Author: Steven Aitchison
The owner of this blog. Proud father, doting husband, blogger, hire me as freelance writer, and addiction worker
In this series I will look at 5 ways to get more traffic to your sites. The first way is article marketing, now before you dismiss this have a read first, you might be surprised.
1. Article marketing
if you have a blog already you will be used to writing articles. However I am talking about writing articles for syndication which means other people can use your articles. Without doubt the best place to submit articles to is a site called ezinearticles.com (EZA for short) In the early days of this blog I used to submit my articles to EZA and here are some of my stats:
You can see the number of views I got from this and the number of clicks. These were articles I had already written for the blog so it didn’t take much time to put them on EZA and drive more traffic. You will also notice the number of clicks I got through to the site, not great but it was free traffic. The column headed EzinePublisher means other people who used my articles to put on their site. What this means is that people who used the article had to give my name and use my resource box, more about this later, which drove even more traffic to my blog. This was back in 2006 when I was first starting and didn’t really have a clue about optimisation of article marketing.
Compare the above stats with some recent article stats I have written:
You’ll notice the difference in the number of clickthroughs with the latest set of articles. With EZA you can calculate the click through rate (CTR) with the following fomula:
ClickThroughs
Number of Views X 100
For example the CTR for ‘How to reach meditative states within 8 minutes’ =
138
451 X 100 = 30.59%
This means that 30.59% of people who read the article clicked the link in the resource box to find out more information.
In the first set of stats I was getting about about a 2% CTR
In the second set of articles I am getting between 10 and 40% CTR which is a huge difference. This is because I have optimised the articles as I have learned more about EZA.
5 Tips for optimising your articles for Ezine Articles:
Article length
Your article need not be long pieces of work. In EZA you can write a minimum of 300 words for an article which can be done in no time once you are practiced. I have seen me writing 4 articles in the space of an hour after I have done about 20 minutes research on a topic. I generally write between 500 – 800 word articles which is my preference. I like to give a lot of information in articles.
The heading
The heading is what draws people in. For every single heading I write I do 5 minutes research using wordtracker the free keyword research tool over at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ and google search.
First I type in the basic phrase which my article is about. So using the example above I would type in ‘meditation’ – I can see from wordtracker that ‘meditation’ gets searched around 1500 times per day and in Google It has around 36,000,000 pages with the search term ‘meditation’, which is far too much to get a high ranking on google and is too generic for EZA. So I would narrow it down and use words that are similar. Eventually I came up with ‘meditative’ which has around 10 searches per day according to wordtracker, and according to google has around 3,600,000 pages with the key word ‘meditative’ which is okay for a long tail keyword.
Now I have found the main keyword I need to find a hook for the EZA readers and build my heading around the main keyword. After thinking about it for a few minutes I come up with a few. Consider the follwing two headings:
Reaching a meditative state
How to reach a deep meditative state within 8 minutes
It’s pretty obvious which one most people would click on. The second heading has some key psychological hooks in it e.g. ‘How to’ ‘Deep’& ‘Within 8 minutes’ these are all little hooks that grab the readers attention.
You might think it’s hard work for a heading but it is well worth it and when you get used to writing articles you can do all this within a few minutes.
Keyword density
A lot of marketers pay a lot of attention to keyword density which is the number of times a keyword or key phrase is placed in an article. Some say it’s good to have around 2% keyword density others say around 5%. I have to say I don’t give this much credence but as a general rule I will use the keywords or phrases at the beginning, middle, end and sometimes in the resource box. Keyword density is purely for Google as google will give it more attention if it thinks it is a relevant piece of work for a choosen keyword.
However, EZA will not accept keyword stuffing so I would use the keywords and phrases conservatively and make sure they are at the beginning, middle and end. Occassionally you can also have them in bold such as in headings or sub headings.
Break it up
If your article is going to be over 400 words consider using sub headings as a way to break the article up.
I know if I see a big block of text without any subheadings or bullet points I am put off straight away, the author would have to be one of the best for it to sway me to read.
Using subheadings and bullet points is easier on the eye and can allow your reader to scan the article first before diving head first into reading it. Make sure you pay a much attention to your subheadings as you do your main headings.
You can also break a long article up into parts which will leave readers wanting more of the information you write and they might subscribe to your articles just to get the information they want.
The resource box
This is a biggie. Your reseource box allows you to put links in them going to a website, blog or anywhere of your choice. But, it has to be done in a certain way.
Once the reader has read your article you want to entice them into clicking the link to your site. This can be done in a number of ways, here are two:
- Your article: Don’t give the reader everything and leave them wanting more that way they aremore likely to click through to your site if you have given good information and they would like to know more about you.
- An offer: In your resource box have a free offer to give away to entice people to click through to your site. You can give away a free ebook, a free guide, a free white paper. I always offer a free audio sample if I am writing about binaural beats and I get a lot of people clicking through and opting into my email list.
Using keywords in your resource box
When I put my link in the resource box I would use the keyword or keyphrase your are targeting and this is how to do it:
To find out more about Binaural beats and get a FREE binaural beat download visit <a target=”_new” href=”http://www.binaural-zen.com/zen”>www.Binaural-Zen.com</a>
With the above example I am targeting the name of my product, I could have gone for the keyphrase I was using earlier which was ‘deep meditative states’, but I want a link back to my site so I went with the first option.
Testing it out
I have given you a brief but powerful introduction to article marketing and the benefits it can bring. If you fancy having a go at article marketing head on over to EZA and have a look around.
In part 2 I will be looking at social marketing to drive traffic to your sites.
If you have any questions about article marketing please feel free to leave a comment below.
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Nice article! I am looking forward to get the other 4 ways… thank you for sharing!
Marko
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com
When you submit your blog entries as is to ezines, do you get penalized by Google for duplicate content? Also, chances are ezines will have a higher page rank than your blog. Does this have an effect in the search results?
This is very interesting. I am wondering how you get the results for the e-zine articles (the pictures posted above). I am very surprised that you received so much traffic from these articles. I didn’t know that these articles were so researched.
By the way I like the topics. Sound humorous.
Wow! Thank you for a great article! I will try out some of your suggestions. And thank you, too, for your willingness to share what you’ve learned.
Best,
Jacque
http://www.101smackdowns.com
Hi Marko, thanks for your comments, much appreciated.
Hi Steve, nice to have you back again. Duplicate content is a bit of a controversial topic, some say it’s absolute tosh that you get penalised others say you will get penalised. I have never seen any problems with duplication. When sending articles to EZA which you have already written for your blog, I would only do this if you are just starting out blogging. Once you are an established blogger i would take your articles and change them by about 40%, making it a unique article in googles eyes. Hope that helps Steve.
Hi John, thanks for your comments. remember the articles from the first image are around 2 years old. If you type in ‘benefits of a cold shower’ in google you’ll see my article at the top and it has been there for two years, so I get the long tial traffic from it.
Hi Jacque, thanks for your comments, I am glad they have helped in some way.
Greetings Steve,
Very nice post on article writing as a means to drive traffic; and quite synchronistic as I was just on EzineArticles today, reading an article of great interest. I immediately thought of submitting articles. Now I will. I look forward to reading the next 4 traffic driving ideas…
(Thanx also for the list of 50 great websites you wrote back in January, I visited quite a few and rather enjoyed what I discovered.)
Valerie Love
http://www.LiveYourDestinyToday.com
What a versatile article i have come across! Thanks for introducing ezinearticles.com to us.I think its a very good way for article marketing.And soon I will be trying it out.
A good one articles. About Social Marketing, Is it legal to do this?
Hi you have very well explained every nook and corner about article writing and thanks for sharing info about ezinearticles.com.Some of my friends are into article submission ,I’ll recommend EZA to them..!thanks for sharing..!
Hi Steven,
That’s great and clear of how you did article marketing and achieve great results. I never had the chance to get my articles viewed more than 1000 times. The maximum I been is just 800. The keyword research part you mentioned is very important to use Article directories to get traffic from the search engines. Thanks for sharing that tip!
Good article to read. Thank you so much for sharing a very cool stuff.
Thank for your this useful post. The keywords tool is particularly useful.
Great info. Is it right the Google are now devaluing article links though?
I dont know how to comment about this but I think is great info. thanks.
Article marketing was the first technique I learned for generating free, qualified traffic to my websites. It still ranks very high in my traffic generation arsenal. Those are great tips. Thanks.
Nice article.
Great article, and very informative. I`ve noticed a huge change in traffic since I`ve started researching for the long tail keywords. Niche Keywords tend to convert a lot better, especially in affiliate marketing.
Great article, it still amazes me how many people look down on or undervalue the power of article marketing. Not only is it free but it can easily bring about an increase in traffic and page one search engine results.
Very useful article..!I didn’t know there are so many elements which needs to be carefully observed when writing an article..!Thanks for sharing all you know about article writing plus about EZA too!
..!
It is really a great article. It gives you a basic or more than basic knowladge about traffic. Now a days people asking about the traffic which they haven’t enough.
http://www.blueunplugged.com/c.aspx?c=53853
No….NO….NO..do NOT do article marketing! I agree with the other methods of getting traffic, but article marketing is a WASTE OF TIME. and I will tell you why:
Article marketing use to once be a good way of getting traffic to your article if you were good at SEO! That means, if you had the right type of keyword density in your article, you could get ranked very high if you submitted to a high ranking directory such as Ezine Articles.
But here is where the program comes in…..more and more people are starting to use Blackhat methods in order to get their webpage indexed and to receive traffic. This is BAD news to people like us who are trying to get traffic the ethical way.
When people spam the search engines by using “keyword stuffing”, etc and other blackhat methods, it pushes our “high ranked” article down further from the list. So now what is going to happen to your article marketing efforts? They will be useless and the only people who will be reading your articles are people sifting through the article directories trying to find a free article to plaster on their blog or personal website. So basically, you are writing for FREE!
I say to try blog commenting in order to increase your traffic along with starting a lot of blogs!
Thank you for sharing your detailed analysis. I have only recently started using ezine and have so far published 5 articles. I have not received as much response as yours but I guess in time this could improve. I have been using the same process as you i.e I have a blog and I am re-using my blog posts, which are well researched, as articles on ezine. My concerns are the same as most which is to do with Google treating it as duplicate content. As ezine is more popular I would imagine Google would treat that as the origional. To avoid this I do the following:
I first post to my blog and wait a couple of weeks atleast so Google can index it before posting to Ezine.
I try to edit the article a little atleast. If not the entire articled then I would recommend changing the title slightly and the first paragraph. This could prevent one form getting penalised. I don’t think think this cheating because you are editing your own article and not copying someone else’s.
Thank you for these great tips. Some of these things are really new to me. This is a good guide for those who are just starting in article marketing.
You stated it right and easy to understand. You really made me realized that article writing and enhancing it is profitable. Following your tips is like freeing oneself of worries.
Here I share some tips.
1) Informative Content – One of the compelling reasons for a visitor to spend more time on your site is because of the magnetic quality of the content. Providing content which cant be found anywhere else. So they have a reason to stay longer on your site.
2) Update your content – Adding content on a regular basis can keep your website fresh with good new content. Visitors don’t like to read content which is old update your articles, add more new pages will lead your visitors to stay long on the site.
3) Fast loading page – If you web pages loads faster visitors are comfortable with sticking with your site. Sites with heavy graphics and flash intros scare away the visitors and finally they stay less time on the site.
4) Don’t distract your visitors – Some website owners think adding flashy kind of stuffs to a website will attract visitors to stay for a longer period of time. If you think that is the answer Study shows that using popup and other kind of flash stuffs are not comfortable with web visitors, so stay away from that.
5) Information architecture – is the structure, organization, navigation, labeling and indexing of a website. Information architect is the backbone of any website. Information architecture is a vital component of defining the user experience which make the visitors to stay longer.
6) Engage your visitor to contribute – In today world website are interactive where a visitors can put their thoughts about your products and services like adding components on your website where you can make the visitors engage like putting comments, rating, forums where discussion can be help etc.
I really liked the blog, really good! Congratulations! I’ll leave here a link to anyone who might be interested in learning free magic (tricks), adding more to your sensational blog. Enjoy, hugs!” mágico Richard – mágico, para eventos, mágico para festas, mágico para feiras, mágico para convenções – mágico-mágicos
Do you write only articles related to the site you want to promote or does the subject of the article isn’t as much important ?
Excellent overview. Here’s a few tips on working specifically with E-zine Articles that’s come in handy for me the past few months.
I’ve flirted with article marketing before, but it pretty time consuming and only a small percentage of the articles I’ve written have sent me any traffic at all. Personally I prefer to write press releases and submit them to PR release sites like PRlog – just my preference tho – others may find it works for them!
Thanks Steve great article and useful. I am in a “competive area your ideas on titles and keywords are excellent
Thanks
Denise
I am newbie, Please tel me to submit artical in Ezine are they ask for money to add artical?
Just to let you know that your informative post gets the thumbs up from me.
Thank you for these great tips. All these things are really new to me