Online Articles - Don't Write Just For Readers
by: Steve Gillman
Online articles have to written in a way that gets the readers attention, holds it through the article, and gets the click through to your web site. Writing for the reader may be the most important part of online writing. However, it isn't the only important part.
Who else do you need to write for? If you want your articles to go beyond the directories in which you post them, you have to write for newsletter and web site owners - potential publishers of your articles. Ideally, your online articles should spread around the internet, creating more and more incoming links for your website. Each of these links is a potential stream of income.
For example, when I wrote an article for my web site, The Secret Information Site .com, I posted it in several directories. I didn't get much traffic directly from the directories, but soon a decent web site took and published the article in their newsletter and on the site. Within weeks, they had generated dozens of sales of my ebook for me. This was almost a year ago, and I still get sales from there every week.
Writing Online Articles For Webmasters
Newsletter publishers and web site owners like an interesting article, the same as any readers. However, they have other concerns as well. They are running a business, so they want an article that helps generate income. Here are some of the specific things they look for.
1. They have few links. Generally one link in your author's resource box should be enough for your purposes. More than that, and you are likely to scare away potential users of your article. Site owners don't want too many non-paying ways for visitors to leave their site. They get your article without direct cost, but they "pay" you for your article with that link, and three links my be too expensive. It is also bad form to put links in online articles now - keep them to the resource box.
2. They are not sales letters. Your "Why My Site Is Best," and "Ten Reasons To Buy My Product" articles will not be used. For the sake of the publishers of your articles and the readers, articles should be informative or entertaining, but not a sales pitch. Selling should be limited to the "About The Author" box.
3. They are short. Long article mean slower loading times for the pages they are published on. There also has to be room for the publishers advertising, navigational links, and more. If you keep your online articles between 300 and 800 words, they will be published more often.
4. They have simple HTML. Many publishers just copy articles from a directory without copying the HTML code. They know how to make the link active, but they may not want to recreate your highlighting, side bars and graphics. Use bold tags and italics, and not much else.
5. They are keyword optimized. The publisher should be able to recognize the primary keyword in the title, and see it in the first and last paragraphs of the article. Notice that "online articles" is used in the title, and body of this article. A publisher hopes that your article will generate new search engine traffic to his site, so decent keyword optimization makes your article more likely to be chosen.
About The Author
Copyright Steve Gillman. He lost money on his websites until he discovered the power of articles. Six months later he was making a good living online. To learn how you can do the same, get your free online writing course at:
http://www.999articles.com.
