One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website, build your brand, and of course, make sales is to use article marketing. If you're unfamiliar with the term, article marketing refers to the practice of writing brief, informative articles on a subject that is relevant to the content of the website you're trying to create a flow of traffic to. This is done by submitting articles to online directories, e-zines or anywhere else on the web where they may be republished and seen by readers. Each article can carry a link to your website, so this is also a back link building technique. While most article marketing is done with a commercial motive (especially by affiliate marketers), writing this sort of content works much the same whether or not you're trying to sell something.
The most important thing to keep in mind when writing for the purposes of article marketing is to create something that is genuinely informative and of use to its intended audience; you want to inform, not present your reader with a sales pitch.
The purpose of these articles is to generate interest in your site and to build a brand image for yourself as a source of useful information. You want to pre-sell, not sell with your articles. What you are really trying to do here is to make yourself someone that consumers feel that they can trust - give them information that they can actually use and they will come to you for more.
Naturally, you'll want to write these articles on topics which you already have some expertise in; or at the very least, you'll have to research your topic thoroughly beforehand. Never present yourself as an expert in something that you know nothing about - it will come through in your writing and readers will move right on to someone else's content.
Keywords are an important element of article marketing writing. If you've never done any sort of SEO writing before, these articles are a great way to get some practice. You want to use your keyword enough for search engines to take notice, but not so often that your content is stilted and difficult to read. Anyone who has spent any time surfing the web has run across these keyword stuffed monstrosities before - and they're awful to read, aren't they? Not only will readers tend to pass this kind of substandard content by, but keyword stuffing may even lead to being penalized by search engines - which negates the time you spent trying to figure out how to use the phrase "how to find the best widgets for widgeting" 50 times in your 400 word piece. Keep to a keyword density of no more than 2-3%. This is plenty; remember that your real audience is human readers, not search engines.
Writing good content for article marketing is both a skill and an art, but it is not an impossible challenge. Write from a position of expertise, provide genuinely useful content, and use keywords in a natural way while making sure to attract and hold the reader's attention and you'll do just fine.
Neil Bartlett is the founder of ProArticle.com. Pro Article provides writers with Tips and Techniques for improving their writing skills. To learn more and INSTANTLY grab his FREE report "10 Tips For Successful Online Writing" go to www.proarticle.com/specialoffer
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