4 things I wish I'd known about article marketing when I got started

Writing an article, and getting it published online is a great way to bring qualified visitors to your web site. Even better, self-publishing sites make it easy to get published.

And best of all – the benefits of article marketing are out of all proportion to the effort involved...

Improve your ranking in Google
Improve your credibility in the eyes of your site visitors
Improve the quality of the visitors you get (for lead generation)
Increase the number of visitors you get
A single article can continue to send visitors to your site for years

Of course, you won't get these benefits unless you go about writing articles in the right way. Here are 4 of the lessons I've learned (mostly the hard way) about article marketing over the last 3 years...

The headline is crucial
The right length is 300-500 words
Read the publishing guidelines
Make the article about something useful

The headline is crucial

One of my articles sends me (on average) one visitor per day. That particular article was published way back in 2007. Why does it continue to do so well? Because the headline contains the most commonly searched phrase to do with that topic.

If you're on the article site in question, and enter 'how to deal with complaints' into their search box, my article comes up.

You're rewarded handsomely when you give thought to what a person is likely to type into a search box when looking for the type of information contained in your article.

The right length is 300-500 words

Reading articles online is harder than offline. Most computers aren't set up for comfortable reading, and screens aren't pleasant to look at for extended periods of time.

I've found 300-500 words is long enough to say something useful, but not so long that people get fed up and move on. If I can't say it in 500 words, I tend to split it into 2 articles.

Read the publishing guidelines

Article sites have rules governing what you can and can't do/say in your article. Each article site has slightly different requirements, and it's worth investing a few minutes to find out what they are.

Make the article about something useful

People read online articles because they need to know about some specific topic. They'll read your article if it looks like it offers useful information on that topic.

The more useful it is, the greater the chance people will start linking to it. When that happens, the search engines take note. And this benefits you in 2 ways...

The article itself is more likely to be found in search engines
A link from the article back to your site carries more weight, improving your own ranking in search engines

A free bonus tip

The key to making this work, is to get your article published. Rather than fuss around trying to make it perfect, submit it and get started on the next one.

One imperfect article up and on the Internet is a gazillion percent more effective than none.