As you’re getting started submitting articles, you may feel a little overwhelmed at everything there is to learn. Learning a new skill is not easy in the beginning–when we’re first starting anything new, we tend to feel a bit awkward!
This is a completely natural feeling, one that every one of us goes through. I’d like to save you some anxiety though, and help you focus on just the key ideas you need to get started.
You don’t need to undertake every article marketing strategy all at once–you’ve got to walk before you can run. Focus on the basics first, and then as you get used to submitting articles you can advance at a pace that feels comfortable to you.
If you’ll just follow these 3 simple guidelines, you’ll create results that astound you:
1) Write educational articles on the topic of your website.
An educational article is free of any sales tactics or promotional, hyped up language. Your objective in the article body is to teach your readers, rather than get them to buy your products or visit your website.
Yes, you started submitting articles with the intention of increasing sales and traffic to your website, but the article body should not be used to accomplish that goal.
That’s what your resource box is for (more on this later).
So, when you are thinking of article topics, ask yourself– “What kinds of things can I teach my readers?”
I think the easiest types of articles to write are of the ‘how to’ variety, so it helps to focus your writing efforts around teaching your readers how to do something specific associated with your niche.
By the way, ‘how to’ articles are extremely popular with readers, so you may wish to make them the bread and butter of your article marketing campaign. ‘How to’ articles aren’t the only types of articles–they’re just the easiest to write and the most popular, so why not start by writing a ‘how to’?
Remember, all of your articles should be on the same general topic as the website you’re trying to drive traffic to.
For example, if your website is about ballroom dancing, then you would submit articles about topics having to do with ballroom dancing.
2) Carefully construct your resource box.
The resource box is the author bio that sits below your article. Each time your article is republished, your resource box is also republished. It is through the resource box that you will build backlinks to your site, but the resource box is about more than just your website link.
Take your time constructing your resource box and be sure you’ve got these elements:
- Your name
- A little bio info
- A reason for the reader to click the link to your website
- Your website URL
You usually have a limited amount of space in your resource box, so it’s a good idea to use all your effort convincing the reader to go to one particular website rather than several.
3) Submit articles consistently.
You may be surprised that the #1 reason why people fail at article marketing has nothing to do with anything complicated or technical.
Most people who aren’t satisfied with their results have simply not submitted enough articles.
When you launch an article submission campaign, it will be a long term endeavor and you probably won’t start seeing major results for several months (probably 4-5 months).
The reason for this is two fold–
- Search engines re-evaluate rankings based on incoming links only every few months, so even though you’re building backlinks, you won’t see the benefits until months after your articles are submitted.
Article marketing gets its power from:
- the accumulation of an arsenal of articles circulating the internet,
- those articles continuing to build links and generate views over time, and
- a continuous and sustained link building campaign.
So, it’s unlikely that submitting a handful of articles will create any great or lasting difference in your website traffic, BUT submitting a handful of articles every month for a year (or hopefully the lifetime of your website) WILL seriously impact your website rankings and traffic.
It’s a bit like rolling a huge boulder from the top of a hill–at the beginning the thing may be hard to push and you may not think you’re making much headway, but as you get over the initial hump and get the thing moving, you start accelerating faster and faster even though the effort you’re exerting is decreasing.
0 comments