are not limited, then you should not limit yourself as well. Explore what other ways can ensure the distribution of your articles, this just has to be done in order to survive in the business.

Frankly the most important factor of all that lead to most business fading out in the area of Article Marketing is the failure to stay long in the race. Many have succeeded, so why should followers fail? Longevity is one factor that will contribute to the success you will experience in Article Marketing. Let’s face the facts, traffic is generated for a period of time and may even go as long as years to wait. Profits would depend on the traffic you generate, as your traffic steadily increases, your profit would also steadily increase.

Like any other business, whether online or outside the World Wide Web, much has to be invested in order for it to succeed. If you are willing to work hard and have faith in what you do, then you have a greater chance of avoiding these pitfalls in Article Marketing.

Hey buddy watch where you re pointing that article

by Ken Nadreau and Hubert Daul

Article Marketing has really taken off lately. Virtually thousands of articles are written and submitted every single day. This is mostly due to Google AdSense and the search engine's keen interest in relevant content.

So everyone's creating high yielding content for their AdSense sites and building significant back links by submitting their articles to high ranking article directories.

Profits are being made, people are being instantly turned into experts in their field, and the search engines are totally loving the constant flow of new content they can show their customers.

But there's one definite way you could completely "blow" the whole thing for yourself, and unfortunately far too many people are doing it lately.

You see, the key factor that makes all of this work is relevance. The search engines want to know that when someone does a search through their system, they'll get exactly what they're looking for. It's what all this talk of changing algorithms are all about.

The search engines are on a quest to find the best way to provide the most relevant material for any specific queries put in front of them, and so they keep changing their algorithms to fulfill their goal.

All we have to do is make it as easy as possible for the search engines to find this specific relevance on our sites and in the articles we write, and we have a marriage made in heaven.

Now when we speak of relevance, there are a number of factors involved. Sure, if you're hoping to get your site listed a the top in the search engines for "baking cookies," your site better be all about baking cookies, and you'd better have a lot of content about it too.

But there's more to it than that.

Even the links on your site should be about baking cookies because the search engines take those into consideration as well when they judge your site's over all relevance. In fact, if your site is about baking cookies and you accept links from sites about car parts, you're actually hurting the relevance of your site and lowering your page ranking.

Keeping this in mind now, there's a seriously unfortunate habit a lot of article writers have gotten into. There are just so many articles being written and submitted to the article directories, that many aren't paying attention to where their articles are being posted.

Most article directories have category choices that separate the content of their sites into specific groupings. These groupings are seen by the search engines as individual "mother lodes" of content. But this true only if these groupings or categories are actually relevant to one specific topic.

Which is why article directory owners have to work so feverishly to maintain the integrity of their categories.

So if you're submitting articles to them just for sake of submitting, you're not only giving them more work, but you're actually wasting your time and working against the intended purpose of article submitting in the first place.

If your articles get posted into the wrong category, it won't help you because your back link will be in an unrelated place. Plus the value of the category will diminish due to your article about "car parts" being in a category about "baking cookies."

This problem has reached a critical point. Either those submitting articles will have to work at being more accurate in category choices, or the article directories will have get smarter so they can catch irrelevant articles before they ruin things for everyone.

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Introductory article marketing

Article marketing seems to be the buzz word in web site marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) lately. I've had a lot of people ask me-- what exactly is article marketing? Why is it so popular? And how is it done?

Well, the whole point of Internet marketing is to get people to notice your site out of the thousands and thousands of sites out there. There is little point in taking the time and going to the expense of having a business website if no one ever sees it.

So, how do you get people to visit your site? That is where web marketing comes in. Internet web site marketing is a specialization in the marketing industry, who's whole point is to bring in those "hits" on a website, and with those hits comes profit for the business.

There are a lot of ways that web marketing is done. One of the biggest is search engine optimization or SEO. This is the art of getting the big search engines to notice you, and put your site higher on the list of sites that come up when a person searches for something you sell. SEO can include site design, careful writing and keyword research, and pay-per-click advertising.

There are other ways to market a website. You can put an ad in your local newspaper or put your web address on all your business cards and correspondence. This is more of a traditional type of marketing, and there is nothing wrong with that. It has been around a long time because it works.

But my personal favorite is article marketing. This is where you write an article about a subject that you are an expert on, and that relates to your website business or hobby. You put a short ad with a link at the bottom of the article that goes to your website. Then you publish your article for free, to anyone who wants to use it in their newsletter, website, or blog.

You find people who want to publish your article by placing it in article directories, where web publishers go to find good content. The web publishers are happy to get new content, and you get people who read your article and follow the link to your site. Your article can get picked up by hundreds (or thousands) of people looking for something to put on their website, blog or ezine.

Now you end up with links to your site all over the Internet, and this in turn helps with SEO. Now the search engines start noticing you. And you don't have to worry about reciprocal links.

Article marketing is becoming more popular right now because websites are looking for lots of content on their website topic. That is another way to get search engines to find and pay attention to a website. So your article is helping them get noticed, and when they publish your article, they are helping you get noticed. It is a win-win situation.

How to find your natural keywords from you blog post and convert it to an article

Here's a tip to find your natural keywords for your articles.

The situation is this: you write naturally and normally on your blog. Often, when you finish, you have well over 500 or 750 words - perfect for an article or several.

The next step is to find an article which reflects keywords people naturally use - so they can find your article quickly. Since you've already ready written your soul into this, and it's exactly like you would talk to a person in front of you. You don't want to have to edit various paragraphs to get some keywords into play.

The solution is simple - use adwords. google. com - and this works only as you have individual webpage addresses (as blogspot does). You type in the exact name of that page, hit the "Get keywords" button and voila': all the keywords associated with that page are now exposed for your use.

At this point, you can then use these keywords to make a new article title (which you search for to finalize) and can even modify your blog post title so people can find your blog post more easily.

Now, interestingly, you can also then use these keywords as tags, labels, etc. Which in turn enable people to find your pages and your articles more easily.

I've just found a tool (which I'm evaluating) which claims to be able to scrape a site for an article. Now you can take earlier articles (blog posts) and then post them to a few hundred article directories, all with key search terms ready for you to incorporate.

All progress toward earning a great income online through article marketing - all from home.

(I wrote the above as a blog entry, let's see if it worked out... )

Update: Google Keywords found the following groups of keywords - blog, money, making money, earn money, money making idea, making money online, plus miscellaneous ones - napoleon hill, audio blogger, adwords software, adwords.

So a sample article title might be "How to earn money online through Google adwords - by using your blog and not spending a dime."

Searching finds that such a title doesn't exist. So I would be able to drop that into my article submission program and let it roll. Provided my bio linked to a relevant product, I'd be set for incoming clicks - and I didn't have to write from the keywords, I just had to let the keywords show themselves.

Now this doesn't take you into the niche keyword world, which is much more profitable, but that is just another research route to roll in on.

(And the number of words above - 411, plenty for an article. Nice.)