Generate Traffic, Leads and Sales With Video
From January 1st, 2010 to April 10, 2010 I accepted the challenge of writing 100 articles in 100 days. Some times I thought I wouldn’t make it because I became very busy with tasks related to my web design business and got behind in my writing. Because I had made a commitment to myself and publicly to my friends I pushed on. This meant I sometimes had to write 5 articles each day to catch up.
Top 10 lessons I learned
Article marketing is a proven method for steadily generating traffic to your website by providing valuable content, building lots of backlinks and improving search engine rankings. As more online business owners use this strategy to market their websites it becomes more difficult for your article to stand out from the crowd. The top article directories receive 1000s of new articles every day so you not only have to frequently write unique articles but promote them consistently to be effective traffic generators.
7 ways to increase the effectiveness of your articles
1. Do research on your topic
Too many article writers simply regurgitate content that has already been written thus boring their readers by not offering anything unique. Gather research by visiting forums, blogs, etc in your niche. Leave comments and ask questions to tap into the mindset of your audience. This will help you to craft articles visitors will want to read.
2. Do keyword research
Keywords within your article enable search engines to spider your content. Therefore include these keywords in your headline, article body and resource box. Google “free keyword research tools” to find software that creates a list of monthly searches for related keywords. Integrate these keywords into your content.
3. Create an attention-getting headline
Your headline is the single most important factor of your article because this is what initially grabs your visitor’s attention and makes them want to read the rest of the article. Try to place yourself in your reader’s shoes by asking yourself, “would this headline make me want to read more?” Use action verbs such as discover, get, how to, read or ask a question. One of the greatest headlines is “How to win friends and influence people.” Use this example to create your own article headline.
4. Give what you promised in your headline
Your article body should expand the information promised in your headline by providing valuable tips your reader can use in their business. Write at least 400 or more words as shorter articles are read less due to lack of good content.
5. Get your visitor to take action
The resource box at the end of your article is the only place you can promote your product or service and include links to your website. Your content should leave your reader hungry for more information. Provide this for them by offering a free report, an e-course or tutorial. If you want to build long term relationships with your readers invite them to subscribe to your newsletter.
6. Promote your articles
The most effective method of attracting lots of readers is to distribute your content to many places on the Web. This may include article directories, your blog or website, social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) , ezine publishers and online publications. The more articles you write and publish the more traffic you’ll receive to your website.
7. Monitor your article statistics
Track the effectiveness of your articles by observing which ones receive the most visitors. Check which keywords are being used to find the articles on your website by viewing your website statistics. If you submit your content to ezinearticles it enables you to track the number of visitors, keywords and click through rate of your articles.
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Article Writing Strategies.
Large companies spend a fortune in online advertising to drive traffic to their websites. How can you possibly compete with them when you’re the sole owner of your business and can’t afford to invest in paid advertising?
The best way to compete with large companies is to build a website around a micro niche then promote it using free traffic generating strategies. Let me explain what I mean by giving you an example.
If the large company sells shoes target a smaller niche such as “mens running shoes.” Make your website standout from the large companies by making it personable e.g. adding a blog so visitors can comment on your posts, write articles about running, create videos offering tips on running, adding social bookmarking icons so visitors can easily share your content with others.
One of the best ways to get free traffic to your website is article marketing. It will only cost you time to write and submit your content to article directories and other online publications.
Step by step article marketing process:
1. Choose a topic you’re passionate about
Create a list of topics to write about by entering your main keyword in Google’s keyword research tool. It will provide a wide range of related keywords people are searching on plus how many monthly searches that keyword receives. Your job is to write articles based on those keywords so your content can be found in the search engines and in article directories where newsletter publishers and site owners are looking for content to publish.
2. Create an attention getting headline
This means you need to write an attractive headline that grabs your reader’s attention. For example instead of writing “How to find comfortable running shoes” you could write “A Startling Fact About How To Save Your Feet When Buying Men’s Running Shoes.” Which headline gets the most attention?
3. Write content that benefits your readers
Your main content should provide at least one good tip your reader can act upon. Alternatively divide your content into several paragraphs each containing one tip. If you write 4 paragraphs (4 tips) of 100 words for each paragraph you’ll easily complete a 400-500 word article.
4. Offer an incentive
The resource box at the end of your article is where you can promote your product or service. Instead of trying to sell to your readers directly by linking to your product, offer a free report or ecourse so you can first capture their email address. This will enable you to stay in touch with them. Most people won’t purchase products on first contact.
5. Promote your content
The key to generating lots of free traffic to your website is to get your content in front of as many people as possible then build a community of followers. Start by submitting your articles to the top article directories because they receive millions of visitors each day. Add the articles to your blog so visitors can interact with them by leaving comments or asking questions. Create Twitter and Facebook accounts so you can notify your followers when you’ve written a new article. Participate in forum conversations and blogs related to your niche.
Build your community by offering a regular newsletter. Develop long term relationships with your subscribers by providing tips, news, product reviews, coupons, sales etc.
Your success will be determined by the frequency and consistency of your content marketing efforts therefore create a plan (e.g. write and publish 3 articles each week) then stick to it.
Related Articles
How Can I Promote My Website For Free
And now I would like to invite you to claim your FREE report titled:
7 Habits of Highly Effective Traffic Generation
Herman Drost is the owner and author of
http://www.DrostDesigns.com
Web Design, SEO, Article Marketing
Viral marketing refers to information that is passed along from person to person. The internet is a great viral marketing medium because you can distribute your content very quickly to a large audience. It’s similar to a human virus. Think of the swine flu or cold virus that spread quickly if you were in the same room as the person with the virus.
Benefits of viral marketing
The amount of traffic generated to your website will increase in proportion to the number of people your content reaches. The larger your audience the more visitors you’ll receive. Viral promotion strategies may include article marketing, videos, reports, ebooks, affiliates, images or simply writing compelling content.
Article marketing: an example of how to generate traffic with viral marketing
When marketing products on the Net lots of content is constantly needed to build backlinks, increase search engine rankings and provide material for your website visitors. Your customers are what keep you in business so if you take good care of them by giving them valuable content you’ll build long term relationships.
1. Write a compelling article
2. Submit to article directories
The top article directories receive millions of visitors and are visited daily by the search engines. When you submit your article to them you’ll generate instant and long term traffic. Instant traffic comes from RSS feeds, email alerts and ezine publishers selecting your article for publication. Long term traffic comes from your article appearing in the search engines. This happens because you get a high quality backlink from the directory plus backlinks from other sites that publish your article.
3. Publish on your blog
Publish the article on your blog so visitors can pass it on to others or comment on it. It will also be distributed to your RSS readers through the RSS feed built into your blog.
4. Use social media
Use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to notify potential readers about your new article. Add social bookmarking icons to your website or blog for visitors to easily bookmark your content.
5. Repurpose your articles
Convert your articles to videos, podcasts, short reports and ebooks. Use video sharing sites (e.g. YouTube), podcast and ebook directories to spread your content virally.
Viral marketing through writing and distributing content, creates a snowball affect that can generate traffic to your website instantly and continuously for many years to come.
And now I would like to invite you to claim your FREE report titled:
7 Habits of Highly Effective Traffic Generation
Traffic is the life blood of your website. If no one visits your site it will die a slow death and join 1000s of other abandoned sites on the Net. Most site owners don’t have a large budget to promote their business so they often ask themselves “How do I get website traffic on a budget?” They are constantly looking for free or inexpensive traffic generation strategies.
Here’s a highly effective traffic generation strategy that won’t cost you a dime. Even though this strategy is free it will still take time to implement but if done frequently and consistently will attract 1000s of visitors.
Web Content Development
New content needs to be constantly added to your website to attract and retain your visitors. One very effective way to achieve this is to write search engine optimized articles. This is an article that contains keywords that people are searching for in the search engines. When a person enters that keyword in the Google search box (or other search engine) your article appears on the first page of results.
Before writing the article create a list of keywords using the free Word Tracker keyword research tool. It will display how many searches each keyword receives each month. Write an article based on the topic of the keyword. Use the keyword in the title, article body and resource box at the end of the article. The article should be at least 400 words long so it meets the requirements for article directory submissions.
Make sure you create an attention getting headline then expand upon it by offering four valuable tips. Write four paragraphs of approximately 10 lines for each tip. This will give you 400 words. Your resource box is where you promote your offer or website. Be sure to include two links back to your website. One should be anchor text (hyperlinked text), the other your full website address.
Promote your content
To maximize the effectiveness of your article first place it on your website or blog then submit it to the top article directories and social media websites. Placing it first on your website means this web page will appear first in the search engines ahead of other web properties where you’ve published the same article.
If you want to get more traffic rewrite the article from another angle using a different headline but target the same keyword. Now you have another unique article that will also attract its own stream of traffic. Make sure you include links back to your website within the resource box . Use this article to submit to the top article directories such as Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Ideamarketers. These directories receive millions of visitors plus get visited by search engines every day. Traffic to your website will increase in proportion to the quality and quantity of articles you submit.
Notify your niche community using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, your Blog, whenever you have new content to publish. Place social bookmarking icons on your blog for visitors to easily bookmark your content. Build your community of subscribers by regularly offering them a newsletter.
Make a schedule to write and publish new content every few days or every day if you can handle it. View web content development and article marketing as free advertising for your website. It’s more effective than paid advertising because your content keeps working for you 24/7 throughout the year.
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Herman Drost is the CEO of http://www.iSiteBuild.com Maryland Website Design
A website that doesn’t attract traffic is like putting a sign up in the desert. It may be a very beautiful and expensively designed sign but if no one passes by to view it you won’t get any business. There are 1000s of sites on the Net that are just sitting there making no sales because they’re not attracting any visitors.
How to increase website traffic
1. Website optimization
Your web pages must be search engine friendly to attract search engine spiders. This means your webs pages must include the keywords people are searching on to find your them. To find those keywords open up the Google Keyword Research Tool. Insert your suggested keyword term. The keyword tool will create a list of keywords and phrases that display the number of times those words have been searched on each month.
Weave these keywords into the title, description meta tags, headings, subheadings, image descriptions, navigation links, internal links, file names and main content of your website.
2. Link building
Backlinks are links that point to your website from other sites. The number and quality of incoming links determine your rankings in the search engines. One of the best methods of building links is article marketing.
Benefits of article marketing
The three main benefits include web content development, building backlinks, increasing search engine rankings. Continually working on these three strategies will generate a ton of web traffic.
Web content development
Content is King on the Net. If you write lots of unique, valuable content and place it one your website or blog, others will naturally link to it from their blogs, social media sites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) and social bookmarking sites.
Publish your content
The top article directors attract millions of visitors each day. You can gain some of these visitors by submitting your articles to them. Write articles containing 400 words that include your main keyword in the title, main content and resource box. Make sure you include 2 links to your website in the resource box. One should be linked text (anchor text) and the other your full website address. You will immediately begin to get a trickle of traffic after you’ve submitted your article. If it gets picked up by an ezine publisher with 1000s of subscribers you’ll experience a dramatic increase in website traffic.
The more articles you write and publish the more traffic you’ll generate. If you convert the content to video and submit it to video sharing websites like YouTube you’ll attract even more traffic.
3. Monitor website statistics
Your statistical data shows how many visitors you’re getting to your website, where they are coming from and what keywords they are using to find your online property. If your web host doesn’t provide this service create a Google Analytics account and insert the code within the web pages. This enables you to track the success of your marketing efforts.
If you optimize your website, provide lots of valuable content on a regular basis and publish that content all over the Net you’ll dramatically increase your website traffic.
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101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site
Even if you have a beautiful website it won’t attract many visitors if you don’t promote it. There are hundreds of ways to promote a site however one of the most successful methods is writing articles then submitting the content to top article directories. Ezine publishers and website owners select well written articles from these directories to publish in their ezines or add them to their blogs or websites. This generates lots of traffic back to your website.
How to write an article that gets published
1. Create a list of keywords
Open the Google Keyword Research Tool then enter one of the main keywords related to your business. Use exact match to weed out general search terms. The tool will generate a long list of related keywords showing how many times people searched for that keyword in Google. Use this list to write a series of articles (one article per keyword or keyword phrase).
2. Write your article
Title
Write an attention getting headline that includes your main keyword. For example in the title of this article I chose “article marketing” as the main keyword phrase. Make sure place you it at the beginning of your headline because search engines place more weight on keywords at the beginning.
Article body
The main content should expand on what you promised in the title. A good length is 400 words. One simple way to write the content is to simply create a list of tips then write a paragraph on each tip. If you write 4 paragraphs each containing 100 words you’ll have a 400 word article completed in a short time. Be sure to include your main keyword in the content.
Resource box
This is added to the end of the article and is the only place you can promote your product or service and include a link back to your website. To motivate readers to click on the link offer an incentive such as a free report or free software.
Proofread your article
Get a friend or relative to proofread your article or if you do it yourself let it sit for a while then read through it again. Removing grammar and spelling mistakes will ensure the article is ready for publication.
Article marketing
The more places your article gets seen on the Net the more visitors it will attract. Publish it on your blog or website first then submit to the top article directories. If you have time rewrite the article before submitting it to the directories. This provides them with a unique article rather than the same one you added to your blog.
Tip
If you submit the same article to multiple publications the first website containing your article will rank ahead of the others in the search engines. For example if I first add the article to my blog then to a directory, the blog web page will rank first. Article marketing needs to be done frequently and consistently to be successful.
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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing Strategies.
Article marketing has been my main traffic source for generating new leads for my online businesses in 2009. It’s helped me achieve top rankings for my web site design company web site, the web design discussion blog and many of the articles contained within them. The articles also help propel my article marketing strategies ebook sales page to the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing.
I participated in a 100 day article writing challenge from August – November. That’s why you see the graph suddenly increase in the image above. It boosted the traffic to all my web sites and was the most profitable months for my business.
Each year I review how effective my article marketing strategies were. Here are some of the detailed statistics provided by the 2009 reports at Ezinearticles.
1. Most viewed articles
2. Highest click through rate (CTR)
(CTR = percentage of visitors who clicked through to my websites)
3. Most URL Clicks from the resource box
4. Articles selected by Ezine Publishers
Conclusions
Also read Article Marketing Predictions for 2010
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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing Strategies.
Article marketing has been a proven strategy for many years to build traffic, backlinks and search engine rankings. In the beginning one article could easily generate a lot of traffic however as article marketing went main stream you had to write and publish lots more articles to stand out from the crowd.
My predictions for 2010
1. Big companies submitting to article directories
Large companies will be hiring thousands of writers to write millions of articles that will get added to article directories.
2. Article writing software increases
There are software programs that spin your article into 1000 variations. They are then submitted to the article directories. Often the content doesn’t make sense and clutter the search engines with article spam. Because of the demand, more of this type of software will get produced.
3. Search engines filtering out spam articles
When web site owners tried to build 1000s of backlinks with link farms the search engines eventually penalized these sites by removing them from the search engines. The same may happen with article spam because search engines want to return the highest quality results to their consumers.
How to prepare for 2010
1. Increase the amount of unique articles you write and publish.
If you wrote and submitted 120 articles this year, make a goal of doubling your output. Outsource the writing if you don’t have the time to do it yourself. It’s going to take more articles to generate a steady stream of traffic.
2. Write longer quality articles
Longer articles of 400-800 words receive more clicks than shorter ones (250-300 words). Ezine publishers prefer high quality articles over poorly written ones so make sure you research the material thoroughly before writing about it.
3. Be consistent
Make a plan to write and submit several articles each week instead of when you feel like it. If you can’t do this commit to one article per week. The key is to do it consistently. Think of article marketing as your advertising agent. If you stop marketing your business you’ll stop attracting business.
4. Repurpose your content
Search engines prefer to see links coming from multiple sources instead of just one source. Convert your article into audio and video content then submit it podcast directories and video sharing sites. You will reach a wider audience.
5. Monitor article statistics
Ezinearticles is the most popular article directory because it provides article reports that track click through rate, views and the keywords used to find your article. It continually provides more ways to maximize the traffic to your articles. By monitoring your statistics you can work on improving your content to you get more visitors reading it and clicking the URL in the resource box.
By making preparations based on these article marketing predictions for 2010 you’ll stay ahead of your competitors and reap the benefits in your online business.
Also read Article Marketing: Year in Review 2009
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Learn how to write & publish articles by picking up a copy of
Article Writing Strategies.
Press releases are a highly effective method for building traffic to your product or service. It’s not used much by online marketers so you can use it to stand out from your competitors. The biggest problem in getting started is writing the press release however the steps below will show you how to convert the content you’ve already written into a press release for your business.
1. Release instructions
This is placed at the top of your document . Mention if it’s for “immediate release” or “for release on some future date.”
2. Create a newsworthy headline
Press release distribution sites are looking for stories that will capture the attention of their audience. Look at the articles written in newspapers. They often begin with a story to capture the attention of the reader.
Example
Instead of your title saying “How to Convert Your Article to A Press Release” write “Mary shows you how to gain free publicity by converting your article to a press release”
3. Create a summary
Write 2 or 3 sentences that expand on your headline. It should summarize what your press release (article) is about.
4. Add your main content
This should consist of 400-500 words maximum explaining the significance of your topic and how it will help your audience. For example if you were to take the topic of this article you could describe how press releases help attract traffic, build your brand and get high rankings in the search engines.
If your article contains how to information that sounds boring spice it up a little to make it more newsworthy. Try to make your story relevant and create a sense of urgency. This will help it get accepted by the media.
5. Create an about section
This should summarize what your company is about. Include a call to action by introducing your product or service, where the business is located and web site address.
6. Include contact information
This is added to the end of your press release so media can contact you for any questions. Include the contact person, their position, name of the company, phone number and email address.
7. The ending
End your press release by adding ### centered at the bottom.
Google “free press release websites” to find locations online where you can submit your document.
If you’re introducing a new product, service or have redesigned your web site consider sending a press release to let people know about it. It’s a fast and easy way to generate immediate traffic.
Also read Top 7 benefits of a press release
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