Your Article Writing Guide

Article Writing is a good way to promote yourself or any services that you might offer. By writing articles about the positive aspects of your product or service you help to bring awareness of them to your readers.

How Article Writing gets you traffic is not to hard to understand.

If you submit your article to directories and people come to read it they will see in your resource box the url to your site. Other webmasters may publish your
article to their site. Ezine publishers may use your article in their mail outs to their list. These all add up to more exposure for your site and a lot of backlinks to it. This can improve Page Rank.

This all assumes of course that your article writings produce quality good enough to be accepted into the article directories. Most are not too hard to get into, but a few can be a bit more difficult. Shop around and try them.

The following tips should help with your chances. Please follow in the order in which they are listed.

Write around a "good" keyword.

There are a number of free keyword tools on the web. If the keyword isn't being looked for then nobody is interested in the subject that you are article writing about. This will not result in many readers.

This may still cause your article to appear in the search engines for the keyword, but nobody is typing it in so it will not be seen. And other websites will be less than interested in using your article. The same for Ezines. So use a "good" keyword (one that has enough searches for it).

Use this good keyword in your title for much better exposure:

As in the last tip, if people are looking for it then they may find your article. It may show in the search engines when people are looking for it. Other websites may desire to use it. Ezine publishers will have more cause to want to use it.

Search for your title in quotes like this:

"Your Article Writing Guide" in Google before using it. If no results are returned then it probably is a good title that nobody else is using. So now before you even start your article writing you have a good title, with a good keyword in it. On a good subject of interest since it is written around the keyword.

About the Title:

We know to use the keyword; which could be a phrase such as "Article Writing". But it should be a unique and interesting title. One that draws the reader in, either with curiosity, or by offering some benefit to them.

Such as how to make them more money, make something easier for them, or solve some nagging problem of theirs. Such as not knowing how to write an article that will show more of the desired effect. Think of your readers point of view and "what's in it for me".

Using Bold or Italics:

These can be good for drawing the readers attention and helping to skim or just to focus in on, as well as helping with the search engines. Check with the article directory that you are using first to make sure they're allowed. The same with"Bullets", or numbered lists.

Using Links in your article:

Don't. Some article directories allow for some links in the article, if they are relevant to what the article is about. Such as a link to a similar article or a website for that subject. But most don't like it.

You can have one link in your "Bio", or "resource box" as it is called that leads to your site, blog, autoresponder, or whatever. Only a few directories allow you to put in a link straight to your affiliate site. Again, shop around.

If you intend to write and submit many articles to many directories this matter of links can quickly become a hassle. While you can make two, three, or several different "Bios" (there's another tip for you), it is really going to become a lot more work if you want to produce different versions of the same article.

Article Length:

Usually between 300 and 700 words according to most opinions around. The point is that if it's too short there just isn't enough "meat" in it, whereas if it is too long readers might be scared off from it.

Also, Ezine publishers may not want to use it if it takes up more than (1) page. Finally, each directory may have different higher and lower limits and so for mass submittal it is better to hit the common "mid-range" in length. This one is over-weight at 811 words before this sentence.