How to Write an Article to Increase Website Traffic, and Kick off a Viral Marketing Campaign

If you write an article correctly, you will be able to increase the number of visitors to your site, the number of websites linking to your site, and will be able to ignite one of the web’s most cost effective and potent viral marketing strategies currently available.

Those are some pretty good benefits of writing articles, aren’t they?

And, as always, time is of the essence – so let’s dive right in.

First of all, if you don’t feel you’re up to writing your own articles, you can hire a ghostwriter from a service provider such as elance.com. Most articles cost between $5-$10, and if you use a service like elance, you can set your own terms and budget.

Ok, so everyone who’s still reading this article wants to know how to write a great article themselves in order to claim the benefits we listed above, right?

Perfect.

Let’s look into what makes a good article.

Format

People can’t read as much or for as long on the internet as they can when they are reading regular print.

With that in mind, keep your article relatively short, between 500-700 words has been found to be the most effective.

If the article is too short, you may not cover your topic in enough depth and leave the readers a little disappointed. If the article is too long, you risk losing their attention halfway through the article, as they realize that they see the staggering pile of paragraphs left.

Be sure to break up your article to make it scannable (easy to read), varying your sentence and paragraph lengths to keep the article looking interesting. Nothing is more boring to internet users than big huge blocks of text.

Keep things on the short side, getting right to the point as quickly as you can.

Be sure to leave a blank space between each paragraph. You want your article to be as easy on the eyes as possible, and one of the ways to do that is by the amount of white space that you have.

A few other things to keep in mind that affect the readability of your article include: the font size, the font style (make sure it’s simple), the html styles used such as bolding, italics, underlining, the use of bulleted lists and so on (if html article submission is possible).

The Parts that Go Into Making a Great Article

In order to write a fantastic article, you need the following sections:

1) A Headline

A headline should grab the reader’s attention and get them interested in reading the article. You need to tell them what they’ll get out of reading your article by listing some of the benefits that will come from reading your article.

2) Introduction

An introduction needs to get the readers interested enough to read the whole article – that’s the only way that they’ll ever get to the end of your article and see the link to your website at the bottom of the page.

3) Body

This is the content of your article. Make sure you use a fairly conversational writing style, getting right to the point with clarity. Avoid the use of jargon (terms that your audience may be unfamiliar with).

Edit, edit, edit. Then use the spellchecker. Then edit some more. Webmasters are looking for professional articles to post on their website, and basic spelling mistakes don’t present a very professional image.

Don’t write an advertisement and call it an article. If your article is seen as being just an advertisement, it will probably be ignored by most webmasters. Your goal is to provide some sort of value to the reader through your article, while subtly promoting your website – which may only take the form of a link at the end of your article.

4) Closing

The closing section wraps up the entire article, summarizing what you have talked about, re-mentioning some of the benefits associated with following or reading your article, and having some sort of call to action.

Tell them to visit your website, check out product X, or something along those lines.



5) Resource Box

This is where you need to get the reader excited. Offer them something free – a free e-course, other articles, a free sample of your product – something to get them to go to your website.


Now that you know how to write an amazing article that could help kick off an incredible viral marketing, all you have to do is market the article by adding it to sites such as www.contentdesk.com or using a distribution service such as http://www.automaticarticlemarketer.com

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