You heard writing articles is a great way to
drive traffic to your site. So you have written several articles and
posted them to dozens of article sites. Then you sit back and wait for
the avalanche of traffic. And wait. Nothing is happening. What’s the
deal?
The deal is depending on where your article gets republished your links
may not be “live”. Writing articles and posting them is a great way to
drive traffic to your site. Search engines love it and if done
correctly it will help drive new visitors to your site and get you
listed higher in the search engines. The problem comes when article
writers and authors and publishers don’t all follow the same rules. The
main problems are:
1. Original article not formatted correctly
2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links
3. New publisher doesn’t make links live
Lets start with #1 “Original article not formatted correctly”. Not all
article sites are the same. On some sites you can simply put in plain
text and it will format it correctly, paragraphs will be correct and it
will recognize http://www.yoursite.com as a live link. Some sites you
may need to format it all in html. Sometimes the easiest way to do that
is type your article in a web design program such as “Dreamweaver” and
then view the source and copy and paste the code. If you don’t have
access to such a program then you should learn a few basic html tags:
View the source of this page to see the html tags.
This is a “break” tag, The break tag is used when you want to end a
line, but don't want to start a new paragraph. The break tag forces a
line break wherever you place it, a very common tag and one that is
recognized by most all article sites.
Bold anything you want in bold should go
between these tags
italic anything you want in italic
should go between these tags
http://www.yoursite.com--some sites will recognize this as a live link.
Many will not! This is where you are going to lose your links! If your
article is copied and pasted into another web page or ezine your link
will not be clickable. Someone who really wants to go to your webpage
can copy and paste it into their browser but it is alot easier if
someone can just click on it! If it is not a clickable live link search
engines will not follow it not matter how many times it is republished.
Imangine your article being reprinted 1000 times, a potential of 1000
back links to your site but without it being a clickable link you won’t
reap the benefits of those 1000 links. Your links to your sites should
always be formatted this way:
If you follow the correct html formating for links your website links
will always be clickable. To learn more about html tags search google
for "html tags"
2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links. Your
article may be correctly formatted on the article site you posted to
but when it is copied and pasted into a new webpage or ezine it may
lose some of it’s formatting. Some of the better sites have a choice of
“ezine ready”, this will display your article in the correct html
formatting which makes it easier to copy and paste.
3. New publisher doesn’t make links live. All article sites have a
policy that clearly states “you are free to republish the article as
long as the links and author bio stays with the article” Some don’t
realize your links are no longer live or don’t know to make them live.
Others leave them off all together or don’t make them live on purpose.
Not much you can do except write to the website owner and request they
make them live. Some will comply, some won’t. Chalk it up to the cost
of doing business. For everysite that doesn’t make your links live, 10
will.
Keep publishing! Writing articles and posting them across the internet
is still a great way to drive traffic to your site. Content is king and
website owners, and ezine publishers are hungry for fresh new original
content.
This article is free for republishing
TJ Smith is the
creative force behind several websites including Article Boy
article submission site and content archive and The
Blogger Nation Blog Directory
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