The keys to driving traffic to your website URL using secondary websites, and your own, happens in a 3 phase process:
- Write articles that are optimized around long-tail keywords (if you want to get traffic straight from the search engines to your articles)
- Create articles with eye-catching titles.
- Write even more engaging articles that your prospects will read thoroughly.
To further break down this process, we provide the following useful (yes, and somewhat prevalent) information to run with.
Succeeding in Article Marketing
The most important thing you need to know to succeed with article marketing is how to write your byline or author’s bio/resource box. Indeed, if your bio box isn’t compelling, no one will click through from your article to your blog. Because it’s sometimes referred to as an author’s bio box, some authors DO offer a brief autobiography. You’d be surprised how much great ‘unknown’ content exists…
But here’s the thing: Your prospects DON’T care about you, and it’s nothing personal. So if you use this space to talk about you, then you’ve wasted this space (and probably lost a lot of click-through traffic). Discuss pragmatic topics, and maybe lightly mention who wrote the piece.
Use your blank space to offer your readers a compelling reason for them to click your link. Use this space to talk about your prospect and how you can solve his problems. For example, “Click here to discover how to rid yourself of migraines for life!”
Boost your Click-Through Rate (CTR)
To drive traffic to your website, start off by creating reader-centric copy. To check if your bio is indeed reader-oriented, take note of whether you’re using the word “you” more (reader-oriented”) or the word “I” more (author-oriented). Perhaps loosely promise a benefit. What do your readers want? What’s the biggest benefit you can offer in this bio box?
Next, make sure you’re arousing curiosity in what you’re writing about. An alternative way to increase clicks is to mention the benefit they’ll receive, but arouse curiosity about how they’ll receive this benefit. For example, “Find out which simple herb will make you migraine-free for life!” (Tells the benefit – being free of migraine headaches – while arousing curiosity about which herb delivers this benefit).
Giveaways
Offering something free, like eBooks or free membership trials, has historically worked wonders. The word “free” is a trigger that can catch attention and get clicks. Tell people what benefit you’re offering… and then let them know they can have this solution for free when they click through to your site. (For example, “free report shows you how to…”). Offer the second part of the article they’re reading, and they’ll bite all day. Finally, another sneaky trick you can use to get clicks is by making a two-part article. Write the first one, but leave a “cliffhanger.” Then tell people they can get the second part of the article when they click through to your site, instantly creating that viral appeal.
In Closing: Testing, and More Testing
Finally, here’s one last bit of advice: Test and tweak! Specifically, you should test your bio box to see which version gets you the greatest click-through rates, and highest conversion rates. And, of course, you can and should also test different guest blogs, article titles and so on.
Submitting similar niche articles to all the top guest blogs or blogospheres such as Technorati, Business2Community, ReadWrite and many others, will provide an avenue for steady flows of traffic to your website URL that can last for years. Article marketing may have lost some of its popularity in the last year or two, but it definitely still works and should not be discounted.
