Article Marketing-Fresh Out Of Topics?
If you’ve been doing article marketing for a bit, sometimes you may feel like you are fresh out of topics to write about. This is the scary phenomenon called….dun da dunnnn…writers block!
And you’ve won the title fair and square 
So where do you go from here?
Well, as you probably already know, if you are using articles to boost traffic to your website or blog, you’re gonna have to write lots of articles before you’ll start seeing the results of your efforts.
So at some point after writing so many articles, you just draw a blank. But it doesn’t have to be a permanent blank. Just a short, shall I say, lapse of any brain power available. Just like a battery, you need a recharge to get your creative juices flowing again.
Fortunately there’s help.
First of all, when you run out of ideas, head to the bookstore. Honestly, once you start using this technique, you’ll never run out of ideas.
Whatever your niche is, there will be a section in the bookstore that addresses it. Fitness, starting your own business, internet marketing, parenting, crafts, public speaking, career changes, gardening, dog training…you will find a section of the book store that addresses it.
You don’t necessarily have to buy any books, although if you look in the bargain section of the book store you will frequently find books that cover your topic, for $5-$10. However, if you don’t want to spend the money, all you have to do is flip through some books and skim some of the chapters and chapter headings.
If you have a web site about fitness for men, look at the books in that section. Now look at the different techniques that are recommended in those books, and start writing down lists of ideas. Next, head over to the magazine section. It’s well worth the investment to buy a few magazines in your niche and flip through them to mine for new article ideas.
For instance, a recent issue of Dog World had articles on top dog friendly vehicles, and caring for a dog with arthritis. These are perfect article subjects for a dog site.
You can also go the library to read recent magazines for free, and you can check out books on your niche area. And, if you want more inspiration, go to the article directory that you write for and see what other people in your category are writing.
Don’t worry about the fact that you are covering the same subject. Magazines recycle ideas, books recycle ideas, ezine article publishers recycle ideas. There is only so much that can be said about a particular niche; but, when you write your article you will give it your own unique twist.
More sites of interest:
| Do You Suffer From Search Engine Marketer’s Writers Block? – Search Engine Marketer’s Writers Block As a blogger, often I find myself staring at a blank white screen, wondering what I should write about. My job as an author is to write content that I monetize towards earning money online. …
Getting over Writer’s Block Saturday Writers – I’ve had writers block for a couple months. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get anywhere. Everything I wrote I trashed. Finally, a couple days ago, I realized what my problem was. If I am going to write more, I need to know more. … The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain blog: Writers don’t believe in … – Of course, “Do you believe in writers’ block?” is a very simplistic question. Who could really say that what Douglas Adam experienced (as mentioned by Gail Renard in the comments to the original post) wasn’t genuine? … Writers Block?? | BlogButterfly – I came across an handy post regarding Writers Block and thought I’d share my findings (for any of you lovely fellow bloggers)…..Courtesy of Blogger Talk. Writers Block – 5 Tips to Cure It for Bloggers and Other Writers … |
Writing Articles for Instant SEO Traffic
It used to be that writing articles was the least known form of traffic to your website. However, people’s opinions have changed as they see that articles can bring lots of traffic to their sites. So I’m going to give you some quick SEO article writing tips that you can easily use to harness the process of getting more traffic to your site.
First of all, it’s a myth that once you finish writing and publishing an article that your work is done; this is so far from the truth. Albeit a well written and popular article will remain highly ranked in the search engines, the key for you is consistency. The more you write articles and publish to directories, the higher you will climb in the rankings. We should clearly understand which elements in our article writing process the search engines look for.
One of the items that search engines analyze is the keyword density, or the number of times your keyword appears in comparison to the total number of words. Preferably and for optimum rankings when writing articles; keep this percentage in the range between 1% and 3% in the body. This would be considered the simple version of calculating keyword density.
But, there is a second calculation that search engines use in their algorithm. It takes into consideration all the other elements such as the Title, meta tags, Alt tags, etc. and includes these in the final numbers. For example, if you have 600 words in the body and the keyword appears 6 times; then that would equal 1% density (6/600*100=1). And if your title, meta and alt tags totaled 150 words and the keyword appears 20 times, it totals to a different number.
Here would be the new calculation:
Words: 600+150=750
Keywords 6+20=26
Calculation: 26/750*100= 3.5%
So the simple calculation is 1% and the complex calculation is 3.5%. This is very good information to know because now you are in possession of key factors on how to write a good article. So if your article doesn’t rank well, you can use this a test factor when writing articles by simply increasing or decreasing the keyword density.
Now I have been hearing totally different thoughts on another concept of writing articles that I have to let you know about it. Some of the experts have been saying not to give a hoot about keyword density. And that if you write a well written article that flows well, Google will reward you. I have heard claims of as high as 33% keyword density and still having a highly ranked article. I am sure that there is much more to this than meets the eye, and I will definitely continue this conversation in the future.
For now, just try to stick between 1% and 3% keyword density when writing articles. Many have already been down this road and it has proven to be the right “thing to do” now.
Let’s move on to submitting your articles to the directories. Listen, even if you are a great writer, you still need to proof your work BEFORE submission to article directories. Proof meaning reading your article to weed out grammatical and sentence structure errors. When writing articles I personally tend to write like I speak so don’t look for the scholar version here
Article directories are depositories where these articles are submitted, and in turn the search engines usually pick these up. Many article directories will let you put a resource box at the end of your articles. This can have a little about you and what you do and whatever you are promoting. And most of them will let you put in a url of your web site.
The importance of the resource box is that people will read and then click on the links, and guess what? You’ve got traffic to your site! And the more article directories that your articles wind up on, the more traffic you get. Simple eh? But it goes one step farther. If someone wants to use your article from one of these directories, they must leave your resource box intact. Soooo, now you get more traffic from even more different sources. It’s a definitely a win-win situation for all.
This is a very low cost and efficient way to start getting traffic by just writing articles. It’s just a matter of getting the ball rolling with writing articles on a consistent basis and submitting them to the directories.
How to Hire a Proofreader for Free
As an internet marketer, communication via the written word ranks in the very high majority of what you will do. Writing for exposure is what it comes down to. I am not a writer by any means, and I wish I that I had the gift that so many have been born with. And that is to methodically and articulately organize and layout their words in a way that is easy to understand. But that wasn’t one of my gifts so I have to find other means of compensating for my short comings.
So you may be asking what this have to do with proofreading? Well, as I stated earlier, the majority of what we do as internet marketers is to communicate effectively with our readers in writing. And before I publish my writings I want to make sure that my t’s are crossed and my i’s are dotted. It’s very hard to be subjective on your own work.
That’s because you know what you want to say, and as you proofread your own work it is quite easy to skip over an error. Your mind knows what the paper should say so I think that you see the correct words even if they are not there. I know that I have done it many times, and it wasn’t until after publication that I noticed the goof up. I realized that no matter how hard I tried to check and correct my own writings, that there was a chance that I would fail to find any errors. The only way out of this is to get a pair of new eyes….a proofreader. But I can’t afford to have someone proof everything that I write. I needed a poor mans, or womans I should say, solution to this problem.
So I came across this neat little tool that gave me an idea. The tool is a free text to speech tool called Spoken Text. I figured if I can hear and not read my writings that I would be more apt to hear what my eyes don’t see. The tool that I use is free and not necessarily the best, but it worked for me. I use it to check my blog posts, emails, newsletter, etc. I don’t use it for any sales material as I leave that to the pros.
There are more brands offered than the one I chose. The main reason I picked this one is because it was free and it was solving an immediate problem that I was having.
Hey, sometimes you have to find round about ways of getting your tasks accomplished, and I just thought I’d pass it along to you. Have fun and I would love to know how you fare with it.
Use Your Signature When Article Marketing
For your online business to thrive, you need traffic to come to your website, and preferably, you want targeted traffic, traffic that will be interested in your offers when they arrive at your website.
While you can get some targeted traffic via Pay-Per-Click methods or by paying for ezine ads in newsletters that are related to your subject matter, that takes a good amount of money to continue doing, and unless you are a large and successful corporation, chances are, you don’t have that large of a budget to be able to buy targeted traffic consistently.
Therefore, you need to find some free methods of getting quality targeted traffic to your website. Fortunately, there are some good free ways to do just that.
One way that is gaining more popularity all the time is via article marketing. This is where you write quality articles about a topic related to the industry you are working in and that will appeal to your target market.
You also could pay quality writers to write the articles for you if you feel they will do a better job writing the articles instead.
In either case, you then insert your signature file at the end of the article. In this signature file, you have a 5-6 line paragraph (about 60 characters per line) that
includes a little about you and your business and a link to your website.
After you have added this, you need to place this article in places where it will be seen by many. The idea is to get interested people to read your article, look at your signature file, and then click on the link to head to your website.
Voila! Now you are getting targeted traffic to your site.
