Increase Website Traffic with Article Marketing.

You can increase website traffic fairly easily by using article marketing it’s an effective method regardless of the type of website. The basic idea is to submit articles to a number of sites, often known as directories, with a link or links back to your site. Most often the link back will be in a resource box at the end of your article. So your intention should be to whet the reader’s appetite so they visit your site to read more.

Here are a few handy tips to help get your articles noticed.

Most article directories only accept articles of between 400 and 1500 words so anywhere in between is good. You really need to write four or five paragraphs with four lines per paragraph; that will cover it. Alternatively if you use a text editor like word or open office then a single full page is pretty much the same and they make it easy to do a word count so you always know where you are. A lot of people say you should always convert your articles to basic text (.txt) before you submit them; it's apparently to do with formatting issues. You can do that easily enough by just copying and pasting into notepad then saving the file to a folder called Text Articles.

OK, here's the important stuff about how to increase website traffic with article marketing.

First off, naturally, it's a good idea to know what you want to write about. Although your website content will be relevant to the niche you are in there is a slight difference between that content and what you submit to other sites. It's almost like a representation of your talents, sort of like "look this is what I can do". So when people see what you are about and feel that you can help them they click through to your site and so you increase website traffic.

Your article structure is important as well though. The title or headline of anything is always important; some people say it is the most important area of all so spend a bit of time on getting it right. There are lots of people submitting articles on all sorts of different subjects so you want people interested in your niche to read yours. Creating and structuring a good opening title will help you to achieve that. A good title should always compel the reader to carry on reading. Its worth practicing this and looking closely at how other people do it.

So the main thing to focus on is writing articles that show you are good at what you do and can provide useful information. Be aware that it's simply not enough to only focus on an increase of traffic to your website, you have to give value. People will see right through anything that isn't well written and relevant to their interests, quality is always the key. Remember your main goal is to get people to visit your website they won't do that if your articles are poor or lack good information.

The other big plus about using article directories is the extra links you can gain when other people post them on their websites that will spread your content all over the World Wide Web.

The end of every article has something known as a resource box. This is where you can write about who you are, what you do and provide a link back to your website. So if you write good articles people will naturally want to visit your site to learn more. The resource box is widely considered as the most important area of any article after the headline. So again it's probably in your best interests to practice writing them and seeing how other people do it. A good title, article and resource will almost compel people to visit your site; you get to increase website traffic. Once the visitors are at your site you can offer them more, such as a free report, free video or free software in exchange for their name and e-mail address.

This is the basic concept behind using article marketing to increase website traffic and when you get good at it you can do very well indeed.

Your Website Traffic

Image via Wikipedia

Your website traffic is the most important aspect of your website, unless it’s simply a personal site for yourself, friends and family. But most people want at least some site visitors and if you are running an online business then the more the better.

There are a number of ways to go about this. You can pay for advertising or even employ the services of a specialist company. But many of the best ways to generate your website traffic are completely free.

You do have to work at it though and it doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes some time and effort but it isn’t difficult. Once you start using a number of even the free tactics you’ll begin to see site visitors and the more you do the more visitors you will get.

So the basics to generating your website traffic for yourself all starts with on page optimisation. This is what can also be called seo or search engine optimisation. Again it’s not that difficult just a little time consuming. But as with all things the more you put in the more you get out.

The way to optimise your site pages is to look for keywords that you can rank for and get indexed high up on the search engines results pages (SERPS) preferably on the first page. Looking for keywords is as easy or as complex as you want to make it. The simplest route is to use Google’s keyword tool located here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

If you don’t have a Google account its better to sign up for one as the results you get will be more in depth.

Naturally you need to look for keywords and phrases that are related to the subject and content of your site. The best ones to look for are the high traffic ones but with lower competition. Fortunately Google makes it very easy with a handy layout that shows all of that in columns relating to every keyword displayed.

Once you’ve found some keywords to work with you need to write some content and include them. Put them once in your main title and making it heading 1 an H1 tag. Then use it again in the opening paragraph getting it as close to the beginning of the paragraph as you can.

Then you need to include it a few times within the body of your webpage. If you use it in any sub headings make them heading 2 with the H2 tag. This is all to do with optimising your pages for the search engines and will help you to generate your website traffic more easily.

It’s best to focus on one keyword per page and make sure all the keywords you use are related to the main topic of your website. It’s also a good idea to create links to other pages on your website and to other websites that are related to yours.

A lot of people like to do link swaps, so they will contact other website owners with a similar site and offer to include a link to their site if they will do the same. As long as you make sure your content is good quality you shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting a few people to swap links with you.

Monitoring Your Website Traffic

Image via WikipediaThis isn’t something you should get too hung up on. Although it is necessary to check your traffic stats from time to time it’s only really for monitoring purposes. You simply want to make sure that what you are doing is working and that you have a gradual increase of traffic to your website. As long as that is the case then you just need to keep going. If not then you need to keep going anyway and focus on link building as well as creating quality content.

You can monitor your website traffic in a number of ways. If you have a cPanel server then that will provide tools like Awstats that you can study. Awstats provides a huge amount of information from basic visitor numbers to where the visitors actually came from.

Another method is to use Google Analytics which you can find here: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Although this is a little bit more work to set up it can give you a lot of very useful information about your website traffic. Again you’ll need a Google account but its definitely worth setting one up because of all the useful tools, tips and information they provide.

Using Social Bookmarking and Social Sites.

Image by webtreats via FlickrThis is another very useful, free and easy method to build links to your site and generate interest. The more bookmarking and social sites you use the more links back to your site you’ll achieve. You do have to submit your site pages to each individual site but there are specialist services that you can use and that will submit for you for a charge.

Posting Your Content To Article Sites.

This is another popular and effective method of building backlinks and helping to generate your website traffic. There are a lot of article sites you can post to and include a link back to your site page in the resource box at the end of the article.

Always link to pages though not to the main site.

Using all or any of the methods discussed will help you to achieve your goals but you do have to work at it and keep  working. As you progress and monitor your website traffic you will notice a steady increase over time. But remember

it won’t happen over night so you need to keep going and don’t give up too easily.