If you are trying to be a successful online entrepreneur then you have probably already tried to increase traffic and generate sales through search engine positioning and pay per click advertising. Have you also tried article marketing? Article marketing is the strategy of writing articles related to your business and publishing them on other websites and in ezines of complementary companies with a link back to your site. This form of online promotion is a very effective way to build traffic and boost sales. Below you will find the main ways that article marketing can benefit you.
1. It is your best way to get known as an
'expert' in your field.
Why should someone buy from you and not from one of the thousands of your competitors that are also online? The few lines that you write in your ?about us? section of your website may not be enough to set you apart from the others. However, if your potential customer sees your name on well-written and informative articles appearing on several websites around the Internet, then she will regard you as an expert in your field. The more you publish, the greater your recognition will be and the more your reputation will be enhanced.
2. Informative articles build trust in your ability to provide a good product or service.
If you are selling online your most important asset is to be seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy. When one of your articles is selected by another publisher and placed on a website or included in an ezine, that publisher is in effect endorsing you. This kind of endorsement will impress the readers of those articles and they will feel more confident in doing business with you, especially if your article is published in an ezine or on a website which they already respect.
3. Your articles help to
'pre-sell' your products and services
It is the quality of website traffic that counts, not necessarily the quantity. The best kind of traffic you can get is from people who have read one of your articles, and have liked what they read. These web visitors come into your website with an eagerness to know more and are much more likely to buy something from you then someone who comes onto your site ?cold? or without a full introduction to your ideas.
4. Article writing is a great way to generate content for your ezines and your own website
Although you can look at article marketing as an outreach activity designed primarily for publication elsewhere, you can also use these articles in your own newsletters and on your own website. Keeping touch with your customers and clients through a regular newsletter is an important part of doing business online. However, you need a steady flow of good material to really be successful. If your articles are good enough to be published on someone else's website, then by all means publish them first in your own newsletters and on your website.
5. Articles published on other sites help to build one-way links to your website
Link building is one of the keys to making a website successful, but, as with traffic, it is the quality of the links that matter, rather than the shear number. Each time one of your articles is placed on another website, you will get a link back to your site. These are one-way links because you did not have to trade links to get them. Usually these links come from pages with fewer outbound links than the standard link pages where your link is usually placed when making a reciprocal arrangement. One-way links coming from pages with few outbound links help to build Page Rank more effectively than reciprocal links.
6. You can generate a lot of money from articles that are published elsewhere
I am conducting an online business from one of the most unlikely locations on the Earth, Albania. Despite this handicap, I have had people call me up on the phone and go on to order thousands of dollars worth of services. All of this has been the result of articles about website promotion and search engine optimization which I have written and published over the past few years. If I can do it from Albania, think of what you can do from your place.
Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor, and social worker. He has been
working on the Internet since 1995 and is the proprietor of A1-Optimization,
http://www.a1-optimization.com, a firm providing search engine optimization,
copywriting, reciprocal linking, and other web promotion services. His site features an article directory with hundreds of articles that you can use on your website.
