How to Get Your Articles Downloaded

1. Traffic
2. Links

That’s right! The reason why we online marketers and other folk bother to submit articles to article directories is because we want to get free web traffic from those directories and send it to a destination domain of our choice as well as get backlinks!

Seems pretty straight forward, huh? So what’s the catch (there’s always a catch right…well in real life at least!). The catch is that writing an article is not the end of the story; you need to actually get people to read that article.

Think of it this way. Imagine that you have invented the world’s most useful product but nobody knows about it, which means that nobody is ever going to use that world’s most useful product! For that essential invention of yours to be embraced and used by people they first need to know that it exists!

Same thing goes for your articles; you may have written the world’s best article ever, but if nobody bothers to read it then that great article of yours has achieved far less than a poorly written, inaccurate, poorly performing article that is at least performing!

Which brings us to perhaps the most important aspect of article writing, and that is:

Getting Your Article Read

So how do you get people to read your article?

Ever heard of the 80/20 Rule? It comes in many guises but for purposes of this article I shall define it as follows:

The Headline Is Responsible For 80% Of The Success Of An Article

This statement reinforces what we just discussed, about how useless even the best written article is if nobody ever gets to read it. Basically what I am saying here is that the headline will make or break your article, in that if it is not captivating then people simply won’t bother reading the rest of the article!

So ideally your heading should be riveting, gripping, captivating, intriguing, exciting…I could go on and on but I think you get the point. Your heading should be an eyeball magnet!

The Rule of Three Eees!

Ever heard of the rule of Three Eees (as in three letter Es)? Anyway without further ado, here’s what the three eees stand for:

1. Engage
2. Educate/Entertain
3. Excite

That’s right! The best articles incorporate at least 75% of the above three parameters.

1. Engage: Let’s consider point one, “engage”; this we have basically tackled with respect to the headline seeing as it is the headline that will capture your would-be reader’s attention. That part covers the engagement aspect of the three Eees (sounds like some band from the sixties).

2. Educate/Entertain:  Most times when browsing for information on the internet people are expecting one of two things: to be educated or to be entertained. If your article covers any of these two aspects in a comprehensive and easily digestible manner then you are way ahead of the game. If it so happens that your article is both educative and entertaining then you have hit a home run!

When you educate a reader with an article you have written you are inherently giving them a solution to a problem that they need fixed. By entertaining your readers you are enabling them to de-stress in a fast-paced that has stress oozing from its pores!

3. Excite:  The best way to get a response from anybody is to get them passionately involved in your topic. It is a well known fact that the best kind of marketing appeals to the emotions as opposed to cold harsh logic, and it is done through none other than the humble written (or spoken) word! Let’s face it, if your writing is boring and uninspiring the only thing that is going to get excited (maybe) is the search engine spider, which if your lucky drool itself into a frenzy to web that new content…but then again you aren’t writing for a machine are you now?

Across the passage of time people who  understand the very enormous power of the written word have invoked it time and time again to stoke the fires of war, excite the depressed new impassioned and energetic fervor, change bad habits into good (and vice versa) and so on and so forth! Thus the saying: “The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword!”

LINKS:  Getting Links Through Article Submission!

Okay, so we have dealt with the traffic portion of this equation now let’s tackle the aspect about linking. As mentioned earlier the 2nd reason that people bother to submit their article to article directories is (no…not because they simpleee love those article directories) because they wish to get backlinks for their domain from the article directory and also from other websites belonging to those folks who subsequently downloaded their articles.

If you are wondering why anybody in their right mind would want to give you links for no reason at all, even when you haven’t bothered requesting a link swap, well ley’s just say it all boils down to one word…LAZINESS!

Yup! Most of us are downright lazy and given the chance, if we could get from Point A to Point B without lifting a finger we would…in a heartbeat! Being online doesn’t change our lazy tendencies, in fact if anything the internet magnifies our lazy tendencies. We have come to expect instant gratification thanks largely to the internet and indeed we expect the internet to make our lives that much easier!

Which brings us full circle to this question about links, writing articles and people’s inherent laziness.

Most Folks Would Rather Download Your Article Than Write Their Own Content!

We have just ascertained that the vast majority of people are just as lazy online as off, if not more so online. A good number of folk find writing a tedious and thankless chore (evidently non-writers) but are savvy enough to know that if they want their online piece of real estate (blog, website etc) to graduate up the search engines, they must supply additional content consistently and on a regular basis.

And where do they get that new content from? From you and me Pal! They can get hold of our mouthwatering articles through the various article directories where we submitted them!

Anybody can download articles covering almost any subject under the sun from any one of hundreds of article directories on the internet and they don’t even have to sign up for nay kind of membership! The rules are simple governing article redistribution are straightforward. So long as you have given your permission to whatever article directory that anybody can download your articles and paste them on their own website or blog they can do so, just so long as they leave your link(s) in place and do not tamper with the text of your writing.

Thus in this manner you can get thousands of people downloading your article resulting (theoretically) into thousands of backlinks from different IP address all pointing to your own website or domain. However there’s a definite skill and art involved in getting your article downloaded in the thousands as opposed to single digit downloads!

Gary Neame
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/how-to-get-your-articles-downloaded-683360.html