Promote your website using articles
By Nowshade Kabir ©Rusbiz.com
Internet is all about information! At any given time, majority of web users surf
the Internet in search of some kind of information. That’s why it is only natural
that marketing with the help of providing sought after information to web surfers
should be a key method in your online marketing strategy. There are various ways
of exploiting this effective and low-cost method of web marketing. One of them
is to write articles related to your business field and distribute them for free!
There are numerous inherent benefits in this fairly simple and innovative way
of promoting your website and your products.
You can establish yourself as an expert in your field
People trust and tend to buy products from somebody they consider to be an
expert. Once you start writing articles and if these articles provide valuable
information, it won’t take long for you to get accepted as an authority in your
subject matter.
Augment your own knowledge
If you write articles, apart from the knowledge that you already have, you
still have to do some home works on the relevant materials – gathering and culling
information, data, surveys, etc. This process eventually improves your own grasp
of the subject as well.
Get targeted traffic to your site
As far as web marketing is concerned this is the main reason why you should
consider writing articles. Each of your articles that you allow others to republish
should carry a resource box which includes a short description of you as an
author and a link to your website. If readers like your articles, they will
visit your site to check out what else you have to offer.
Increase link popularity of your website
All your articles published in other websites with a backward link to your
website will help boosting your link popularity. Link popularity indicates the
number of web pages that link to your website. Many search engines use it as
one of the main factors in their algorithm which determines the search engine
ranking of a certain website.
If you are a novice writer and would like to pursue this unique method of promoting
your website, you don’t have to worry about where to start. There's a load of
information available on the Internet about writing. However, before even you
start writing your first article, no matter how good you are in your chosen
subject matter, you still have to do some extra research to seek out an interesting
topic, gather relevant materials on the topic, evaluate gathered information,
organize your thoughts and plan your article.
While writing an article, maximum time and effort, probably, you will spend
on preparation rather then the physical process of writing itself.
Here are five steps for novice writers to jump start their website promotion
through article writing.
Step I: Choose a topic
If you feel this method of web marketing suits you, the first step from here
is to choose topics for the articles you plan to write. While choosing topics,
if your purpose is to attract targeted traffic, make sure that you stick to
the subjects relevant to your business field.
From the broad base of your business field try narrowing down several subjects
that could be interesting to your prospective readers. Use those subjects and
related materials as your article topics.
Step II: Gather materials
Once you have a topic to write about and ideas to focus on, brainstorm surrounding
it and find several key phrases relevant to this topic. All of the information
needed for you to explore your ideas and illustrate your points you can get
from the Internet.
Here is the process of retrieving information from the Internet:
- Use Google and other search engines to find information
on the search terms you identified. One of the best
search engines for this purpose is www.vivisimo.com.
Vivisimo’s clustering and meta-search method
will help you finding many relevant information
that you might not have thought of.
- Browse through directories to find relevant websites
and get required information from there.
- Seek out specialized repositories of related
information. www.bitpipe.com
and www.knowledgestorm.com
are two wonderful resources if you are doing research
on business technology. If you are looking for articles
on a topic, try Looksmart’s www.findarticles.com
- Once you collected enough information, now is
the time for you to jot down your ideas and related
points. Note down you thoughts using some structuring
systems like mind mapping, listing, etc.
Step III: Make an outline
Spend sometime on planning your article and develop an outline of the article.
Process of making an outline of your article will help you visualize your finished
product. An outline is a visual and conceptual list of your ideas and their
place in the article. It should reflect your logical thinking process – the
way you want your readers to see it, a beginning and a culminating point.
Step IV: Write the article
Write your article addressing your readers in second person. Try starting your
article with something that will spur interest in your readers. Your article
should consist of words within the range of 600 to 900. This size for articles
became a standard for ezines and, therefore, many ezine publishers simply don’t
accept larger articles.
Step V: Edit your article
After finishing, read the article loud. Work on the sentences that don’t sound
quite right. Stack the article aside and come back to it in a day or two. Revise
it. You will find many ways to improve it this time. Your friends and co-workers
can help you too. Let them read the article and make their suggestions.
Writing articles is a skill like any other you develop by practicing. Why not
start doing it now, and at the same time get targeted traffics to your website?
