A free way to drive traffic for you writers out there is with articles. Called article marketing, Ezine Articles is the giant in this arena. Setting up an account with them is free, and you can then post up to 10 articles on your niche.

After your first ten your account is reviewed and if you are posting high quality, valuable material, you will be able to submit 25 more. Having a number of articles on Ezine Articles with links in your signature file pointing back to your website (called backlinks) does two things:

1. Drives immediate traffic to your pages when readers click your links.
2. Builds up your credibility with the search engines as a valuable resource for information on your niche. Why? The backlink from a high PR (page rank) website.

They have excellent tutorials and training materials there, so if you writing skills are a little rusty you can easily get back up to speed.  There are also some limits on how many links you can have in the body of your article, along with where they can point, so be sure to read their terms of use carefully before submitting your work.

It takes about a week for your article to get reviewed and go live, and mistakes will mean an even longer wait to have your articles working for you.

Your Signature File Drives the Traffic

Most people don’t know the importance of the article signature file. It is actually ideal for driving targeted traffic back to your website. What you usually see there is a little 3 or 4 line bio about the author. That’s OK, but you can make much better use of that prime online real estate.

Write a punchy teaser that links to your website or lead capture page. Something that tells them why they should go there, and go there NOW! Use the primary benefit you have to offer your market.

Here is an example. It is the signature file for an article I wrote last year on Forex trading:

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Dramatically increase your chance of successful forex trading by visiting the http://www.Forex-Currency-Trading-Online.com blog. Forex freebies await, including a 7-Day Forex Trading Course, and free ebook “Quick and Easy Forex Trading” for newsletter subscribers, market updates, tips, and techniques to make you a better forex trader, today.

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You get the idea. Why this works is because the reader isn’t there to learn about you. He or she has a need and if you have a product or service that can fill it, use that space to let them know. They can learn about your credentials later; after they opt-in to your list or buy your product.

There are other online article directories you can post to as well. Make sure you are always submitting unique material to each directory, however. Otherwise the search engines will see it as duplicate content and will penalize your site ranking. By this I mean your site might get blacklisted or just dropped so far down in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) that it may as well not exist.

Writing Articles Is Not My Bag, Baby

If you are not good at writing yourself, you can pay someone else to do it. There are websites where freelancer writers congregate, waiting to help you with your article marketing.

ELance.com is one that has been around long enough to trust. They have an easy to use interface. Basically you set-up a free account and post your “help wanted” ad. You will receive responses from Elancers who will bid on your project. You select who you want to work with and work out the details via email and an interface on their website.

Buying high quality, custom written articles can get very expensive though, so you might want to try your hand at it first. Or if you have someone who already works for you and can write, assign the work to them.

Just make sure that you are only publishing original, top quality articles to your site. Proof read them yourself, and have at least one other person proof them, too, before you publish them. Bad grammar, misspellings and other typos detract from your message because they distract the reader.

Using articles is a powerful way to drive more traffic to your website, but it takes time to see the benefits. Be patient and consistent and you will see results.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 12:15 pm and is filed under More Web Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.