Using Articles Written by Others
Lesson 22 from You Can Make Money Writing
Using articles that you didn't write might be an unexpected
topic for this book, but I want to touch on this as a way to
further develop your website or blog. As you know, I promote
my websites with my own articles. What you may not know is that
I also go to those same article directories to find other people's
articles for use on my sites. In this lesson, we are going to
look at this other side of article marketing.
With over a thousand of my own articles out there, and thousands
of my own pages, you may wonder why I choose to also use articles
from other authors to build up the content of my websites. The
answer is a simple one: additional website traffic. More specifically,
I want traffic for keywords related to topics I don't want to
write about. I can quickly make those articles into new pages
on the site, and they bring in new traffic from the search engines
- if they are used right.
Where to Get Articles
Some directories are better than others. I always find higher
quality articles at EzineArticles.com, for example. However,
I usually start with GoArticles.com, or others. Why? Because
some directories don't require a link to their site as a condition
of using the articles. That means one less non-paying outgoing
link on the page.
In the end I still get many from EzineArticles. They really
are higher-quality articles in general, so I tolerate two, and
sometimes three links total, counting the link to the directory.
See Lesson 23 for a list of some other good directories to get
articles from.
What to Look for in an Article
1. It complements your website.
The fact that there is a lot of search traffic for "bass
fishing" isn't enough reason to put an article on bass fishing
on your site about home decorating. You will lose credibility
and visitor's interest with such off-topic pages. Obviously,
any articles you use should be related in some way to the theme
of your website.
2. It is well-written.
You'll lose repeat visits if the visitors read a poorly written
article or two. Remember that you hope to bring in new traffic
to your site with these articles by others - directly from the
search engines. This means that these article-pages will often
be the first page on your site that a visitor sees. First impressions
matter.
3. It has one or two links only.
You can decide how important this rule is to you, and when
to break it. Occasionally I have used an article with three links,
but only because I absolutely couldn't find a better article
targeting the same keyword. I figure that if the article brings
in any new traffic, I could lose most of those visitors through
those links and still be better off than not having that extra
traffic at all.
4. It targets keywords you haven't already targeted.
If you already have a page aiming to get search traffic for
"classic cars," you don't need another aimed at the
same searchers - you need new traffic. Keep a list of decent
keywords that you haven't yet targeted. Then you can search the
directories using those to find valuable content for your site.
5. It is about something you can't or won't write about.
There's no point in using someone else's article if you can
write on that topic just as well. On my site HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com,
I use someone else's article on "1031 Tax Exchanges"
because there is traffic for that keyword, but also because I
don't know enough about the topic. If I did, I would write my
own article and page, and avoid the possibility of readers clicking
away to the other author's website.
That covers the "where" of using articles, but now
we look at the "how."
Continues here... How to Use Articles
Note: This is part of the book, You Can Make Money
Writing. There are links to all the all the lessons/chapters
on the home page.
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