Word Content

Give Your Articles Away!

How writing articles and giving them to others can drive traffic to your website.

It sounds counterintuitive, but it works: you can pre-sell customers and drive them to your website. The idea behind it is that other sites have what you want: a proven pool of customers who are looking for products and information that you have. In other words, they're pre-sold on your products. All you have to do is show them the right item and you've got them.

How do you reach these pre-sold customers? By proving that you know your stuff, and then giving them an easy way to reach your products, like a direct link to your website.

The only way you can demonstrate to someone that you know your stuff is through communication; the primary way to communicate online is through writing. It stands to reason, therefore, that if people read what you have written and are impressed, they're going to expect that you know what you're talking about.

So you try to reach as many people with your words as you can. It's that simple, and that complicated.

The Concept: Giving Away Your Words

The one thing that everyone is hungry for online is great quality content ï¿½ not just words, but words that tell people something they didn't know before: information on a new product, a new use for an old one, consumer information, etc. Think about it ï¿½ if someone asked you to put a good article on your website

For example, suppose you sell paintball guns and related products. There is a surprisingly large online community for these items, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, not many people who have really good content on the sports surrounding paintball. The sites that do have great information are very popular indeed with aficionados.

These sites usually make money in one of two ways: either they sell items through affiliate links, or they sell advertising on their websites. For instance, if you look at about.com, you'll find good, constantly-updated information about paintballs, and lots of advertising. About makes money on their advertising and by selling products from sites they're linked to.

But About, and sites like them, are always in need of fresh information and articles, for a few reasons. The older articles have been read; the most valuable customer online is a repeat customer, but if you never update your site information, customers don't come back. Also, the Google search engine spiders have been paying attention lately to sites with fresh content. If you consistently have fresh content on your site, your site will move up in the Google rankings. And that's something everyone wants.

If you can supply these sites with this fresh content, they will keep coming back to you. And as long as your name is on the article as the author, you'll get fresh customers from their site.

Becoming A Guru

Before you start writing articles, you need to know what you're talking about. You become a guru.

First, haunt the online chat rooms, forums, and message boards where people go to talk about your product. Perhaps you think you know everything there is to know about paintball ï¿½ you're almost certainly wrong. Forums will tell you what your customers are looking for, what information they treasure. And these are the bits of information you want to include when you start writing articles.

Second, make sure you really know what you're talking about. A paintball fan will know pretty quickly whether you're faking it or not, and they won't go to a fake's website.

Once you're secure that you can act as a guru, you're ready to start writing great articles.

How to Write Giveaway Articles

First ï¿½ not everyone can write. This is a simple fact, so if you're one of them, hold on; there are other alternatives.

If you can write well, and you know your information, you're more than halfway there. Now you just need to understand how to write for an online audience and how to optimize your article.

First, write short. Keep your paragraphs short, make bullets and numbered points in your text whenever you have a list of information, and write in a conversational manner instead of an academic one.

Always do your best to use good grammar, and spellcheck everything.

If you have an article longer than 400 words (that's about one page in MS Word) break it up. You can serialize it, or you can insert headings in the best places for the article to break across web pages.

Finally, choose a set of keywords. These are the words that you think people interested in this article are most likely to search for. For instance, paintball articles should always use "paintball" and "paint ball" as keywords. If you're writing about a specific paintball gun, use the gun's brand name and manufacturer's number as a second keyword.

Sprinkle the keywords throughout your article. Be certain to use them in headers as often as you can: "Paintball for Kids: The Mark X-23". If you can, try to have a 5% frequency of your keyword in your article ï¿½ that's one keyword every twenty words. Less is okay, particularly if the article sounds better overall, but high keyword count will get your article to rank higher on search engines.

If you write your articles in this way, you'll make your reader happy, convince them that you're a guru, and ensure that your articles do enough good at the website they're donated to that you will continue placing articles there.

What If You Can't Write?

That's okay. You can hire a web content ghostwriter. There's a whole new breed of writers online who can research your information fast, and who can write articles for you based on the information you supply. In general, better writers charge more, but no web content writer should charge you enormous fees.

When you hire your writer, make it clear up front that you're purchasing all rights. This gives you the right to put your name on the article as the writer, establishing your credentials as a guru.

But you should always read through the articles written for you. Make sure the information included in them is accurate and easy to understand. Remember, the article you're placing is your face to your customers.

Where to Place Your Articles, And What Your Terms Should Be

Here's the kicker: when you have your wonderful, informative, keyword-rich article ready, you ask the owner of the website you're placing it at to run the article ï¿½ at no charge to him ï¿½ but to please include a link to your website in exchange.

That's it.

With your name and website link attached to your article, a reader whose interest is piqued will click to your site. There he or she will have the opportunity to buy your product; and if you're running advertisements on your website, they'll also rack up a hit for your billing.

The best thing is that you're pre-selling your customer with your informative article. That does not mean your article should be a sales pitch, by the way; instead, you should use your article to teach your reader why he or she needs a specific product, or a range of product, or should come to your site to learn more. This means that you're only telling them about the fantastic stats of the Mark X-23 paintball, and why it's such a great gun for kids. Leave it up to them to decide to go to your site.

You can place articles at dozens of great places. Check first with other sites that deal with items peripheral to your product. For instance, a paintball organization's website might be willing to run your paintball article. There are also dozens of generic websites that run articles on a wide variety of topics, including:

ï¿½ www.About.com (submit articles to the guide in the subject area most closely related to your business)
ï¿½ www.Ask.com
ï¿½ www.goarticles.com
ï¿½ www.ezinearticles.com
ï¿½ www.ideamarketers.com
ï¿½ www.marketing-seek.com

Fringe Benefits: Improving Your Search Engine Rankings

There's one more advantage to placing articles with other websites. You can improve your own site's search engine ranking with each link you build.

If you have your website keyword optimized, you should insist on having a "resource box" at the end of your article. This is a section enclosed in a border that tells the reader a little about you as well as giving them a way to get to your website. "Mark Borders runs FabuWare, home of paintball accessories for the last 20 years."

Notice that your link is not "FabuWare." Instead, it is "paintball accessories." There is an important reason for this.

With plenty of links to your site from other sites, your search engine rankings will go up. This means that along with your free link and pre-selling through the article, you also get a free boost to your website.

If the words that link to your website also match your keyword, your ranking will be boosted much higher than with other links to your website that don't use the keyword. And the only way to do this is to write the resource information yourself and ensure it's used exactly as you wrote it.

To do this, design a reference box with text exactly the way you want it to appear, complete with your link set up, and submit the reference box along with your article.

Recap: What To Remember

Writing articles and giving them away can:

ï¿½ Make you into a guru
ï¿½ Allow you to presell your products
ï¿½ Drive fresh traffic to your site
ï¿½ Improve your search engine rankings

A single article, properly written, can be worth much more on someone else's site than it would be on your own. Choose carefully, and write it well.

For more information, please visit: WordContent.com ï¿½Content is Kingï¿½

Wordcontent is an online company providing specialist and professional content for websites

Related Information of Interest:

The Benefits of Submitting Articles for SEO
There are millions of businesses in the world. Similarly, there are millions of web sites being used to promote each and every one of them. Some get lucky enough and always appear number one in search engines. However, most get archived in the last places customers will ever look for in a search engine. Clearly, luck can not be everything when it comes to giving your business the attention it needs. Itï¿½s a good thing thereï¿½s always SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the only way to go if you want your ads and web sites to stand out in the internet. SEO compliant articles will inevitably hit the right keywords at all times. This procedure comes from the meticulous task of picking out most probable keywords people from all over the world use in search of corresponding services. Through hitting as many keywords as possible, a certain website raises its ranking in various search engines such as Yahoo and Google. With this higher ranking, customers gain more accessibility to the site. As we all know, it is indeed very rare for people to check out web sites in the latter pages of search results. That is why articles need to be optimized by inserting the words with most hits in terms of customersï¿½ random typing preference probabilities. Through search engine optimization, a web site will earn higher in the engines and remains there as long as it is kept properly maintained. SEO companies also see to it that their clients are always on top of the results page. As such, you are guaranteed continuing surveillance of your siteï¿½s ranking day in or day out. They also have keyword generators which can spare you from the laborious task of assessing which key words need to be hit and which ones are futile to include in the article. It also allows writers to hit the taste of the masses which access the internet. Companies can now focus writing attractively for the keywords which sell the best. Other services rendered by sites can now be dissolved if the web isnï¿½t showing an interest for it, therefore eliminating deadwood in the business. With this wonderful innovation in web writing, each article will surely be given ample attention in terms of engine optimization and accessibility. The purpose of advertising and syndication will be fulfilled, instead of stagnating in a dark and shady area with abysmally low ranking positions.

Sandra Adams writes search engine related articles.To get free articles to display on your own site, please visit www.articletrader.com

7 Winning Tips For Article Marketers
1. Follow up with your readers.

For example, you could offer a subscription to your ezine or
you could offer a free email course in your resource box.

2. Use lots of white space.

Increase your article's white space by going over it for
sentences you can shorten and also paragraphs you could
break up into two or three shorter paragraphs.

3. Use numbered lists.

Use your numbered lists to convey points in your articles or
your steps in your "how to" article.

Numbered lists can also be used to create the content of
your article, like I did with this simple list article.

4. Use the word "you" a lot in your articles.

Make your writing feel more personal by using the word you a
lot within your article.

That way your readers will feel like you are talking
directly to them and you'll be able to better draw them into
your article's content.

5. Write to one person.

Choose a person such as a friend or spouse to write your
article to.

By doing this, you will naturally use the word you a lot
within your article, and your readers will feel like you are
talking to them one to one.

6. Offer an article announcement list.

Keep people up to date on your latest articles by publishing
an email list that announces your new articles.

You could also announce your new articles by RSS to
publishers and webmasters that like your writing.

7. Let your affiliates use your articles to earn
commissions.

Make your articles available to your affiliates to publish
on their sites or in their ezines with their affiliate links
in your resource box.

You'll be able to successfully raise your profits by turning
your articles into an effective promotional tool for your
affiliates.

Ken runs the Net Pro Marketer where you'll find informative articles on business, marketing, and ezine publishing. Browse through the articles or submit your own at: www.netpromarketer.com

Article Marketing for Search Engine Traffic
There are sites on the net that serve tons of traffic everyday. Traffic you wish you had, right?
The web is made up of billions of links, much like a spiderï¿½s web but on a larger scale. Search engines spider the web looking for new content to add to their massive databases so they can rank how relevant it is to particular search phrases.
What are the search engines looking for?
New content! In order for any search engine to provide relevant results to their visitors (so their visitors will repeatedly use them) they must provide the best results possible for every search performed on their site.
The best search engine gets more traffic and more traffic means more advertising money for them - so search engines have to be up to date to stay competitive in their market.
The big sites on the net, people, who have page rankings of 5 upwards, obviously serve a ton of visitors per day, provide search engines with a mass of links to follow and index. Thatï¿½s why they go back to the big sites more often than the little ones.
High traffic, very popular sites are visited by the search engine robots more often than sites with little traffic. Some large sites are visited by search engines as much as 2-4 times per month.
How can article marketing increase your search engine traffic?
By submitting articles you can get links from these high traffic sites. Furthermore you can optimize your articles with your search terms to get high rankings for that particular page. This would otherwise take weeks on a new site as oppose to a well established one such as this.
Each of these sites will have its own resource area, at the end of the article, writers include a bit of Author information on where to find out more about them. Place your website link in here and bobï¿½s your uncle the search engines will find your site through that link.
The more articles you submit with your website link in them, the more pages on the net you have pointing to you from high traffic sites and the better your ranking and link popularity.
Many good article sites these days create RSS feeds for each category. This provides an additional opportunity to market your site and article to people who subscribe to the feeds.
Start submitting your articles today. You will be amazed at the results they yield.

Richard is the Publisher of Articleprobe a Free Article Distribution and Submisssion Service. Set up your account today and start submitting your articles to Articleprobe

Advertising Divas and Consumer Queens
In the past, the saying has always been “don’t underestimate the power of branding” but now the best advice seems to be “don’t underestimate the power of women!” Ignore it at your peril.

If statistics out of the US are any guide for the rest of the world to follow, and in the past this has been the case, then everyone in the advertising industry should give their serious attention to this fact. Jupiter Research has concluded that women influence 83 percent of all purchase decisions. There are more women online today than men.

And looking forward, 70 percent of all US women will be online in 2006, and looking even further ahead, 85 million women will purchase products and services online by 2010.

These statistics are huge by anyone’s measurements. Does anyone out there still have doubts as to the potential of ecommerce? Or more importantly, guys, how do your doubts hold up as to the influence of women on the internet?

US women over 40 are devoting more time online per week than running errands, eating or preparing meals, relaxing, or spending time with friends. Their internet time outweighs watching TV, listening to the radio and other media activities.

So what does this really tell us?

Fact #1 Advertisers in both traditional and new media, have up until now, been seriously underestimating women power
Fact #2 Women are the dominant gender when it comes to online spending
Fact #3 Women know women better than men know women (I’m sure most husbands would agree.)

Who better to understand the consumer behavior of women than women themselves? This last fact should lend itself to a rush to employ or promote females into the positions of advertising executives and creative directors. Now guys, don’t get us gals wrong, sensitive men can still create great ads for women and vice versa, but if the above statistics can be believed, then surely you should be eagerly encouraging the women in your industry to play a greater role in both decision making and creativity.

This makes such common sense to me, nothing biased about it.

Penny Archer, herself a “Consumer Queen”, is a Director of SmartDames FZ LLC, an international email List Broker based in Dubai Media City, Dubai. Other articles that she has written can be found at http://www.smartdames.com or http://www.listownerlimbo.com