Web Promotion Articles :: Article Marketing
Article writing is an effective and potentially quick way to get links and traffic. Articles can be created by making minor edits to content already published on your site, so it need not be too time consuming a task. Also, the submission of articles can be automated with the right software or by employing a third party service.
The Headline
The headline of your article is very important and will help you to snatch traffic or sales from competitors. Whether you are just writing content for your website, writing articles to drag traffic from article directories or writing emails to sell products the headline is the most important part of that text. Its such an important consideration because the headline is what will make someone discard your article or take time to read it. If your headline does not grab the user's attention and excite them, they will not bother to read on. This could be a lost sale or a lost visitor to your site and a wasted cross selling opportunity.
The headline of an article made specifically for submission to an article directory is even more important than a headline in website content. If a visitor searches an article directory, they will be presented with a long list of articles. What is going to make them read yours? -The HEADLINE!
The headline needs to stir emotions. The reader needs to be intrigued, excited or convinced just by reading the headline. They need to be persuaded by it that the contents of the article will answer their question, solve their problem or just provide them with amazing benefits or tips. If the headline is good, the reader may be half way sold on your product already or halfway to clicking the link to your site. It takes less from the content to push them the whole way and do what YOU want them to.
Follow the tips below to start snatching traffic away from the other search results/articles or start converting readers to paying customers.
1. Subheadings
Write subheadings into your article or website content. These extra headlines will break up your content so the reader can scan it and pick out parts they want to read -remember, most people are either very lazy or have little time to waste and will skim read.
Make your first subheading the unique selling point of your product or the major benefits the article content will generate for the reader. This will help keep a readers attention and interest in further reading.
2. Emotion Stirring
Make sure you are concentrating on tapping the emotions of the reader. People almost always make decisions based on emotions, so use this in your favor. Get them excited about what you have to offer or make them scared about the consequences of not using your product/article content. For example, you could only be writing about how search engine optimization is a good way to get traffic, but your title could say: 'Don't get crushed by your competition, learn SEO NOW!'.
3. Open ended questions
Asking a question in your title is a good way to attract a reader. For example: 'Why do so many websites fail in their first year?' This makes the reader feel there is a fact that many websites fail within their first year and the reader is concerned by this. They want to avoid failing and assume the article will help them out, so they read on. This could have been an article on search engine optimization and the headline could have read 'SEO Tips'. The problem with this headline is that it is the same as 1000 others and doesn't stand out. Also someone wanting to know how to promote their site and get traffic may not know what SEO is or stands for. They wouldn't read the article to find out.
4. Write Headlines for Your Target Audience
Only write an article for your target audience, if you write something irrelevant you will only get useless traffic to your site or article. You won't generate sales or returning visitors and will loose out on people who were looking for what your article actually offered.
5. Headline Storming
Think about your article and its headline. Write down as many different headlines you can think of keeping all of these tips in mind. Then mix them up a bit and come up with more. Maybe leave it a day and come back with more. Then whittle your attempts down to what you think will sell best.
You may spend more time on the headline than the actual article, but this is fine because the headline is most important. No one will even get to your content if it is poor.
Maximizing The Reach Of An Article Or The Content Of Your Website
The content must be accessible to as many readers as possible. This means keeping your language simple. Many people try too hard to come across interesting or intelligent in their writing. They purposefully use long words or do the equivalent of overusing a thesaurus and do not realize that they are actually harming the effectiveness of the text. Many people will not understand these words as the reading skills of the average person are lower than you may think. Try not to use jargon and try to explain as many terms as you can that you feel may not be main stream. The easier your article is to read, the more people will be able to read it. A potential customer/visitor may be sent elsewhere by one single word they don't understand. The web is one of the most difficult mediums to write for. There is so much choice so easily accessible, keeping a readers attention is very difficult.
Error Free Writing
If you need to promote a trustworthy or professional image, you most likely will, then error free content is very important. If a reader can pick out spelling and/or grammatical errors in your writing, they will be turned off from a sale or give your site less trust. This can be devastating to conversion rates (the percentage of visitors/readers that become paying customers or frequent visitors). The more mistakes your content has, the worse the effect. There is no excuse these days with so many free tools available to spell or grammar-check your content. Be careful however, as they don't pick up everything. You may have a word correctly spelt in the wrong place which makes sense grammatically as well but is wrong. So proof read everything you publish and get someone else to do so as well if possible. Remember, credibility is key when making a sale and keeping visitors returning.
Shorten Your Introduction
Make sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot by boring a reader before they have even started. This not only means having a great, captivating title but you need to keep your introduction as short as possible. If a reader is put through a long introduction before getting to the important stuff, their mood may be turned negative and affect their view of the rest of the article. They may not even bother to read past the introduction! So make sure you keep it to a few key sentences. These key sentences should very briefly summarize the article and/or its benefits or use.
Content Formatting
The format of your article is very important. Even if you have 1000 important points efficiently voiced, if you have not left the reader time to breathe they may be totally put off. You need to split your content into subheadings so that the content doesn't look like an effort to read. An introduction followed by one massive block of text will make most people just leave the webpage. You need to use subheadings to break it up into manageable chunks or you can use numbers or bullet points. These are especially good for 'how to' articles.
Wrap it up
A conclusion is important because it can be used to stress your main points in a way that leaves the reader with an image burned into the back of their mind. They may just forget about what they have read so sum up at the end to aid their memory. You can use the end of an article to point a user to other things you have written that may be of interest or you can use it to cross sell a product.
Edit, Re-edit and Re-re-edit
You need to edit your article several times to make sure it is the best it can be. Read through it, make changes and then read it again. If you don't read it again what you have edited may not be as good overall as the original copy. You may find that you have repeated yourself or made mistakes in your edit. So edit again and again till you are satisfied. This process is vital because it will minimize the chances of errors, errors which may make the entire article near pointless.
Social book marking
Make sure you take advantage of social book marking and add a link at the bottom of the article to a couple of the social book marking sites. This will maximize the traffic pulling power of your article link building campaign. The sites are listed in the social book marking overview section.
SEO Applies!
Remember that with almost anything on the web, SEO can be applied. Your articles can be read by search engines and so make sure they have been SEO'ed for targeted keywords. Also, make sure that the text linking back to your site from your articles is varied but themed. So it is sometimes different linking text but that text is a keyword following the theme of your website. This will ensure your website is optimized for Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
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