Sep 28, 2008 Posted in Marketing Ideas

Writing Articles to Generate Website Traffic

I‘m going to let you in on a secret that most of the great marketers have been using for years to generate visitors to their websites and increase their online sales. Nearly all of them write and distribute articles about their area of expertise.

Now you may be wondering how simply writing and distributing articles can increase the quantity and quality of the sales leads that you’re able to generate. Well, this happens in three ways.

First, when you write about your area of expertise you immediately become perceived as the expert on the subject that you’re writing about. This gives you credibility and allows you to charge more for your products and services. It doesn’t matter if you write a book or if you write a series of articles, as long as you provide valuable, relevant information to your prospects you will quickly become the expert in your field.

Second, when you write helpful articles and place them on your site you’re increasing the content value of your website. This means you’re making your website more valuable and interesting for your visitors and to the search engines. Too many businesses have one or two page websites that are really just sales letters for whatever they are trying to sell. That is fine but when you don’t have valuable content on your site visitors are less likely to return. The search engines see this and they are less likely to rank your site highly. When the search engines see that your site does have relevant content and that your visitors are staying around longer, you are more likely to get a higher ranking and therefore, more visitors and more interest in what you have to offer.

Finally, after you’ve written your articles you’ll want to distribute them in a manner that allows other people to read them (obviously) but also that allows other website owners to use them as content on their own sites. Why would you want to to that?

Though nobody has cracked the code to search engine optimization (seo) it is evident that the search engines like sites that have a lot of inbound links. This means that other sites are linking to you. When the search engines see this, they consider your site an authority site and are more apt to rank you highly.

This brings us back to writing and distributing articles. When you write an article that is going to be distributed you are allowed to include a bio at the end of your article. That bio will include at least one link back to your site. Many website owners realize the value of having a content-rich website and are desperately seeking for new content to place on their sites. If they like your article and decide to use it they will need to use it ‘as is’. They cannot change the article in any way.

In other words, the bio remains unchanged and you get an inbound link to your site. If you write and distribute a number of articles and they get picked up by a number of different sites, you’ll quickly build your inbound links and the search engines will rank your site higher and higher. At the same time, you’ll gain more exposure and more people will contact you to buy what you have to sell.

Distributing Your Articles

There are literally thousands of article distribution sites and directories on the web. Depending on your industry, you may even have one or two that are dedicated to your field. Definitely find and start with those because you’ll be most likely to find qualified prospects through these sites as visitors are already looking for what you have to sell.

If you don’t have any article directories that are specific to your industry, here is another secret that you’ll want to know about. The search engines love article sites because they are pure content. Having said that, it seems that both Google and Yahoo! have a couple of sites that they love more than others. Specifically, GoArticles and EzineArticles seem to be their favorites. What this means is that if you get an article published on these sites, you are more likely to get a higher ranking with the search engines.

Each directory or distribution service has different rules and regulations to be sure to check them out carefully and comply. You don’t want to get banned from these services because they can be so helpful in getting exposure.

Online marketers have been using this strategy for years but I don’t see a lot of business owners or sales people capitalizing on this powerful method of gaining exposure and credibility. For some of my sites, I only use article marketing and they are doing phenomenally well. I strongly suggest you try this yourself.

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If you’re looking for ways to generate free sales leads without cold-calling, I offer the Crash Course in Modern Sales Prospecting. It is completely free.

Eric Haaranen

www.modernsalesprospecting.com

www.nicepeoplecansell.com

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