As every successful webmaster knows, driving qualified traffic to your website is the key factor to online business success. A successful article marketing campaign is the best way to drive targeted traffic to the products you sell.
Article marketing is the easiest and least expensive marketing method. More traffic is only three simple steps away: write, publish and market.
High Quality Articles
Everyone knows content is king. High quality content is often difficult to find. New freelance writers are a dime a dozen and often publish grammatical errors and misspelled words in their haste to be seen.
High quality articles do more than look good in print. They’re very informative without adding too much fluff. They are factual and build a relationship of trust with the reader.
Where to Find Articles
Write Your Own: The cheapest alternative is to write your own articles. Writing down your product knowledge isn’t usually a difficult task. Don’t give up on article marketing if you don’t feel you can write articles on your own. Look for other alternatives.
PLR Articles: Private Label Rights (PLR) articles are usually inexpensive and can be found nearly anywhere online. Some free PLR packages are included with purchases.
Rewrite Other Content: Find articles you like and rewrite them so they’re at least 80 percent different from the original. Rewriting is simple and not very time consuming.
Spinning Software: Certain pieces of software allow you to use one article to create different variations that may be used as separate articles. While not always perfect, these pieces of software can save a lot of time as long as you edit the finished product.
Writing Services: Order professionally written articles from a writing service. Most writing services provide excellent service and content at minimal cost.
Carefully Tailored Author Resource Box
The author resource box is one of the most important parts of your article. It’s where the magic happens. The article itself shared information about a product or service; the author resource box finishes the sale and directs traffic to your website.
The author resource box serves more than one purpose. In addition to directing traffic to close the sale, it creates a backlink to your website. Relevant links contribute to link popularity and cause an increase in page rank.
Article Distribution
Article distribution may be done manually or through a distribution service. Distribution services charge a small fee compared to the amount of time and money they save. Most paid distribution services have thousands of potential recipients on their distribution list.
More articles distributed to more publishers mean a higher increase in qualified readers and traffic. Qualified traffic is traffic that has been pre-sold and is actively looking to make a purchase. Articles put your information in front of hundreds of readers per day.
Manual article submission does take time but is well worth the effort if your marketing budget doesn’t allow room for a paid distribution service. Publish your articles with several directories and keep an eye out for directories with mid-to-high page rank.
Carol Palmatier is Vice President of Marketing for the premium article distribution service; Article Marketer, and a “Word of Mouth” marketing expert. Grab our Step-by-Step Guide here.
