Whether you are just starting out with your online business or you are seasoned pro, writing and distributing articles is one of the most effective and low-cost ways to drive lots of targeted traffic to your site. Writing articles and submitting them to the article directories will get you free traffic when people click on the link in your resource box. It is also a great way to improve search engine rankings, since you will have plenty of incoming links to your site. Let’s take a look at how you can get started writing articles. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Write a Top Ten List

An easy way to get started with an article is to come up with a Top Ten List. Find a topic related to your business and jot down ten reasons why someone should purchase your product or offer advice on a topic that’s related to your website. Examples would be top ten ways to get your baby to sleep through the night, top ten reasons to write articles, or top ten reasons to buy car insurance. Once you have your list of ten items, write a little paragraph about each, explaining the reason in a little more detail.

Next you add an introductory paragraph that pulls the reader into your list. For example an introduction to the baby sleeping through the night article could mention how hard it is to make it through the day and how sleep deprived you are until you get your baby to sleep through the night. Then close your article either by summing up what you just told them in your top ten lists or encouraging them to act on what you just told them about.

Congratulations, you just wrote an article. Of course you can easily shorten this to a top 5 list. Just write a little more about each of your points.

Record Your Article

Some people prefer recording themselves while they are talking about a particular topic and then transcribing and editing it into an article. If you have an easier time talking about a particular topic than writing about it, this may be a great option for you. Most MP3 players now come with a record option, or you can pick up a cheap tape-recorder. Pick a topic and just start talking as if you were explaining it to a friend. Just start babbling and the ideas will start to flow. Now listen to your tape. Write down and arrange the major points you mad in order. Add an intro and a closing and you have another article.

Hire a Ghost Writer

If you are having a hard time writing articles, or just don’t have the time to do it, you can still benefit from article marketing by hiring a ghostwriter. Ghost Writers will write unique articles for you that become your intellectual property. You can post them as your own work to your site, your blog, as well as the article directories. You can find a ghost writer on sites like elance. There are also some freelance writers with their own websites out there. You can usually buy articles anywhere from $5 – $65.

Write an Outline and Have Someone Else Turn it into an Article

Another option if you don’t want to do all the writing yourself is for you to write a basic outline of the article and the point you want to bring across. Jot down any ideas you have for the article, then ask a friend or hire someone to flesh it out for you into an article. You may be more comfortable with passing these articles off as your own, since the content of the article was your original idea. Someone else just put it into an article format for you.

There is no reason for you not to get started with article marketing one way or the other. Get a few articles out there and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You’ll be so impressed by the results you can get even from a handful of article, you’ll be writing them and submitting them all the time.

A website is only as good as its content. If people don’t want to read what is on your site, then they will not use your services, either because they don’t trust you or don’t have the patience to sort through the content to find out what your service is. It is important to have well-written, direct articles on your site to keep user interest and generate revenue.

A simple way to get excellent articles is to hire a professional writer to develop them, but that can get expensive, especially if your site is just starting out. For many people, it is far more economical to write your own articles. But before you tackle this task, make sure that you’re up to it, because the quality of your articles can make or break your website or online business. Here are some tips to get you started.

FORMAT THE ARTICLES FOR THE INTERNET

Online, less is more. When you’re laying articles out on your site, try to put as much negative space in as you can. Break paragraphs up and try to keep it so the user needs to scroll as little as possible to read the entire article. Also, if you can, include pictures with the articles. The goal is to make your articles appear as short and text-light as possible, so users won’t be intimidated and not bother reading them.

KEEP THE ARTICLES SHORT AND SIMPLE

A way to make the formatting easier is to keep your articles short. Again, the object should be to require as little scrolling as possible. The Internet is called the Information Super-Highway, not the Information Back Road. People are looking for as much from articles in as small an amount of time as possible, so help them out. Keep your sentences simple and easy to understand, without any unnecessarily long or academic words. Just be careful not to fall into the trap of writing like a child. You have to walk a fine line when writing for the Internet.

BREAK YOUR ARTICLES INTO SECTIONS

Try to organize your articles so that the paragraphs can be broken up very easily into sections under descriptive headings. This will make the reading experience much smoother and faster for the user by allowing them to pick and choose what they want to read, as well as helping them find a specific piece of information when they come back to your inspirational and enlightening articles. Do your best to make these headings catchy and fun, not boring chapter headings. They should draw the readers into the articles, not keep them away in fear of boredom.

USE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION IN YOUR ARTICLES

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a mandatory skill when writing any articles for the Internet. Basically, SEO is using the same keywords over and over again in articles so that they are picked up by search engines, giving your website a higher search engine ranking. Search engines dominate the Internet, and you won’t bring much traffic to your site if you don’t use SEO. There are a number of articles and sites online that can help you write with effective search engine optimization technique. One thing to be careful of is not to use to many keywords in any of your articles. 2.5-4% is usually a good ratio. Any more and the reader will get turned off by the repetition, which defeats the purpose of SEO.

DRAFT, DRAFT, DRAFT YOUR ARTICLES

Never accept a first draft. No matter who you are, it won’t be up to your potential. After you write an article, put it aside for a day and don’t think about it. Then come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. You’d be amazed at what you’ll pick up, both grammatically and content-wise. Ideally, it won’t be uncommon for you to write three or four different drafts of an article before you find the one that you really like. Never be content with your first attempt.

Anyone can write effective articles for their site without hiring a costly professional writer. All it takes is practice and research. Read everything you can online to see what the writing style is. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so find a writer or group of writers online whose work you admire and copy their basic techniques. Eventually, you’ll find your own rhythm for your articles. Having your voice on your site will add a personalized touch to your site that users will appreciate, because no one knows how to say what you mean better than you. The key is to just keep writing.

Writing articles is probably the best way of promoting your website these days. It gives you the chance to seriously increase the amount of backward links your website has, links which are also on a one way basis and helps you to spread your message and website across the net.

In this article I describe how to write these articles to make the biggest impression and to get the maximum impact.

My name is Stephen Hill and I write articles for my own websites and am also asked to write articles for other people. These are the areas I think are most important when writing articles:

Article length

Your article should not be too long, the reader should be able to read your article in between three and five minutes.

Keep it simple

Not everyone who reads articles on the internet are brain surgeons. Keep it simple by using easy to understand text.

Short paragraphs

Keep each paragraph fairly short, on average about three to five lines.

Make it interesting to read

When writing, try to write from the heart with a passion. Keep the reader interested and make it fun.

Give the reader a reason to read the article

The article should have lots of free advice and information which is likely to be of use to the reader.

If you have a website or plan to have one and you don’t know how to write articles, you need to start learning how to write articles, download articles from other authors (Have in mind that if you download articles from other authors you need to follow some rules. One of them is that you can’t change anything on the article and that you need to have the author name on the article) or the other choice that you have is that you need to pay someone to write articles for your website.

If you want inbound links to your site one way to do this without paying is writing articles and post them in different sites that allow you to submit articles. Make sure you submit your article on the right category and also make sure you write the articles according to their terms. If you don’t follow the terms then you won’t have your article publish.

One advantage that you can get with writing articles is that if your article get submitted that is an automatically inbound link to your site without having to add a link on your site to them. Also a lot of people will read your article and some of them will download your article for content on their site. Think about this for one second “This means for every person that download your article and add the article for content to their site you’ll get an inbound links to your site”. Don’t you think this is a good start?

So if you are not that good with writing articles you have couple options, link popularity, Link Exchange or Inbound Links. I think if you want to have a good website you need to combine all of them together but as a webmaster you always have your choices. I hope this article helps you to understand more about How writing articles will benefit to your website.

Owning, running and maintaining an internet based business or a site needs articles. Plain and simple, every who has a site knows this. Even those who don’t have sites but are frequent internet users knows this as well. Articles quench the thirst for information and knowledge of the people. Plus, the articles provides many other benefits for the site.

The benefits that articles provide are putting a site high in the ranking in search results of keywords and keyword phrases that pertains or are relevant to his or her site. They also provide attraction to website visitors when they are appreciated and is linked to your site from another site or newsletter. Articles provide for the increase of the confidence and trust levels of customers to your site and company.

Many articles are also beneficial to both company and its traffic. When the readers like the articles, they would tell more of their friends, family and peers and recommend your site to them, providing for a larger volume of traffic. You get bigger sales if your traffic trusts and believes in you. Your product or services would be much easier to sell when they know you know what you are doing and talking about.

So ok, we have established that articles are very important to a site and to business. Articles are crucial and to keep ahead in the game, a site must have an article, it is imperative. There is one dilemma though, not many people like writing articles.

Many website owners would rather spend their time on something else, and unless you’re a big time company, you don’t have the necessary resources to use on a pool of article writers. Plagiarism or copying of other articles is frowned upon and could easily get you into trouble, worst case scenario; a hefty fine and jail time.

So what are the other options?

Well, for starters if you hate writing articles and you can’t afford to hire people to write for you then don’t. Get free articles. The first place to look at for free articles is the public domain.  Here you won’t have problems with copyright infringement and the following penalties and fines if you get caught for plagiarism.

Public domain articles are articles freely given to the public for public use. You can do whatever you want with it. You can place it on your site, name it as yours, put it in a newsletter its you decision. Always remember though that you will have to choose articles that is very relevant to your site.

The downside to public domain articles is that since it is free for everybody, many of your competitors may have access to them as well. Since every site needs to be original and unique even though you have the same niche, this could be a predicament. You may also have to edit them a bit to place more keywords and keyword phrases to make them better.

Another way to get free articles is to allow other sites which has the same subject or topic as yours to submit articles to your site. This would be only to augment your existing content or else all your articles would be leading to other sites since these articles would have resource boxes with them that could link or direct the readers to their site. That’s why it is important to have your own articles; you cold use them to link your site to other sites as well.

But, to truly feel the impact of what a good article to you, go for original ones. There are many article writers who do part time and freelance article writing jobs that charges only minimal fees. You can get good articles that have all the keywords and keyword phrases you need and people are looking for.

The investment you made for these articles would be worthwhile because you could use them for all the benefits you could offer. You hold copyrights to them and you will be able to use them anyway you want. As your articles help you in building your business and your site, you will have more articles to write and maybe then you wont be having second thoughts about articles.

It is well-known among internet marketers that writing and distributing articles is one of the best and least expensive ways to promote products and services to a very wide audience. If you are involved in trade show or event marketing, you can use this technique to very effectively support your event marketing efforts.

**Supporting your trade show marketing with articles**

Let’s say you are a wedding photographer who shoots weddings within a radius of about 150 miles of your office or home. You are selective about which weddings you will shoot because, quite frankly, some pay better than others. So you are interested in reinforcing your carefully developed image. Your image is of a photographer who does work that is more creative and of higher quality than what you get from the average wedding photographer.

One of the successful methods you use to promote your services is to enter two or three specialty wedding trade shows held every year in different cities within your target area. Because these shows are geared specifically towards couples who want “something special” (that is, they are prepared to spend more money), they help you reach the “better than average” clientele you are after.

**A perfect opportunity to reinforce your special image**

This is a perfect scenario for reinforcing your image by writing and publishing articles about wedding photography. Of course you have to be careful that your articles don’t sound blatantly self-promoting. Most article marketers suggest your articles contain interesting, general information that can stand apart from the fact that you just happen to be providing the services you are writing about.

For instance, you might write an article called “Do Something Different with Your Wedding Photos”, where you describe some different techniques and locations that might be used. Or “Wedding Photography Over the Last 50 Years”, or “Should Your Photographer Choose Your Wedding Outfits?”, or “5 Secret Locations to Shoot Your Wedding Photos”, or “Perils of a Wedding Photographer”.

There is really no limit to the number of original and interesting stories you could can come up with if you just use your imagination.

A good article marketing campaign will consist of at least three or four articles written and distributed just before the peak periods in your marketing cycle. If you are trying to reinforce your trade show marketing, make sure you prepare your articles well before the trade shows you are entering.

**How to distribute your articles**

Your objective is to use these articles to create an identity for yourself at the same time as getting yourself lots of free publicity. The more places you distribute your articles, the more prospective customers you will reach, so don’t be timid about getting your articles out there.

The obvious place to start is by posting them on your own website. Create an article section and mix in articles from other (non-competing) writers. This will make your website a more valuable resource for your prospective customers, and it will enhance your image in their eyes.

Second, consider distributing your article to the local print media. If it is interesting enough — and not just a self-promotion — some of them will very likely publish it. The important thing is to find an interesting angle. Think in terms of their readers and write for them. Some media will even have special sections — weddings, home renovations, automobiles, outdoor, sports — that you can contribute to.

Third, if you are entering trade shows, send your material to the trade show organizers. They may publish a show program and may be looking for interesting material that helps make their program appear more substantial.

**Distribution on the internet**

If you are catering to local customers you may think the internet is overkill. But you would be wrong. If you are trying to reach prospects in, say, the Lexington area, make sure you write your article so the search engines know your service focuses on the Lexington area. They will do a great job getting you exposure for searches like “wedding photography Lexington”, “Lexington auto detailing”, or “kitchen renovators in Lexington”.

Distribute your articles to as many key article websites on the internet as you can find. This will do three things for you. First, a lot of people will read your articles on these sites. Second, other sites interested in your subject matter will republish your article, exposing it to an even wider audience. And third, the major search engines will analyse and index your article and it will start appearing in searches.

**Using a professional article writing service**

You may not feel comfortable writing your own articles, and you may think it is much too time consuming to do your own distribution. That’s when you should look for a reliable service to do both of these things for you. You might be surprised to find out how many writers and promoters there are out there ready to go to work for you.

Look for a service that has a solid track record. They should be able to show you writing examples, and they should be able to give you a very good idea where they intend to distribute your articles. As with most other specialized services you will probably find it is a lot more efficient to let a professional do it for you than to try to do it yourself.

In this day and age of online marketing, content has been heralded as king, and for good reasons. People flock to sites not because of the flashy graphics nor the astounding features nor the witty domain name of the said pages, but because of the information contained therein that would enlighten them with their queries of the moment.

Content is even more potent in winning visitors than, say, search engine placements. You may derive a tremendous amount of traffic from the search engines, but if your content is junk, your visitors will never come back. But with good content, alas, you’ll have for yourself recurring visitors who will be eager to read your latest update.

You are most probably aware about the importance of traffic. Relying on unique visitors alone won’t give you the traffic that can be considered as sustainable. You must find a way that would encourage previous visitors to return to your site as well. Good content does this with relative ease. It goes without saying then that your website should have rich, premium, informative content. Content is indeed king, and your web pages serves as the throne. For the success of your business, your website should be constructed as such.

Here are some simple steps that would help you build a content site, and fast:

· Develop the layout that is simple and pleasant to the eyes. By keeping away from flashy ornaments, you’ll be able to manipulate the focus of your visitors to the content you want to share. Let your content carry your web pages and let the words speak for themselves. · You cannot rely on words alone, no matter how witty and cleverly used they are. There should be substance behind them as ultimately, the worth of your words is what would impress upon your visitors the true value of your website as a quality resource hub. So do your research. Make sure you know the subject matter by heart before writing your content. If you have questions about the same, do not try to conceal it them with silence. Seek out the answers and leave no bases uncovered. Make your content as comprehensive as possible, and your visitors won’t have to look elsewhere to find the answers they are seeking.

· Your content should be presented credibly. Employing good writing skills
would be instrumental to achieve this. Pay attention to the intricacies of writing for the web. Write well, but in a simple manner. Avoid using jargons and flowery words. Keep your paragraphs short so that you could make good use of negative space, that blank area between clusters of words, which would allow your readers’ eyes to rest. Use bullets and numberings as much as possible. Online users are not really known for their patience, and this is something you have to work on.

· When writing your content, make sure that the first part of your piece is capable of grabbing your visitors’ interest so that they would be motivated to read on. In these times of convenient surfing, bear in mind that your readers can always go to another site if they don’t find your content engaging. The challenge lies in capturing their interests and giving them what they want. This would compel them to read on and stay.

· Always update your website with new content. Not only will the search engines love this, resulting in a higher page rank for your site, your visitors will likewise be encouraged to return to your site come for the new information you would share.

· Consider using blogs instead of traditional HTML designs. Blogs are very easy to set up and update. Once you have typed your entries, all you have to do is to click on a button to publish them. A lot of Internet marketers actually use blogs in creating several mini-sites for their AdSense campaign. Blogs allow them to set up multiple pages in one day. And with the way blogs are favorably getting indexed at the forefront of every search engine result, their value has fantastically increased in recent months!

Content is king, but you wield control. Furnish the king with royal garments and surely, your online kingdom would reap the rewards at a faster rate.

A Cardiff councillor has found himself in a bit of hot water because he made a tweet as he passed a Scientology Org.