If you’ve read my newsletters for any length of time, by now you know one of the best super-effective, grass roots website traffic strategies…

….writing and submitting articles.

Not only can this strategy build you a loyal following, it can deliver targeted visitors, increase your search engine rankings and ultimately, boost sales.

However, it is easy to equate article writing with days of high school or university paper deadlines, and those dreadful all-nighters. Those stressful memories can make article writing seem like hard work, and keep you from taking advantage of this powerful strategy.

I want to get you over that hump today, because the fact is, writing your own articles for the web isn’t difficult at all..

It All Starts With An Idea…

One of the biggest hurdles most writers face is finding ideas to write about. Naturally, you’ll be sticking to your niche, but pinpointing a topic to write can seem challenging.

Once you have decided on a general area, a good way to narrow your article topic down is to focus on the problems that people have.

You may already know the common problems that people have in your particular field, but if not, a good source of information is to look at related online forums and note the most common questions asked. Try a search for your niche at http://groups.google.com/ and you’ll find some active discussions from real people.

Oh, and if you don’t have all the answers, a small bit of research can assist. Often the answers are readily available with a Google search which the readers could do themselves. However, you are adding value and convenience by providing a range of answers in a single article.

Short and Simple is the Rule Online…

Most people don’t like to read large documents from the Web, so your articles can be as short as 300 – 600 words long.

If you break the article into an introduction, a small number of sub-headings and a conclusion you may only have to write about 100 words in each section. You’d be surprised how fast the words add up.

The first draft should be for your eyes only. Don’t try to produce a final copy as you write. It tends to be much quicker to get your thoughts down and come back to edit later.

The final step in the writing process is to proofread your article making sure that the writing flows and would be interesting to the reader.

Ask yourself, ‘does the article provide information the potential reader is looking for?’ Also ask yourself if you can you get your message across using less words.

Finally, if possible, have someone else proofread the article, not only looking for spelling and grammatical errors, but helping you cut out the “fluff”.

Once you have your article completed, what you DO with the article is even more important. I’ll cover that next.

How to get a ton of traffic from your articles…

Perhaps the most important thing about article writing is what you do with your articles once you’ve completed them. Here are the four things you must do with each of your articles, to leverage them into traffic and income.

1. Add an ‘About the Author’ section after your article, with a link to your website.

This is where you tell readers about yourself or your site, and give them a call to action. Make them an irresistible offer they cannot refuse, such as a free product or service.
 

2. Add the article to your own website.

Each article you write should get it’s own page at your site or blog. Search engines love original content and the more you add to your site, the better your ranking will be in your niche.
 

3. Publish the article in your own newsletter and send it to your subscriber list.

If you do not have a subscriber list, you need to start growing one right away. You can do that by converting your best articles into an ebook and giving it away at your site via an opt-in list subscribe form. Here’s the tool I use to automate that process.
 

4. Submit your article to article directories and newsletter publishers in your niche.

As other websites publish your article, you receive one-way back links. That not only results in direct traffic, it improves your search engine ranking faster than you might imagine.

Note: Submitting articles can be a tedious and time-consuming process. If you want to save time, consider an article submission service.

In Closing…

After writing your first few articles you will find that it is not nearly as daunting as it first appears. You never know, you may even want to offer your services as a freelance writer on the Internet as a way to make some extra income.

But one thing’s for sure, you’ll never find a better “grass roots” strategy for marketing on the Internet. In fact, if you do it right you may see an increase of thousands of website visitors a month — not to mention a sharp increase in sales.

I can personally attest to the power of this strategy, as I used it extensively to build my list into the thousands. And you can do it too!

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