Did you know the reason most people go online is not to buy anything, but rather to get free information? It's true. So how can you use this information to your advantage?
Provide that information in the form of free articles. Why free articles?
Because writing articles gives you a dependable method of generating free traffic to your website whenever you want it. Trust me on this. I do it every single day.
Want more free traffic? Just write and distribute more articles. It's as simple as that. And generally speaking, more traffic equals more sales.
Writing articles is still one of the quickest and easiest ways of bringing free, targeted traffic to your website. Writing articles will bring you free traffic from three reliable sources:
1. Ezines - Ezine publishers are always on the lookout for fresh content. They desperately want and need free articles. If you write articles and allow them to be freely published, your articles become viral, meaning your articles can actually spread like a virus and have the potential to be viewed by thousands of Internet users.
Also, when your article is published, it is then archived and can remain on the publishers website for years - making your article available to search engines for years as well.
2. Websites - More and more webmasters are building content-rich websites. They've all heard the expression, "Content is King." Believe me. Many webmasters are heeding those words. As a result, they also need your articles.
3. Search Engines - When your article gets published, the URL in your resource box is a link back to your website. Inbound links increase your link popularity, resulting in higher search engine rankings for your website.
Here's how to get the optimum amount of free traffic from your articles:
Use a compelling headline. Write your headline for your article the same as if you were writing a headline for an ad or sales letter. The same principles apply. Answer this question in your headline "What's in it for me?"
That's all your readers really care about. What's in it for them? Answer this question in your headline, and your article will get read.
I should also mention, Publishers are also attracted to compelling headlines. So the more compelling your headline is, the greater chance you have of getting your article published.
You should also write about popular topics. For example, this article is about free traffic. Let's face it, everybody wants free traffic. Since this is a popular topic, this article has a better than average chance of not only getting read by many people, but getting published as well.
How can you find out what topics are popular? Here are a few of the resources I use:
Ask IQ:
http://about.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml
Dogpile SearchSpy:
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/
Google Trends:
http://google.com/trends
Google Zeitgeist:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Lycos 50:
http://50.lycos.com/
Yahoo Buzz Index:
http://buzz.yahoo.com/
For this method of generating free traffic to be effective, it's important to write as many articles as you can, as quickly as you can. This is the hardest part about writing articles for most people - being disciplined enough to write a bunch of articles.
The excuses I hear most often are, "But I can't write." Or "I'm too busy to write articles."
Here's my answer to that. Either make the time or hire an affordable ghostwriter over at
http://elance.com. Just make sure you check their credentials carefully. After all, all writers are not created equal.
I'm busy too, but I make the time to write plenty of articles because I've seen the incredible impact they've had on my business.
If you put in the necessary effort required for a few months, writing articles and submitting them to the top article directories, those articles will generate plenty of free traffic for you for years to come!