When I started my first advice website for women (GirlShrink), I knew that I had to reach women, but wasn’t sure how. I started doing the only thing I knew how to do, and that was to write articles.
What I didn’t know back then was how writing articles on different issues in my niche and posting them to my site, would mean a flood of new organic traffic to my website and more dollars in my PayPal account!
If you are just starting out on the web, or even if you have been online for a while and haven’t penetrated your niche – writing the articles just may be the ticket for you. What started as an accidental turn of fortune for me, can be a deliberate cash cow for you.
This is how you can get started right away claiming rights as an authority in your marketplace:
1. Find relevant keywords in your niche. I like using keyword finder tools such as Wordtracker and the Google Keyword Tool.
2. Start out by writing one article every other week. This is a pace most any new solopreneur can keep up with, but if you can write more – absolutely do that.
3. Research shows that search engines love content that is at least 400 to 500 words long, and that readers love reading short chunks of info-packed articles. So write 400-500 word articles. Not long 1500 word articles.
4. Add your keywords early in the title of your article, and also carefully place them in first paragraph and somewhere in the latter body of your article. Don’t fall into one of those spammer traps and stuff your article with keywords. The search engines are smarter than that and will penalize you for it. Plus your article will not read well.
5. Don’t get caught up on the particular placement of your keywords. Just make sure that it is in your title and mentioned at least twice in your article like I stated above in #4. Some people can become paralyzed about where to place keywords and then never write anything at all.
6. Submit your articles to important and relevant sites, especially ones that potential customers in your niche like to visit. Movers and shakers in your niche will begin to learn who you are and start to view you as an expert in your marketplace. That’s how great joint ventures begin!
7. Ramp things up even more by promoting your articles via social marketing, press releases, etc. This will gain you wider exposure so that you can begin to reach people outside of your niche. This is all good because you never where that next “word-of-mouth” referral is going to come from.
8. Finally, be consistent. Try to create a “writing schedule” for yourself or your virtual assistant. Remember that it’s more important to write and publish 100 “good enough” articles on a consistent basis — then to write 10 perfect ones and then never write again!
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