Why Writing and Distributing Articles is Good Promotion

by Rick Hendershot, Linknet Marketing Forum

 

Writing articles is still a good way to get some "free" exposure for yourself and your website. It is also a good way to get "free" links pointing at your site.

Of course it isn't "free" if you have to spend a lot of time writing and submitting your articles. So it is best to try to come up with a formula for writing effective articles.

When I say use a "formula" I'm not suggesting your articles be machine generated or anything like that. I'm just saying try to stick with the essentials. Anything more than that is probably not an effective use of your time.

So what are the essentials when it comes to writing effective articles? Here are some of them:

1. Use a narrowly-defined theme for your article. For instance, if you sell dog care products write an article about some specific aspect of dog care such as "getting rid of fleas" or "dog weight control." This will increase your credibility much faster than a more general theme. And credibility should translate into visits to your site.

2. Create an attention-grabbing title. When potential readers are looking down a list of articles it is the titles they see first. In fact it is usually the title alone that gets them interested.

3. Include your most important keyword in your title. Keywords are the search terms people use when looking for information about specific topics. Including your most important keyword in your title will make your article more likely to be found in searches.

4. Include a link out to your website from the resource box. Use your primary keyword in your anchor text (the words that are hyperlinked.) This will help to identify your website with those keywords.

5. Keep your articles relatively short. 500-600 words is plenty. If you want to say more than this, break your article up into two or three different ones.

6. Don't promote yourself in your article. Save the self-promotion for the resource box at the end. Whether it makes sense or not, many article publishers simply will not publish self-promotional material.