Article marketing: How to write

Traffic
September 22, 2009

A Killer Headline

Remember when you visited article directories in order to get ideas for your blog posts? In most article directory listings, all you can see is a title and a brief description of the article before clicking through. This means that your title becomes an important determining factor in whether or not your article gets seen within the directories.

Effective article titles

Why is this so important? Articles exist in directories so that website owners, e-mail newsletter publishers and bloggers can re-publish the content. They can take your article and put in on their site or in their newsletter, as long as they include your bio box. We’ll get to the bio box in just a moment but for now let’s look at creating effective article titles.

A good article title increases the amount of clicks that you get within the article directory and it also helps your article show up in the search engine rankings. The key to creating a great article title is to use the keyword at the start of the title. For example:

Keyword – dog training tips
Title – Dog Training Tips: 5 Keys to a Better Behaved Dog
Keyword – baby colic treatment
Title – Baby Colic Treatment: How to Use Water to Soothe Your Infant
Keyword – small business tax advice
Title – Small Business Tax Advice: The Number One Key to Simple Bookkeeping

Looking at these examples, it’s easy to see the pattern develop. Use the keyword as the start of your title and then explain the rest of your title. Make sure that you emphasize that the information is vital for the reader to find out to encourage them to click through and read.

A Knowledge of Keywords

Keywords are important, as you learned in the first section of this guide. You’ll be armed with the keywords that you discovered in the first section. Now you just need to use them in your article submission process. When you submit your articles to directories, you’ll have the opportunity to add keywords to the listing in order to get more traffic to your article.

Max four keyword phrases

In addition to the main keyword that you’ll be using to create the title, you should also choose two to three related keywords for a max total of four keyword phrases. By adding these to your listing, you’ll help tag your article just like you did with your blog posts on your affiliate blog. This will increase your chances of being found in the article directory listings and in search engine listings.

An Effective Bio Box

Your bio box is what makes your article a traffic powerhouse. You can’t have any backlinks within the body of the article, but you can have one within your bio box. Most people make the mistake of using their bio box as an actual biography box.

Use the bio box wisely

The article readers aren’t interested in your biographical information, and it won’t help you get clicks back to your site. You need to use the bio box to encourage people to visit your blog. You can use the following bio box as a template to help you build backlinks and get more traffic.

“Mary Smith is a home business expert and is dedicated to helping other women learn about home business opportunities for moms. Increase your monthly income and learn more about home business opportunities for moms by visiting http://www.yoururl.com.”

In this case, the keyword was “home business opportunities for moms.” Take notice that the keyword appears twice throughout the bio box. There is also an incentive to click through to the website. You can also note in your bio box that you will also be offering a free report or course of some kind, depending on what your e-mail marketing list opt in is.