I thought I’d share this quick bit of information to clients who are practicing what they’ve been taught about article writing for their eCommerce websites. Article writing is a great way to build credibility in your industry, brand your name and business, and especially helpful for creating quality links on other sites.

As you know, EzineArticles.com is one of my favorite places to publish articles: it has a PR6, it’s user friendly, and they allow you to post a couple links in the bio section of your articles. If you have questions about how to make these links, check out these HTML tips.

When I first starting writing articles for my clogging shoes website, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. This is one of the responses I received to an article submission:

….articles MUST NOT be a press release, advertisement, sales letter, promotional copy, or blatant and excessive self-promotion or hype.
Unfortunately this article falls into one of those categories.

Did this cause me to give up, quit, or not write articles any more? Absolutely not! In fact, I felt it was a “small success” because now I had a better understanding of what Ezinearticles.com was looking for.

Basically, articles that you want to get accepted need to be informative.  Teach people why they should use a product you sell, teach them the pros and cons, create a “top 5 reasons to buy this product” article and share it with readers.  As you write new articles, look at other articles in your industry that have been accepted.  What did they do?  What was their style?  Without copying it or plagiarizing, use their ideas as a starting point.

You can do this! Although it may seem difficult at first, it’s not “rocket science”. Best of luck in your offsite optimization strategies.

I had a client today ask me for more information about article writing so I decided to do more research on the subject. As many of you that I work with know, article writing can really help us get targeted traffic to our websites and build link value on other sites. Questions many clients ask:

What am I supposed to write about?

If you are a client I’m working with, you’ve heard me say it a thousand times – keyword research is so important, not only for helping us narrow down the niche, but also for marketing later on. Our articles need to be specifically about keywords we want to be found for on search engines.

How long does my article need to be?

250-500 words is fine for an eCommerce Blog.

What if I don’t like writing?

Start to, you’re building your own business and writing is part of it. If you don’t like to write, there are options like www.elance.com and www.getafreelancer.com.

How will I know if my articles are being seen and working?

Track your stats. I use two tracking devices: www.statcounter.com and Google Analytics. Both will tell me important information: where my visitors are coming from, how they found me, and what they do when they get to my site. If you are submitting articles to a variety of sources and not getting any traffic from them, maybe it’s not the best use of your time.

Where else can I post my articles?

This article about eCommerce Blogging may help. I also like to look for forums related to my industry and blogs that relate to what I’m writing about. Use portions of articles you’ve already written as comments or threads on these sites. As people like what they’re reading, they’ll tend to go to your site.

What makes a good article?

Proper usage of keyword phrases that you want to be found for. Example: I have a client that is trying to move up the charts for a specific keyword phrase. He wrote an article and published it at ezinearticles.com. After a few days, his article was published. The interesting thing was that the article had the specific keyword phrase in the title. The very next day, when typing in that keyword phrase in Google, his article (not his site) showed up #4 out of over 900,000 websites. This means that he was 1 click away from being found for his brand new website by his target audience.

My top 6 quick tips to help you write compelling article content:

1. Get to the point, be brief and be unique. Leave all sales & marketing hype language out of your articles.
2. Be interesting, don’t ramble. Ask questions, provoke thought or insight backed with reasons why your ideas work.
3. Write your article to be visually appealing for easy eye text scanning. This includes bullets, lists, bold text, etc. (see next point)
4. Include generous use of sub-titles/sub-heads, bullets, numbered lists, and an occasional block quote.
5. Create an easy to understand article title so that your reader knows upfront what your benefit promise is – then be sure to deliver in the article body the answer to the promise you just made.
6. Know your audience. Write about things you feel need to be discussed by your potential buyers. Answer questions they may have that can back up their buying decisions.

If you’d like more information, email me at info at mollermarketing dot com.

Special thanks to Newspapergrl for the requested post. I did more research on writing articles too and actually made two posts tonight at www.ezinearticles.com, which is my favorite article directory so far. I also recommend the following:

• www.goarticles.com
• www.articledashboard.com
• www.isnare.com
• www.articlecity.com

I think the toughest thing for new clients about articles is their fear of failure. They don’t want to write something that doesn’t get accepted or they don’t want to write period. The thing is, writing articles is one of those “little things” that can really separate you from the competition. It’s a cost effective way to build quality links and it really doesn’t take too much time. My good friend Lisa Herbik has done great with article writing and it will prove to help her set herself apart in the wall mural industry.

One of the things I do to save time is write an article about a specific keyword phrase I want to get noticed for by search engines. After posting it to one of the article directories, I’ll then revise the article, edit the title and content a bit, and post it at another article directory. I recently wrote an article about a cheerleading photography website and have seen the traffic increase to that site substantially. Not only traffic, but back links can be built this way too.

If article directories allow a bio section, I make sure I don’t always use the Default Source (as found in ezinearticles); instead I try to customize the bio based on the article I’ve written and the keywords I want to be found for. After all, I’m not in the business of writing necessarily (although SEO and eCommerce requires quite a bit of this). I am in the business of eCommerce consulting, creative business marketing, and creating win/win solutions – both on and offline. By writing articles consistently, you will differentiate yourself from others who don’t understand these basic link building strategies.