Article Writing - Increase Traffic and Drive Up Your Sales

Article writing is a great way to increase the amount of traffic to your website, more importantly increasing your exposure to the world. Writing articles is all about getting links to your website, usually done from within what a "resource box." Your resource box should contain links back to your website, after someone reads your article if they are looking for additional information on the subject they are re-directed to your website.

Resources boxes play an important role in developing back links to your website, which are very important to search engines for ranking your site against your competition. Back links are one of the key factors that search engine use to rate your website based on relevance of a specific keyword, or topic. Creating an effective resource box will drive traffic to your website each time a reader would like additional information about the topic.

Article writing by far is the fastest way to build your back links, drive traffic to your website. Traffic is ultimately, what you want right. You did not build your website just to sit there and wait for people to stumble upon it occasionally. In addition, article writing is a fast and effective way to get your website indexed with the major search engines. When articles are published to directories that already have a lot of traffic your site is "picked" up by the search engines crawlers the next time they visit their web site, this means faster indexing and inclusion in search engines

Once you write an article you have to get it published, this is very easy to do, find article directories that are high traffic and user friendly. High traffic sites are your best option, your article spread around the internet much faster, and therefore getting you traffic faster.

The more articles that you write the more traffic you drive to your website. A good number to start with is five articles, write and publish a minimum of 5 per day, or at least 150 per month. In the right directories and distribution, you can build thousands of back links a month.

Eliminate Common Problems in Writing Articles

Before writing an article, have you ever felt overwhelmed by a blank sensation, not knowing where to start?

...I'll bet you have!

This checklist should help you eliminate some common problems in writing articles:

1. Have a specific purpose in mind.

Always have a specific purpose in mind before you begin writing: you should be crystal clear about what are you hoping to accomplish by writing your article.

Is it an article clarifying an issue for your customers, to attract prospects, to improve the link popularity for your website?

2. Know your target population.

Before writing an article, conduct research on the target population. What are their experience, their interest, and their wants in the chosen topic? What pain or problem do they try to avoid?

3. Develop a detailed outline first, stressing on the benefits.

Now that you have a purpose and a target, organize your article so that scanning it quickly will show immediately to your reader how he will benefit from it and what are the most important points.

4. Stop your reader in his tracks with your title.

Your title should grab the reader's attention and 'force' him to read your first paragraph. Using your most important benefit usually does it.

5. Start your article with the most important information

Again, do not keep your most important information for the conclusion! Give it immediately and develop on it in the following paragraphs.

6. Keep jargon to a minimum.

If possible, avoid jargon as well as prejudices and insinuations. Write your article so that even a child can understand it.

7. Make your article warm and personal.

Speak direct to the reader. Use a lot of 'you'.

Reading your article, the reader should feel warmth and empathy, knowing that you have the same problems and goals than him.

8. Keep sentences short and simple.

Using short and simple sentences will allow a fluid and easy reading, preventing your reader to get bored.

9. Have someone from the target population critique your article.

Who can give you a better feedback than someone from your target population? It will help you

10. Spend more time rewriting than writing.

Besides formatting your article for easy reading and nice presentation, be sure to use tools or an external editor to carefully proofread your writing for grammatical and spelling errors.

Remember that the more writing you do, the better you will get. After sometimes, when you are in the habit of writing, article writing will not seem as difficult as now!