Promote your website using articles - Internet is all about
information! At any given time, majority of web users surf the
Internet in search of some kind of information. That’s why it
is only natural that marketing with the help of providing sought
after information to web surfers should be a key method in your
online marketing strategy. There are various ways of exploiting
this effective and low-cost method of web marketing. One of them
is to write articles related to your business field and
distribute them for free!

There are numerous inherent benefits in this fairly simple and
innovative way of promoting your website and your products.

You can establish yourself as an expert in your field

People trust and tend to buy products from somebody they
consider to be an expert. Once you start writing articles
and if these articles provide valuable information, it won’t
take long for you to get accepted as an authority in your
subject matter.

Augment your own knowledge

If you write articles, apart from the knowledge that you
already have, you still have to do some home works on the
relevantmaterials – gathering and culling information, data,
surveys, etc. This process eventually improves your own grasp
of the subject as well.

Get targeted traffic to your site

As far as web marketing is concerned this is the main reason
why you should consider writing articles. Each of your articles
that you allow others to republish should carry a resource box
which includes a short description of you as an author and a
link to your website. If readers like your articles, they will
visit your site to check out what else you have to offer.

Increase link popularity of your website

All your articles published in other websites with a backward
link to your website will help boosting your link popularity.
Link popularity indicates the number of web pages that link to
your website. Many search engines use it as one of the main
factors in their algorithm which determines the search engine
ranking of a certain website.

If you are a novice writer and would like to pursue this unique
method of promoting your website, you don’t have to worry about
where to start. There's a load of information available on the
Internet about writing. However, before even you start writing
your first article, no matter how good you are in your chosen
subject matter, you still have to do some extra research to seek
out an interesting topic, gather relevant materials on the topic,
evaluate gathered information, organize your thoughts and plan
your article.

While writing an article, maximum time and effort, probably,
you will spend on preparation rather then the physical
process of writing itself.

Here are five steps for novice writers to jump start their
website promotion through article writing.

Step I: Choose a topic

If you feel this method of web marketing suits you, the first
step from here is to choose topics for the articles you plan
to write. While choosing topics, if your purpose is to attract
targeted traffic, make sure that you stick to the subjects
relevant to your business field.

From the broad base of your business field try narrowing down
several subjects that could be interesting to your prospective
readers. Use those subjects and related materials as your
article topics.

Step II: Gather materials

Once you have a topic to write about and ideas to focus on,
brainstorm surrounding it and find several key phrases
relevant to this topic. All of the information needed for you
to explore your ideas and illustrate your points you can get
from the Internet.

Here is the process of retrieving information from the Internet:

• Use Google and other search engines to find information on the search terms you identified. One of the best search engines for this purpose is http://www.vivisimo.com. Vivisimo’s clustering and meta-search method will help you finding many relevant information that you might not have thought of.
• Browse through directories to find relevant websites and get required information from there.
• Seek out specialized repositories of related information. [http://www.bitpipe.com] and http://www.knowledgestorm.com are two wonderful resources if you are doing research on business technology. If you are looking for articles on a topic, try Looksmart’s http://www.findarticles.com
• Once you collected enough information, now is the time for you to jot down your ideas and related points. Note down you thoughts using some structuring systems like mind mapping, listing, etc.

Step III: Make an outline

Spend sometime on planning your article and develop an outline
of the article. Process of making an outline of your article
will help you visualize your finished product. An outline is
a visual and conceptual list of your ideas and their place in
the article. It should reflect your logical thinking
process – the way you want your readers to see it, a beginning
and a culminating point.

Step IV: Write the article

Write your article addressing your readers in second person.
Try starting your article with something that will spur
interest in your readers. Your article should consist of words
within the range of 600 to 900. This size for articles became
a standard for ezines and, therefore, many ezine publishers
simply don’t accept larger articles.

Step V: Edit your article

After finishing, read the article loud. Work on the sentences
that don’t sound quite right. Stack the article aside and come
back to it in a day or two. Revise it. You will find many ways
to improve it this time. Your friends and co-workers can help
you too. Let them read the article and make their suggestions.

Writing articles is a skill like any other you develop by
practicing. Why not start doing it now, and at the same time
get targeted traffics to your website?