Web Design Discussion

You write articles to get traffic to your web site..correct?

One of the most difficult problems in the whole article marketing process is getting enough visitors to read your article. Another problem is getting the them to follow the call to action in your resource box.

If you get lots of people to read your articles, the chances are they will read it, click the link in your resource box and buy your product. It’s a numbers game…the more traffic you acquire the higher your chances of people reading your article.

Let’s first discuss how to drive traffic to your articles

How to find a high traffic web site

A high traffic web site is one that gets 1000 visitors a day. If your main site fits this description, place your article there. It will probably get indexed and show up in the search engines within a day or two.

Alternatively find a high traffic web site that fits your article content.

How can you find a high traffic web site?

* Visit Alexa dot com and enter your keyword in the search box. The sites that get over 30,000 visitors a month are authority sites. These are ones that have been around a while and receive lots of traffic.

*Backlink count. Select any of the sites you have chosen in Alexa and do a backlink check. Backlinks are the web sites that link to your web site. If you have a large number of incoming links, you will receive good rankings and get lots of traffic.

Find the backlink count of a web site by entering link:www.domain.com in the Yahoo search box. From the drop-down box, select “except from this domain”. This will eliminate the links within your own domain and just deliver the incoming links from other sites.

*Contact the owners of these sites and ask them if they would like to publish your article on their web site. Make sure your article relates to their content. Tell them they will have exclusive rights to publish the article for 2 weeks. This means you will not publish it anywhere else. Only after the article had been on their web site for 2 weeks will you be able to publish it elsewhere.

*If the publisher wants exclusive rights forever, you can always rewrite the article then distribute it to other publishers.

Tips

Once you’ve had success with one web site, find others that will accept your content. Create a list of article publishers that you can contact for future articles.

High traffic web sites provide one of the fastest and most powerful ways to drive a ton of visitors to your articles.

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If you want to attract a continuous stream of NEW visitors to
your website without spending a dime on advertising pick up a copy of
my new ebook”Article Marketing Strategies“…
to receive immediate and long-term traffic to your web site.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

The key to article marketing success is to get lots of eyeballs reading your content. The other point of success is that your article needs to be so compelling that it draws the reader naturally through the content then responds to your call to action in the resource box.

Let’s say you get 100 people reading your article and only 1 buys your product. That means your conversion rate is 1%. If you get 300 people to read your article and 3 people respond to your CTA, your conversion rate is still 1%. If you continue building more traffic it may slightly increase your visitor numbers but your conversion rates will still remain the same.

How to increase conversion rates

1. Quality content

Place yourself in your visitors shoes and try to read your content from their viewpoint. Ask yourself “what’s in it for them?”

Did you clearly point out the problem the reader is having?
Did you offer multiple solutions to the problem?
Did you explain each solution clearly?
Does your content have a natural flow that pulls the reader through it?
Did you create a clear summary of the article in the concluding paragraph?

By addressing these questions your content will have more impact.

2. Call to action (CTA)

This is the only place you get one shot for your visitor to take action…buy your product or service or subscribe to your ezine. if you’ve done a good job pre-selling your product in the article your visitor will respond positively to your CTA.

The first sentence or paragraph of your resource box is where you make your offer. The next few sentences explain who you are and includes your web site address.

3. Sales page content

Your visitor gets taken to your sales page from the CTA in your resource box. If the sales page is not compelling it will not convert the readers into buyers.

Here are 7 ways to increase your sales page conversion rate

4. Download page

The download page is what visitors receive after purchasing your product. It should thank them for their purchase and clearly restate the name of the product to reassure the visitor the information is correct.

Provide clear instructions how to download your ebook…not all users are computer savvy. You might also offer another product here that will further help the reader.

If you attract lots of traffic to your articles and convert readers into buyers you’ll have created a successful marketing funnel or system that you can use repeatedly.

*****************************************
If you want to attract a continuous stream of NEW visitors to
your website without spending a dime on advertising pick up a copy of
my new ebook”Article Marketing Strategies“…
to receive immediate and long-term traffic to your web site.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

Part 2

6. Be a guest writer

Offer to be a guest writer for a large publication or high traffic web site or blog. You will need to show you are an authority in your niche first before they will accept you. Instead of using the same article, modify it enough so it is unique. Your guest article or post will drive lots of traffic to your own web site.

7. Submit unique content to social media sites

Social media sites are currently one of the best ways to attract traffic with good content and backlinks. For example you could create a squidoo lens for your main keyword and write some content around it. Make sure you include links back to your main web site by weaving them into the copy..

To get a list of social media marketing sites and how to market to them visit:
http://www.socialmediadaily.com

8. Create a PDF

Search engines also spider PDF files. Convert your MS word article to a PDF file and place a link to it on your web site.

9. Create an audio file

Some folks prefer to listen rather than read content. Place an audio file or podcast of your content on your web site or blog then submit your podcast to podcast directories.

10. Create a video

Most people grew up watching television, movies and videos so they are accustomed to visual learning. Create a video of your article and submit your video to YouTube and other video sharing sites. Google indexes video content and includes it in their search engine results.

If you implement these top 10 article marketing methods, you will see a massive increase in traffic, get visitors to your web site and make many sales.

*****************************************
If you want to attract a continuous stream of NEW visitors to
your website without spending a dime on advertising pick up a copy of
my new ebook”Article Marketing Strategies“…
to receive immediate and long-term traffic.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Site Design, Web Hosting, SEO

Article marketing is only effective if you are able to do it on consistent basis. You can’t expect to get much traffic if you write and submit one article a month. Well….you would if it was miraculously published by an ezine owner with 10,000 subscribers but there are better methods for achieving success with articles.

Top 10 places to submit your article

1. Submit to the top article directory

Ezine articles dot com is currently the directory that gets the most traffic so submit your article to them first. It may be published by ezine owners looking for new content. It may be read by visitors to the ezinearticles web site (because your article is rotated on the front page with others). It may be viewed by folks that subscribe to their RSS feeds.

2. Submit to other top article directories

If you don’t have time to modify your article submit it anyway to the other top article directories. You won’t get as much traffic if using the same content but you can capitalize on the link juice you receive by including your keywords in the anchor text of the resource box at the end of the article. Modify your anchor text when submitting to many article directories.

3. Include it on your web site

You need to add content to your web site or blog continuously so search engines will visit it and readers receive fresh content. Even if you have a static site, create a section for articles or attach a blog to it.

If your web site gets spidered quickly by the search engines you might place your article here first then submit to the article directories after a few days. This will allow the search engines to spider your site first and rank first for that article.

Alternatively write 2 different articles, one for your web site and another for the directories so you will benefit from both methods and receive more traffic with the extra work.

4. Submit to individual ezine publishers

Create a list of ezine publishers related to your niche by entering ezines+keyword in the Google search box. Every time you write a new article send it to this list. If it’s high quality content that subscribers will find useful you will get lots of new traffic.

5. Article swap

Ask article writers within your niche if they wish to swap articles with you. This means you will publish their article in your ezine if they publish your article in theirs. It creates a win-win situation for both of you.

Points 6-10 will be included in my next post

*****************************************
If you want to attract a continuous stream of NEW visitors to
your website without spending a dime on advertising pick up a copy of
my new ebook”Article Marketing Strategies“…
to receive immediate and long-term traffic.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Site Design, Web Hosting, SEO

One of the largest obstacles to writing an article is the time it takes to write one. If you are not an avid writer it’s hard to sit down and write freely. ..you stare at a blank screen and nothing pops into your mind. You may end up wasting an hour in front of your computer before you start typing anything.

My 15 minute secret for writing an article

1. Give yourself only 15 minutes to start writing the article. This forces you to just start writing instead of procrastinating. It also sets your mind at ease because you are only committing 15 minutes of your day to writing the article.

2. Choose a topic - only spend a few minutes selecting a topic to write about then write a few headlines that include your main keywords. You’ll want to weave these keywords into your article to make it search engine friendly.

3. Build the structure - your introductory paragraph should point out a particular problem you are going to solve in the body of your article. Emphasis the pain and frustration the visitor will feel if they don’t solve this problem.

The next few paragraphs should outline several solutions to the problem. Each paragraph should expand on a different point. These paragraphs will form the bulk of your article body and easily enable you to fill the number of words required for submission to article directories. This can be anywhere from 250-800 words.

Combine serveral short articles together if you don’t meet the necessary word count.

4. Resource box - this is where you can promote your product or service. Create an attractive call to action, include your web site address, your name and who you are.

Tip

The most important point of this 15 minute secret is that it pushes you to begin writing. Often you’ll find you don’t stay within the 15 minutes because you have a lot more to say and that’s fine. It’s OK to write a longer article. If it gets too long divide it into two articles Part 1 an Part 2.

If you have to stay within 15 minutes, just stop within that time period. Continue writing the next day for another 15 minutes until you’ve finished writing the article.

Any activity you want to become good at takes practice. Keep doing this on a consistent basis and you will soon be punching out all your articles in 15 minutes.

*****************************************
If you want to attract a continuous stream of NEW visitors to
your website without spending a dime on advertising pick up a copy of
my new ebook”Article Marketing Strategies“…
to receive immediate and long-term traffic.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Site Design, Web Hosting, SEO

If you want to do a quick seas on Google to find specific information, you don’t want to receive results which are either irrelevant or contain the same content. Ideally you want the search engines to return results related to the keywords you entered. Search engines have become clogged with duplicate content. The top ten results should offer visitors a choice of different web pages.

Google is now doing something about it by creating a new patent application on near duplicate content. This new patent tries to keep its users from finding redundant content in the result pages.

How is content duplicated?

1. Web page content is available in different formats e.g., html page, PDF, printable page
2. Syndicated content e.g., articles, blog posts, news, press releases
3. Content Management System (CMS) displays the same content in different locations e.g., a blog post may also be listed in the category and archives sections.
4. Content is reproduced by others e.g.,your article may be distributed to other blogs, ezines, newsletters, web sites.

What’s in the patent application?

Google tries to detect duplicate duplicate content at different web addresses.

What does Google do when it detects duplicate content?

Google displays the original source of the content providing it has better inbound links than the other web sites carrying the same content. If the content is placed on a web page with higher quality links than your own, it will rank higher than your own site.

Tips

* Write unique content for your own web site and don’t distribute it to other sites.
* If you want to distribute the same content to other sites, place it on your own web site first, then wait until it has been
indexed by the search engines. This will ensure your site will get ranked ahead of the others carrying the same content.

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Receive fresh, in-depth articles articles on how to design, optimize and promote your web site by subscribing to my “Marketing Tips” newsletter at: http://www.isitebuild.com/

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Site Design, Web Hosting, Search Engine Optimization

Most online marketers talk about increasing traffic to your web site but few talk about how to get visitors to click through to your offer. If you receive thousands of visitors a day but none of them click through to your sales page you’ll soon be out of business.

Definition of Click-through rate

According to Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia)

CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.

The CTR measures what percentage of people clicked on the ad to arrive at the destination site; it does not include the people who failed to click, yet arrived at the site later as a result of seeing the ad.

CTR does not necessarily mean your ad or web site was successful because it does not measure conversion rates. A customer may click on your ad, read the information but still not buy the item.

How to Increase Your Click-Through Rate

There are hundreds of ways to improve your CTR. Then most important aspect is to test one factor at a time. If you change too many things at once, it will be hard to decipher which one had the greatest impact.

Start off by making one change to see if it increases your CTR, then change something else. If your CTR decreases simply undo it and try something else. Always work on moving up your CTA until you are happy with it.

4 ways to improve the CTR of an online ad

Online ads may include Google AdWords, banners or ads on web sites.

1. Test the headline

Create different headlines by placing yourself in your customer’s shoes. Try to see the headline from their viewpoint by asking “what’s in it for them.” This means you need to include a benefit in the headline.

2. Try different fonts types, sizes, colors.

One small change often creates a large impact, therefore try capitalizing the first letter of the headline or all first letters of each word in the headline. Experiment with common font types e.g., times roman, arial, verdana. Colors also have different effects on people so test other text colors besides black.

3. Use action words or phrases

Action words and phrases are more powerful than passive words and phrases.

Some good words to use include:

get, discover, secrets, powerful, read, how, how to

Questions also get your customer to check out your offer e.g.,

How do you write an article a day?
What are the 7 secrets to getting your article read?

4. Use short sentences

When writing an ad you are limited in the amount of words you can put into it. Your sentences need to be short and have an impact on the reader. Leave out filler words such as the, on about

If you want your headline to be spidered by the search engines include the keywords at the beginning of the sentence e.g.,

Instead of writing:

“The Top 7 Ways to Lose Weight in 7 days”

Write

“Weight Loss - Top 7 Ways to Lose Weight in 7 days”

Conclusion

The most important aspect of increasing your CTR is to test everything but test one thing at a time and do it consistently. It will take some time to see substantial results so be patient. If so, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have the best possible ad. and don’t have to rely on the opinion of others.

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Receive fresh, in-depth articles articles on how to design, optimize and promote your web site by subscribing to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter at: http://www.isitebuild.com/

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Development, SEO, Hosting

If you write a lot of articles you want them to be read and acted upon so you will have a high conversion rate. Many folks are very good at writing articles but fail to provide a “call to action” in their resource box. They either leave it out or promote themselves at the beginning of the resource box then follow it with a CTA.

Why this not the way to do it?

After reading a well written article the person is prepared to take action. Your call to action (CTA) should immediately follow your article body while the article content is fresh is their minds.

Don’t follow your article with a pitch about yourself and all your wonderful accomplishments.

Examples of effective CTAs in the resource box:

1. Receive a Free Report on 10 Effective Ways to get your articles read by visiting http://www.domainname.com

2. Sign up for a Free Bi-Weekly Newsletter to receive more marketing secrets at http://www.domainname.com

3. Visit my web site at: http://www.domainname.com to discover how to lose weight in 7 days.

When writing your CTA place yourself in your customers shoes and think of the benefits they’ll receive. Make the customer feel they can’t do without the knowledge they’ll get when they click through.

Test different CTAs

Every article doesn’t need to have the same CTA. Write out several CTAs to test which one gets the higher conversion rate. CTAs with high conversion rates mean you will make more sales, and get more subscribers. You also won’t have to write as many articles thus giving you more time to spend building your business.

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Receive fresh, in-depth articles articles on how to design, optimize and promote your web site by subscribing to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter at: http://www.isitebuild.com/

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Development, SEO, Hosting

When you submit your article to an article directory you often set it and forget it hoping that some ezine publisher will include it in his ezine or newsletter and gets indexed by the search engines. This is only a partial view of what happens. You often receive an immediate boost in visitors when you send in your article.

Here’s a description why this occurs:

A day in the life of a new approved EzineArticles.com article:

1. You send in an article.

2. We approve and publish it.

3. We send it to our RSS feeds in real-time and your article gets read by folks who view our site in their favorite RSS reader. A select group of approved RSS publishers publish your title, summary and a link back to the full article, giving it more traffic.

4. We make it available to our new XML keyword search partners that return keyword search results of the most recent articles submitted as we can only display 10-25 usually for them… hence, the newest articles get listed first.

5. Your article gets included in the recently submitted articles in the category you selected until it gets bumped out of the list. That means other articles from your fellow authors help bring traffic to your article for about 20-35 position movements.

6. Your article get promoted to our proprietary email alert lists and this brings more traffic to your articles.

7. The search engines discover your article and give you an initial ranking. A few days to a few weeks later, your position in their indexes settles due to intense competition for the top.

8. In our category views, we list the newest articles on top and the oldest near the bottom. This is designed to encourage you to send in a continual flow of articles while giving our web surfers the freshest content.

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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, SEO, Web Hosting

Receive fresh, in-depth articles articles on how to design, optimize and promote your web site by subscribing to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter at: http://www.isitebuild.com/

It’s been proven that submitting to Article Directories will guarantee an increase in web traffic to your web site. If you only submit an article once a month it’s not going to help attract traffic. You need to submit several articles on a consistent basis to build a continuous stream of traffic.

Article Submission Frequency

1. If you have a bunch of articles stored on your hard drive it’s more effective to submit them all at once rather than spreading them out over a period of time. My experience shows I get more visitors if I submit 3 articles at the same time instead of one at a time.

2. If you want to receive a lot of traffic, submit a minimum of 5-20 articles per week, every week. If you can’t produce this many articles write 1-5 articles per week for the first 3-4 months. Evaluate the results at the end of this period. The top article directories (i.e., ezine articles) produce statistics that show how many people read articles. If you find this strategy effective you can then boost your results by increasing your submission frequency.

3. If you own many web sites it will be difficult to write many articles for each niche. My recommendation is to focus on one niche unless you have lots of time and are a fast writer. Focusing on one niche allows you to concentrate your thoughts better and make it easier to generate multiple articles.

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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Site Design, Search Engine Optimization, Hosting

Receive fresh, in-depth articles articles on how to design, optimize and promote your web site by subscribing to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter at: http://www.isitebuild.com/