If you have a website, odds are you are always looking for new ways to bring in traffic and get relevant links to your site. Writing articles can give you the following benefits:
- 1000’s of potential promoters distributing your content
- Relevant links to your website
- Stature as an expert in your topic area
- Fast listings in major search engines
The Article Writing Process
The process is simple. Write a short article that is related to the content on your website. You can excerpt something you have already created for your site or generate something new (which you can then put on your website.)
Next, create a by-line for yourself that includes a link to your website. The by-line is your chance to advertise yourself and your website and make readers want to see what else you have to say on the subject.
Finally, register with websites such as eZineArticles.com and ArticleCity.com and start posting your content onto the sites. It usually takes no more than a day to get your article approved and listed on their article databases. Then, E-Zine and website producers from around the world will start finding your articles and including them in their work.
Each person who uses your material will include your by-line with a link to your website. As search engines re-index their sites, they will find your content and the links back to your site. These producers get relevant free content and you get free advertising.
The Results
It has been three days since I posted my most recent batch of articles to the article directory websites. Already, 3 of the top 10 links that come up when Googling “Andrew Seltz” are to the articles I submitted to eZineArticles.com and ArticleCity.com. 10 article links show up in total.
Keep in mind, these same articles have been published on my websites for weeks. Those websites have all been submitted to the major search engines for indexing. Yet, not one listing that showed up is from one of my sites. It took less than 4 days for those articles to start popping up in Google – and each instance has a link back to one of my sites!
A recent check of my website stats shows that I’ve already received traffic to my sites from links in these articles. I expect that these websites will keep my articles in their systems for a while and that I will continue to generate traffic for months from people following the by-line links back to my sites.
What if I Can’t Write Articles?
First, don’t overthink the process. You aren’t creating a literary masterpiece, you are conveying helpful information. Find a topic in which you have helpful knowledge and experience, then follow this basic model:
- Tell them what you are about to tell them
- Tell them
- Summerize what you told them
Use bullet points to summarize information and headings to mark the different sections of the article. Write short focussed paragraphs and include examples from your experiences to illustrate what you are talking about. When you’ve written a draft that you are happy with, let someone else read it and ask them to point out anything confusing or places where your writing sounds awkward.
I suggest you visit one or more of the article websites I’ve listed and read a few articles in your topic area. Get a sense of how others are writing and model your work on theirs. (Note, I didn’t say copy. Find you’re unique perspective on the subject and distinguish yourself from all of the other voices out there – plus, copying without permission is illegal.)
If the process of writing articles is a real struggle for you, you might want to consider something like the 30 Minute Article Writing System, by Melanie Mendelson. She swears she can teach anyone to write a quality article in 30 minutes using her system (I just Googled her name and got back over 18,000 results – she’s prolific.) There are other methods out there for helping you through writers block, just remember not to overthink the process. Save your criticism for your second draft.
Build on Your Successes
Save everything you write. Over time you will find that you’ve created a valuable body of work. This collection of short and useful articles might be re-edited into a book or serve as the foundation of a course or seminar. You will be gathering together the building blocks for your future work and also finding an audience for it along the way.
Happy Article Writing,
Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy