We discussed this briefly already, but basically there are two ways to get traffic from the article directories, and each requires a different type of article.
For consistent long term traffic then getting your article ranked in the search engines is a great strategy. Every time people type the search phrase into Google your article will show up, people will click through to it and a percentage of those reading your article will also click through to your site. You create little funnels leading to your site!
For a quick surge of traffic and the chance to possibly get some traffic for a few months then what you can do is leech off other articles that are already getting traffic from the search engines. To do this you need to grab their attention with a catchy title when you appear in the ‘recently submitted’ list below other articles you can grab people who have finished reading the other article on the page and are attracted by your title.
This works best for a quick surge of traffic and I’ll reveal a sneaky trick for this shortly, but if you can get enough of a surge of traffic at the start then you might make it onto the ‘Most viewed’ list which you can then get traffic from for a lot longer as you’ll drop off the ‘Recently submitted’ list quite quickly. Please note the leeching method only really works on sites like EzineArticles.com which have the ‘Recently submitted’ or ‘Related Articles’ links at the bottom of each article.
So why do you have to create different articles to capitalize on one of these methods? Well it mostly revolves around the title. You see in search engine optimization then the title of a page, and the title ON a page are important. For most article directories then they take the title you give your article and also use that to name the page where you article will reside, so this title is a big factor in your chances of ranking in the search engines (along with some other factors which we’ll discuss later on in the series).
For SEO then you want to include the keyword phrase you are targeting in the title, and if possible then try not to dilute the title by putting in much else, of course if it doesn’t make sense or is too boring then you might have to, but targeting the phrase ‘Dog training tips’ then you might have a title like, ‘5 Top Dog Training Tips‘ instead.
That includes the keyword phrase but not too much else, and it is enticing enough to get people to click through it if you get it to rank in the search engines. You would then make sure you included that keyword phrase in the article a few times too so Google knows you article is about that keyword phrase and will consider ranking it for that term.
Now with the leeching method then you don’t have to worry about getting a keyword phrase into the title, but you do have to worry about making it as ‘clickable’ as possible. You want people magnetically drawn to your article in the ‘Recently submitted’ list based on its title, so make it grab them by the eyeballs! Make it controversial, make it funny, just make it something! Negative headlines work quite well so maybe something like: ‘5 Shocking Reasons Why You’ll Never be Able to Train Your Dog.‘
Or you can just use curiosity like in these article title examples:
- ‘5 Powerful Dog Training Tips That Professional Trainers Don’t Want You to Know’
- ‘Discover a Startling Secret Which Can Make Your Dog Live Longer’
- ’10 Simple Household Items That Could be Slowly Killing Your Faithful Dog’
You can see these are dramatically different to the title created for SEO purposes, the length is less of an issue, but the impact and interest they generate is more important. If you are using the leeching method then you also don’t need to worry about putting any keywords into the body of the article, just write a good article with a great resource box and that is it!
I mentioned that I had a sneaky trick for you… well here it is, you see the problem with the leeching method is that it only works for as long as you are in that ‘Recently
submitted’ list (unless you get enough views to be in the ‘most viewed’ articles list which doesn’t usually happen), so the longer you can be in there then the longer you siphon off visitors.
The trick is to submit your article so it is approved and in that list when all the editors go home for the weekend! If you can get that to happen then there won’t be any other articles being approved to knock you off the list until the next week!
Now it is easier said than done, you need to figure out how long it takes you to get your articles approved on average and submit accordingly, but even if you just roughly aim your articles to get this to happen then you don’t lose anything if they don’t get approved at the right time, you just get the normal traffic that everyone else gets, but the ones that do stick over the weekend will be well worth it.
Another sneaky trick is to see when your niche gets the most traffic, most niches I have sites in seem to have a best day of the week to get traffic. Some seem to peak on Sunday, Monday’s traffic is then half that of Sunday’s and it slowly builds over the week. Others might peak just before the weekend and then have the traffic tail off dramatically over the weekend as your target audience are out doing whatever it is they were searching about.
You need tracking on your website to find this out (get Google Analytics for free) but once you start to get some traffic from the search engines then you can start to watch the patterns. Make sure you don’t make judgements based on the traffic from your articles as every time you submit a new one you are going to skew your traffic figures by hopefully getting some new people to click through to your site no matter what day of the week it is.
If you just look at the pattern to the free search engine or if you haven’t submitted some articles in a while then maybe look for the overall pattern, you will be able to see which day it makes most sense to have your articles approved on when you are trying the leeching method (it might not be the weekend so don’t waste your time getting them approved just before the weekend if people in your niche don’t search much at that time!).
Those are the two different kinds of article you can create, now let’s discuss the process of getting an article to rank for the long term in more detail.
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