Article Directory

Article marketing is one of the effective and easy ways to generate traffic to your website. The entire purpose of having a website is to have traffic, in other words have people visit your website. There are many ways of doing this and article marketing is one of those ways.

Article marketing is writing original, informative articles that revolve around your website's content, and then publishing them on special directories (called reprint directories). These reprint directories then host the articles and any website seeking content can pick them up from these directories and publish them without making any alterations.

So now you might be asking how these articles, posted on a reprint directory and then picked up by another site could possible generate traffic for your website. The answer is simple. These articles are written in a particular format which includes something called a resource box. This resource box contains information that links back to your website. This is usually a link and a short bio of you the author. People looking for more information click on the link and are directed to your website.

Another important factor to note is that your content must be informative and original. If you copy content from another website and pass it off as your own, search engines will blacklist you. Also, if your article is not informative and merely blah-blahs or goes around in circles without focusing on the topic, then no one will pick it up for publication. Your article must also include a few "keywords" that are relevant to your business - including these in your content will make your article more visible to the search engines. The lesson, therefore, is to have your content written by a professional who knows about keywords.

Here are some more pointers on how to write good articles:

1. Make your article comfortable to read. People do not want to read something that goes on forever and ever but they also want to obtain decent information. The average acceptable length is between 5-600 words.

2. You want people to want to place your article on their website so make sue the article is informative and again it needs to be as original as possible. There are software applications and websites that can help check this for you.

3. Keywords are necessary so be sure to research which ones are going to be of the most value to your work.

4. The article must feature a friendly, conversational tone - just like you are talking to the reader.

5. Make sure to use every day language, industry specific language will usually confuse readers.

6. Make sure that spelling and grammar rules are followed

7. Your headline has to be catchy - it has to hook the reader right away.

8. The resource box must be expertly written. It must give the impression that the writer is a domain expert and is willing to help out with more information, and all the reader has to do is click on his link to get this help.

If you are not used to writing or are not a writer consider outsourcing your content. There are a number of freelance websites that take work on a per project basis and will provide professional, original, and optimized content for you.

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