How To Write Articles That Will Drive Traffic Back To Your Website

Copyright (c) 2008 Steve Shaw

When people learn about the powerful web-wide exposure that article marketing can bring for a website, they sometimes mistakenly assume that they need to write the article as a sales pitch to convince readers to go to their website.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

The way article marketing works is that your articles need to be educational, rather than sales oriented.

The idea is to teach your reader's how to do something that will benefit them, rather than to tell them why they should do something to benefit you.

Keep in mind that when you submit articles, you need to meet the needs of the publisher (who is looking for educational articles that will serve his target readers), and also the needs of your target market (who is looking for helpful information).

Notice that neither of these two parties is looking for a sales letter about your website! (The appropriate place to talk about your website is in the author resource box that sits below your articles.)

If you can't write about your own business, products or website, what are you supposed to write about?

Whenever you write an article for article marketing you want to:

a) Convey that you are an authority on your topic.

b) Convey that you're unbiased, that you simply want to provide a useful article.

c) Always write about the topic of your website. Notice I said "on the topic of your website" and not about your website. Does your website sell gardening tools? Well, then all of your articles would be about gardening.

d) Give the reader the information they need and also make them more interested in your topic (by heightening the reader's interest in your topic you make it more likely that they will click through to your website when they read your resource box).

How do you accomplish all of these objectives?

The trick is to take off your sales person hat and put on your teacher hat. Being a teacher is a much more subtle approach than being a sales person, and with article marketing subtlety is key!

A good teacher creates a hunger in a student's heart for a topic, and with a little creativity you can accomplish the same effect with your articles.

Let's go back to the example of the person whose website sells gardening tools. She can't write about her products she's selling on her website--that would make her article self-serving and a turn-off to publishers and readers.

So what should she write about? Here are some ideas for article topics:

"How To Plant A Winter Garden"

"5 Guaranteed Ways to Produce a Bumper Crop of Veggies!"

"The Top 3 Health Benefits of Eating Vegetables You Grow In Your Backyard"

"The Organic Advantage: Growing the Purest Food Possible"

You get the idea--all of these articles would be of interest to this website owner's target market, make her readers in the mood to start gardening (and then they will need gardening tools!), and will also be welcomed by publishers looking for educational articles.

It's a win-win-win situation!

True, it does take more creativity to craft an article that is educational rather than sales oriented, but trust me--you'll reap the rewards of your extra effort, because well-written educational articles help you accomplish all the goals you were hoping to meet when you started article marketing in the first place:

1) You will build more links to your website, because your articles will be more attractive to publishers. An increase in links can lead to higher search engine ranking for your keywords.

2) You will bring more exposure to your website, which in turn will bring more targeted traffic. Each time your article is picked up for publication, your author resource box is included with a link back to your website. When readers find your article useful, they will natually read your resource box and will be more likely to click through to your website (which brings you targeted traffic).

3) You will establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Being regarded as an expert builds customer confidence and increases the odds that your website will be chosen when a customer decides to make a purchase.

This is perhaps a more subtle, more gentle approach than you might have expected with article marketing, but this is the approach that WORKS!

The payoff from all your hard work comes when a potential customer reads your article and says,

"Now that article was helpful to me! Let me see if she has any more useful info back at her website..."

And that is how you drive traffic back to your website with article marketing--by being an expert in your niche and creatively crafting articles that encourage your reader's interest in your topic.