Article marketing is possibly my favorite traffic producer of all time. Sure, I do SEO and PPC and the like, but well-written articles take care of a number of problems all at once. (I stress the well-written part, because a horrible article does exactly the opposite of what I’m about to talk about)

First, they establish you as an expert. How many times have you read an article in a newspaper or magazine and thought, “Wow, that person knows their stuff!” Ok, maybe you didn’t actually think that, but do you trust Dear Abby’s advice? Or Ann Landers? Or your local newspaper’s advice column writer? Millions of people do, and that’s the power of having an article in a trusted information resource.

Second, they take care of SEO by giving you a backlink from every site that publishes your article. That can add up fast, and hundreds of thousands of backlinks from different sites all over the ‘net will skyrocket your SERPs. When I launched my first site (coincidently, an article directory) I sent out 5 articles with links to it, and within 1 month, I had 400 unique visitors per day coming to read and submit. Granted, I did other things too, but I attribute my site’s success directly to the fact that I had all of those backlinks, and people could find me in the search engines.

Third, you can pre-sell a reader if you can hide the pitch in the facts of the article. Now, don’t get me wrong, an article should NEVER be a pitch for a site or product, or it won’t get published anywhere. But if you can interlace a product reference (without any hype) into the article, do it. Treat it like you’re telling them about a great product you use, and they’ll check it out. You’ll want to use some of the affiliate link hiding ideas above (I find the new domain method very effective for articles) so you’re not listing your affiliate link in the article. Including a bare affiliate link or a tinyurl is a surefire way to get publishers to pass on your article, and to get readers to instantly stop reading.

Fourth, your resource box (or about the author) can bring you substantial traffic. If they’ve read the entire article, chances are, they want to learn more from you. The resource box is where you can tell them what to do next. I’ll go over how to create an effective resource box shortly.

Let me take a little time to give you some tips for your article writing. I’m going to go over the Headline, Byline, Summary, Body, and the Resource Box.

Headline/Title (This just in…)

The headline is arguably the most important part of the article. If the reader isn’t interested after reading the headline, they won’t read the rest. It should be something catchy. My first article was entitled “Branded Email: Email Branding is the Next Generation of Email” and after posting that to a site or two, I shortened it to “Branded Email: The Next Generation of Email.” By now, I’m sure you realize that my first experience at article writing didn’t go so well. My title was not catchy, (in fact, it sucked) and nobody came.

Headline is catchy? “How to” headlines are good. “10 Tips” (or 5 tips, or 47 tips) are often read. Case studies are great. Alliteration (putting words that begin with similar sounds together in a row – Gary Guesses Google’s Gauge – Wow, that was bad, but you get the point) grabs a reader’s attention. Using common phrases and clichés is quite effective, putting a funny spin or changing those same phrases and clichés works well too. Questions get readers. Pique the reader’s curiosity, and they’ll read.

Depending on your audience, you can use “shocking” words and phrases – mild swear words and words that the industry deems “taboo” work well to get readers. “Shocking” headlines create emotion, and emotion gets a visitor to read the article. I wrote a 2 part series of articles entitled “Writing articles, but still not getting traffic? That’s because your articles suck – but I can help!” and they went over very well. Just make sure that if you decide to go with a “shocking” headline, you also propose a solution. “- but I can help!” takes the offence and changes it to “Wow, he’s right, I’ll read the article and find out how he can help me!” Some readers wouldn’t keep reading if I just made the headline “Your articles suck” – that’s just plain mean. For example: If I was writing an article about plastic surgery, I would probably make the headline “Are you ugly? I can fix that.” In fact, if I saw that headline, I’d probably read it for the entertainment factor alone.

Byline (By: ME!)

Bylines are simple – just type your name in the box. Don’t use your business name – businesses don’t write articles! If you’re writing for your business, include your business name with a copyright at the bottom of the body of the article.

What Do You Do After You Have Written An Article?

Now you need to submit your articles to article directories. Here are a few great places to start:

Content-Articles.com

Ezine Articles

Go Articles

You can also find roughly 100 directories at Arcana Web. They’re all kept up to date, and the PR of the directory is listed along with the submission links. However, if you’re submitting to directories, don’t pay all that much attention to the PR, because you never know where a publisher will go to find your content. You’ll want to submit to as many places as possible. But even if you assume it will take 2 minutes (that’s being very generous) per submission, that’s still over 3 hours of work you’re doing to submit your article to only 100 sites.

One quick thing before I move on to Forums – Never, and I mean NEVER submit an article to article directories and newsletters that someone else has written, unless you have sole rights to submit them. The article directories hate getting duplicate articles, and so do publishers – they read these things all day, and they’ve probably already seen that article you got from the affiliate program you just joined. Publishers want original content, not 50 people trying to submit the same thing in order to get easy links. You’ll get a much better response that way.