Traffic Generation Tips

Advanced Article Marketing – 13 Steps To Get Major Mileage From Your Articles

I’ve seen some people wondering if article marketing is still effective traffic generation strategy so I figured today would be an excellent time to revisit the topic of article marketing.

I was feeling a little lazy at the keyboard today, so the video or the accompanying podcast are both going to be a lot more illuminating and detailed than the straight up text. (Perhaps I’ll get the video transcribed for you at some point, but for now you’ll have to survive with what I’ve got for you here.)

The bottom line is that yes, it still works, but if you’re taking a “quantity over quality” approach, you’re doing it wrong.

These days if you really want to get your articles noticed, you need to create a high quality article. If you’re not going to write quality content, then you can skip the rest of this guide, you’ll find it to be entirely too much work.

Follow these 13 steps (yes, 13!) and you’ll find your articles getting major distribution, bringing in traffic, links, high search engine rankings to your website.

Step 1) Write your article.

Step 2) Create two more versions of that article. Here’s a video on how to do just that since it’s much easier just to show you how to do it than try to write it out.

Step 3) Put whichever article version you feel is best on your blog. This needs to be your own domain name, by the way – not some blogger domains – get your own.

Step 4) Submit another version of your article to Ezine Articles. Ezine Articles doesn’t like spun content so just use one of the other two complete versions of your article.

Step 5) Record a video based on the article topic. The easiest way to do this is to simply fire up Powerpoint or some other slideshow software and essentially read the article while displaying bullet points. You won’t win any awards for your presentation skills, but if that’s what it takes to get your video done, then do it. You can use software like Camtasia, Camstudio and Screenflow (for mac users) to record your computer screen in video format.

Step 6) Distribute the video. Turning your videos into multimedia presentations is really going to enhance your text… even if it says the same thing! Now we’ll take these videos and put them on video sharing sites. Youtube can be all you ever need in terms of video sharing, but since there are a lot of video sharing sites out there, we may as well use them, right? Go on over to TubeMogul and get yourself a free account to distribute your videos. Personally, I use TrafficGeyser for video distribution, but it runs $97/month and really isn’t necessary until you start seeing money come in the door from your efforts.

Bonus: If you use Traffic Geyser, they now have an article distribution service built into their video service. It’s not the best article distribution service on the planet, but if you have an account, you may as well take advantage of it.

Step 7) Use Search Engine Nuker to distribute your video and text combination. Once you have your video uploaded, now you can take your combined three versions and the embed url for your video and put together a nice multimedia presentation to share on social networking sites.

Step Distribute through Article Marketing Automation. Article Marketing Automation is an article distribution service that puts unique versions of your article on blogs.

Step 9) Distribute through Unique Article Wizard. Unique Article Wizard is a similar service to Article Marketing Automation but they have a completely different distribution network and again provide quality backlinks to your site.

Step 10) Create A Squidoo Lens On The Topic.

Step 11) Create A Hubpage on the Topic

Step 12) Social bookmark all this content you’ve been creating. If you used the Search Engine Nuker program I recommended in Step 7, they have a URL manager that makes this extremely simple. In fact, it’s about the only way to keep all these links organized. Social bookmarking will get all your content indexed a lot faster and since SEO and organic traffic generation takes long enough as it is, I recommend you take advantage of it.

Step 13) Submit Your RSS Feeds to RSS directories. Search Engine Nuker makes this really easy as well. Remember to manually add in your own blog’s RSS feed, your Youtube RSS feed, as wells as feeds from Ezine Articles, Squidoo, and Hubpages.

Note: Your Youtube RSS feed can be a big tricky to find so here’s what it looks like:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/[YOURUSERNAMEHERE]/uploads

So for my Youtube account, it looks like this:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/gravtex/uploads

Optional Advanced Tactic – I don’t do this on every article I create, but if I think it needs some extra help on ranking in the search engines, I’ll use Linksvana to get an additional 20 links to the post. It may not seem like a lot of links, but I’ve found these links really pack a punch compared to most other links you get. If you sign up through this link, they’ll give you 50 free credits for using their system (I’m jealous, because I never got that deal).

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Professional Link Building Tools

This question comes up quite a bit.

People want to know what I personally use to build links. And the answer is complex. I use a lot of tools, methods, and resources to do it… There’s no one tool I use that can do everything I need done so I use several.

Today, I’ll talk about my favorite tools that I’ve been using over the past year or two. By the way, these tools all cost money. They’re way better than any free alternative I’ve found so I’d rather pay the monthly subscription rather than use third rate software just to save a buck or two – the attitude I’d recommend for any true business owner.

Search Engine Nuker

This is a really cool tool that can help you get top 10 rankings in Google as little as 24 minutes (no joke, I’ve done it). Currently this program is the cornerstone to my traffic building efforts and for good reason. It is extremely powerful, and unlike some of it’s competitors, has outstanding support, is updated frequently, and it actually works (most programs like this are buggy… to say the least).

To say exactly what it does takes quite a while because it has so many different things it can do. For example, need to submit and article to article directories? It’ll do it for you. Need to get your site on social network sites – again, it’ll do it for you. Want to bookmark your sites? You guessed it, not a problem.

Rather than going into a long explanation of everything the software does, just go to SearchEngineNuker.com and give it a try yourself – the first 7 days are free and the trial is fully featured. I highly recommend it, though, and probably use it in some capacity almost every day.

Traffic Geyser

Traffic Geyser is a top of the line video distribution service. Look, these days you need to be doing something to rise above the noise and stand out from the competition, and one way to do it is to use video. Yes, a lot of people have started to use video, but most people still aren’t. Be one of the smart ones that use video to promote your websites.

Now if you’re on a tight budget, you can probably get away with not getting Traffic Geyser right away. You can get decent results just submitting your videos to Youtube or if you only make a few videos a month, the free version of Tubemogul is a good alternative.

However, when you really want to get the most mileage out of a video, it’s time to use Traffic Geyser. They not only submit to video sites (24 at the moment), they also submit to social bookmarking directories, podcasting directories, have a transcription service that you can use to create articles that can be automatically submitted to article directories. It’s a really sweet system.

If you’re interested, be sure to use this link to get the first 30 days of service for $1.

Article Marketing Automation

When it comes to article distribution, article directories are good and work, but you’re better off if you can get unique content on blogs, not article directories. That’s exactly what this program does. They’ve built and extremely large network of blogs looking for free, high quality content. And in return for the content, you get links to your sites.

I really like this program and it’s helped me get some pretty nice rankings in the health niche so I’m happy to give them a shout out for creating a great piece of software.

Linkvana

I really love this tool. I’ve been using for for almost two years now and it’s really a tool built by professionals for professionals.
I’ve read in forums people saying that they don’t use it because it costs too much. And to me, that’s music to my ears because I don’t want everybody and their brother using this tool. I’ve been using it to get high rankings for competitive keywords and haven’t found anything that does a better job yet.

Using the system is a little bit of work, but that’s why it works so well. Basically, what it does is uses a large private blog network to build one way links to your websites, and these links perform great.

The price tag for this software is $147/month and you still have to pay for the blog post writing or do it yourself, and most people don’t like it. However, that’s precisely why this software works so darn well.

If you’re really serious about increasing your rankings, you’ll give it a try. If you have several sites you do work on (or do work for clients – yes, I’m 100% comfortable using this program on a site for a client) then consider it essential.

Unique Article Wizard

I remember when I first heard about the program back in 2005 (it had a different name back then, though). I thought it was the coolest concept I’d heard of for article distribution. It’s no longer the only game in town, but it still gets me links I wouldn’t otherwise get and is still well worth the price of admission ($67/month).

Where I get articles written.

Obviously, I need A LOT of content to use the tools above, and I certainly don’t do it all myself. I don’t mind doing a little writing myself now and then, but I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a writer at this point so I outsource the vast majority of my content creation.

And it really depends on the project I need done. If I need high really quality articles written, I’ll seek out an expert on Elance or Rentacoder and pay a premium price to get someone who really knows the subject matter well (get authority level content from subject matter experts). Most of the time, however, I just need basic content written to get me links so I’ll use the bargain priced services of Need-An-Article.net ($5.52/article).

Is this all I do?

No, it isn’t. Honestly, there are a lot of methods I haven’t gone into here that I use to build links, but those are the major tools I use and they can give your site a major traffic boost if you use them (Please note they aren’t magic wands that make traffic magically appear – you have to USE them). If you really want to tackle high competition keywords, you’ll need to go above and beyond those tools, but for many people the above 5 resources will get the job done most of the time.

I’ll give you one more nugget of information in this post… none of the tools above does press releases (you can get them written for $17 at Need-An-Article.net) yet it’s an extremely powerful way to get traffic instantly AND to build high quality backlinks for the future. Use them. I really like PRweb.com if you can swing it in your budget, but have also gotten good results from the cheaper alternative, Webwire.com (The $20 option works fine).

Let’s face it. Search engine traffic is valuable. If it wasn’t, Google wouldn’t be making billions of dollars and Microsoft wouldn’t be spending a fortune on building a quality search engine. It’s high quality targeted traffic that converts into buyers.

However, getting your share of search engine traffic isn’t always the easiest thing in the world to do especially in competitive markets.

So today, I’m going to talk about how to increase search engine traffic. I’m going to assume you’re looking for tips on how to get listings from the organic listings (free listings) instead of the paid listings (pay per click). If you don’t mind paying for every click you get to your website, then by all means, give it a try.

For the rest of us, however, let’s focus on getting more visitors from Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Google mostly since they are by far the most dominant player in search).

First of all, you can forget about most web traffic software. There are a few programs worth considering, but for the most part, most of them are pathetic and unnecessary.

Also, don’t bother paying for search engine submissions. Again, they’re not necessary and they’re not going to increase the amount of website traffic you see – not one iota.

So what does make a difference?

Only two things. Content and links. That’s it. Everything else is based on one of those two things.
Add more quality content to your website and get more links to that content and you will get more visitors to your website. It really is that simple.
For example, if you have a blog and you’re only writing one post a week, try writing two posts a week. Then get links to each of those posts you made.

The blog posts you write can even do double duty. You can write a blog post and then modify it a little bit and turn it into an article that can be submitted to article directories. You can use the article directory submissions to get links to those blog posts or to any page on your site you want to get more search engine traffic to.

If you have an ecommerce website, you could go in and enhance all of your product descriptions especially if you’re only using the stock descriptions provided to you. Add more content to those pages and again get more links to those newly updated pages.
The most important thing (and I’ve said this many times) is to simply take actions. That’s your magic bullet. It’s not the latest loophole or piece of automated web traffic software. It’s actually going out there and getting something done.

So go out there and create more content and get more links to your website and you’ll see an increase in search engine traffic (the free kind) in no time.

A quick search of the results in Google will show more than 8 pages of companies advertising their services or programs to submit your website to the search engines.

The prices varied wildly, but the fact of the matter is that any site submitter or company offering search engine submissions is just taking your money. (It’s kind of like paying an ATM fee).

Here’s the honest truth. Unless you run a local business, there’s no point to submitting your website to Google, Yahoo, or MSN. If you do have a local business, then making sure your local listing is claimed on their maps and your proper information is included is a good idea.

Let me explain. This is one of those services designed to prey on the new and uninformed website owners. Let me explain how your website gets indexed by major search engines like Google. All search engines use programs called spiders to crawl the Internet. Basically, this is a program that hops from one website to another and reads everything on the page. It then looks for links and goes to those pages next. When it finds a link to a website that it hasn’t seen before, it reads that page and includes it in the search engine index pages (SERPS).

The time it takes your website to appear on the search engines varies wildly – I’ve seen anywhere from 22 minutes to 6 weeks.

The search engines all have a free “submit url search engine” page you can use to submit your website to them, but it’s rather pointless to use since I just explained their preferred way to rank a website. Heck, sometimes you don’t have to submit a website or get a link in an way, shape, or form, since they look at new newly registered domains and check those out once in a while. So, yes, it is even possible to get your website listed in the search engines for free without ever doing a thing (getting ranked well is another story, however).

So do yourself a favor and save your money on these programs and companies. If you ever see a company offering to submit your company to thousands of search engines, take a moment to think of how many search engines you can name off the top of your head. If you’re like most people, you might be able to list 4 or 5. I do this for a living and I was only able to come up with 10.
In fact, the top 5 search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, Ask, AOL) have a combined 99.7% market share! That means the other thousands of search engines out there are fighting for .3% of the market.

In other words, you’re not going to see any traffic from those search engines no matter how well you rank. And if those search engines are any good, you won’t need to submit your url to them since all search engines follow links and if you have links to your website, they’ll include you.

Okay, so nobody ever said I was good about putting up blog posts on a regular basis, but this is ridiculous. I haven’t posted anything here since February. Sorry ’bout that.

Anyway,

I’ve had a few people email me and how Linksvana is working for me? I have a solid six months worth of data I can share with you about how its worked for me, so I figured I’d share the results with you and let you make up your own mind if its worth it.

You can read my old post about it if you need to catch up about what the heck Linksvana does, but if you don’t know anything about it, it’s a one way link building system.

Now a tool is only useful if you use it. So I’m only posting the traffic data for sites that I added 50 or more links to their network. For the most part we kept doing what we were doing on each site, but this wasn’t a perfect scientific study.

I found that if I only added a few links to a site, then there was no appreciable increase in traffic.

My Results:
Site 1 – 256 links added
January – 2133 visitors
July – 7319 visitors

Site 2 – 113 links added
January – 1502 visitors
July – 1602 visitors
(never saw much of a jump in traffic, but revenue is up about $120/month so I’ll take it)

Site 3 – 68 links added
January – 2063 visitors
July – 3067 visitors

Site 4 – 74 links added
January – 579 visitors
July – 999 visitors

Site 5 – 171 links added
January – 27597 visitors
July – 73947 visitors

Site 6 – 59 links added
January - 0 visitors (launched in May)
July – 445 visitors
With this site, I only used the Linksvana system to get links, nothing else. I did manage to get some top ten rankings in google despite the on page SEO sucking for this site, so as best I can tell, Google is definitely giving some weight to the links from their system.

One last thing I’ll add here is that while you can’t tell from the data, I got much better results from sites where I added links consistently over time instead of just doing one link building push. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me say that you need to build links over time, so I’ll hop off my soapbox now.

If you want to check it out, it’s Linksvana.com – I’ve found it to be a worthwhile investment for me although it does take some time to actually use it (although it can all be outsourced pretty easily).

If you have any questions or would like to share your own results, post them in the comments below - I’d be interested to hear from you.

I see posts in forums just about everyday from somebody new wondering how they can get free traffic to their website or how they can get high search engine rankings.

They want to know all the magical little “secrets” to getting tons of traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

I used to reply to all of these forums posts with my answer, but it always seemed that someone would pop up the very next day asking the same question, so I’m going to cover some very simple things you can do to get traffic to your website right here in my blog instead.

But here’s the key…

You ready?

You sure? You might not want to hear this.

Okay, if you’re really sure…

The key to building up massive amounts of free search engine traffic is to take ACTION.

It’s not some silly little automated system that just sucks up your money, or the latest search engine “loophole” for you to exploit that will actually accomplish the opposite of what you want.

The key is to take action so if you’re expecting to sit on your butt and traffic will magically appear, then free search engine traffic isn’t for you. It’s great traffic to get, but it takes a little bit of work to get it.

Okay, if I’ve got you convinced that taking action is what it’s going to take to get a lot of free search engine traffic, let me give you some simple actions you can take.

Daily Actions

Here are some actions you can take on a daily basis, and once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to do this all within 15 minutes. Some things you could do: make a post everyday in a niche related to your website with a simple link in your signature linking back to your website; make a post on your website’s blog; you could also comment on other people’s blogs leaving helpful feedback or commentary and also including a link back to your site.

Obviously, that’s not an all inclusive list of things you can do to build traffic on a daily basis, but it should help you get the wheels turning in your head to come up with even more ways.

Weekly Actions

For your weekly actions, you could take an hour or two out of one day and get these done. You could write an article or two on a topic related to your website, and submit it to popular article directories like EzineArticles. You could also submit your website to 5-10 directories. There are literally thousands of directories out there. You could even record a video and put it up on Youtube and other video sharing sites, and drive traffic to your site with video.

Monthly Actions

Every month you could take an hour or two to write and distribute a press release. Press releases are actually easy to write, and a good press release can drive a ton of traffic to your website in addition to getting you a lot of high quality links.

So there you have it, some simple actions you can take on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Just make sure you pick something you can do on a consistent basis and watch your website traffic keep on going up right along with it.

Want more strategies like this to get more traffic to your website? Then be sure to sign up for my printed monthly newsletter about traffic generation - Traffic Transformation Monthly. Every month I’ll send you some of my best strategies for getting more visitors and on how to convert those visitors into buyers.

If you’re wondering if the Linkvana one way link building system is a worthwhile investment, then this review if for you.

When it comes to link building systems, I’ll be honest, there’s a lot of junk out there. And when it comes to link building a lot of people take the attitude of, “couldn’t hurt.”

In the world of link building, that’s not true at all. If you get links from “bad neighborhoods” or if you get too many at once or if they all use the same anchor text, these links that you thought were going to help you will actually hurt your search engine rankings and could even lead to the eventual banning of your domain name.

I know because I’ve used many of them in the past in an attempt to more easily improve my position in the search engines.

So it’s only natural I guess that I would be skeptical of a one way link building system that allows you to build unlimited links to unlimited domains. My first thought was, “here we go again.”

However, after reading the salesletter at www.linksvana.com (which was surpringly low key and hype free) I started to think that maybe, just maybe this one was different.

It sounded like it had been designed to not only be easy to use, but also to build links the correct way. And by correct I’m saying that you can vary up the anchor text pointing to your site, build links slowly over time instead of all at once, and get links from quality sites that all have Pagerank and a quality backlink structure of their own.

After debating it for about a week, I finally did decide to just bit the bullet and give it a try.

And once I got the hang of the system I found that it was extremely effective in increasing the rankings, and consequently traffic of several of my test sites. In just two weeks, I saw the traffic on two of my test sites double, and now I have to admit that I’m hooked.

What I’ve done is identified the 8 main advantages this system has over many of the others that you’ll see floating around out there promising to help you build one way links to your website.

1) Links are built over time.

The main problem that most link building systems have is that they build too many links too quickly. Linksvana has solved that that problem by throttling how many links it will send to one “project” at a time. I believe the limit is set to 8 links per day, which is about right.

However, through the magic of their queue system you can build several hundred links in a month, and their system will automatically spread them up over the course of the entire month instead of sending them all to your website at once.

If you’ve ever used a system like PayPerPost.com you know just how fast you can typically get links when your campaign is approved – typically it’s too fast.

2) Blogs in the network are all unique content

Unique content is king. However, the content also needs to make sense. Linksvana only accepts unique content in their system (and not junk “spun” content either). That means that their blogs look just like any other blog on the Internet – unique. This feature prevents any potential footprints and keeps the links you get from this system of high value.

That means it’s a little bit more work initially, but the long term benefits of a unique content system completely trump the little bit more effort you need to put in.

3) Blogs all have age and Pagerank

Of course, if all the blogs were brand new and not indexed in Google, they really wouldn’t do much good in helping your search engine rankings.

While I do have some theories as to how this system was put together, I’m still rather amazed that they have so many different blogs that are all at least Pagerank 2 (many are higher) and that they’re all at least a year old with some being up to six years old. The fact that these blogs are in good standing in Google is critical to making it work.

4) Easiest system I’ve ever used to build deep links to a website

Have you read my blog post on deep links? If not, then suffice it to say, deep links are extremely important to helping your website rank well in the search engines, especially for highly competitive terms.

The only problem is that a lot of other link building techniques only help you build links to the home page of your website. The other easy way to do this is through article marketing, but since article marketing just isn’t as effective as it used to be, this system make a great replacement to using articles to build deep links.

5) Centralized Interface

One of the things I’ve really come to appreciate about this system is the centralized user interface. You can manage all of your projects from one control panel, and using the system is actually quite intuitive. And I have nothing against 3waylinks.net (which I also recommend), but this system is so much easier to use.

6) Unlimited Links and Domains

While every system has practical limits somewhere, you’re not limited in the number of links you can build to one website and you’re not limited to the number of domains you can add.

While you can only build 240 links per month to one domain, you could do that every month, and you could do that on 50 domains if you liked every month. That’s 12,000 links per month!

7) Easy to do yourself or cheap to outsource

Part of the reason that they allow you to have unlimited numbers of links and domains is that a little bit of work has to go into creating each link. You don’t just login and automatically queue up 2880 links and forget about building links for the rest of the year.

Instead, you write short little blogs posts (each must be unique, not PLR, copied, or spun content) and then you queue up the post in the system. A couple days later you’ve got a link.

While these posts are easy to write and only take about 3 minutes to do apiece, there is still a time commitment involved.

If you just don’t have that kind of time, then they have a ridiculously cheap outsourcing option where you can have them create the unique blog posts for you for just $2/post. So even if you don’t have time, you can use this system to build a heck of a lot of quality links.

8 - Limited number of members allowed

To protect the integrity of the network and to allow everyone to get the most benefit out of a system like this, it makes sense that this type of network has to be limited in the number of people who can join.

That’s why I’m writing this review right now. Normally, I’d spend several more months testing this system like I did with 3waylinks.net to be absolutely certain it works before I recommended it to you. However, I’m fairly certain it will be full by then, and I don’t want you to miss out.

My initial testing has found that it can very quickly and very effectively boost your rankings, especially for terms of low and medium competition (I haven’t tested high competition keywords yet as it has been less than a month since I started using this system). And keep in mind that if you have a bunch of low traffic keywords that you rank well for that even though each page doesn’t bring in substantial traffic that together they will bring in a ton of traffic.

So what I’m really trying to say is that if you want more traffic to your website, then this is one system that I’d highly recommend trying out.

You can learn all about Linkvana at www.linksvana.com.

Bonus: To encourage you to give this system a try I’m sweetening the pot a little bit. You see, while this system is highly effective at building links you still need to know how to structure them. That’s why I recorded a short video that gives you several advanced use tips that will help you get the most out of this system.

To get this bonus, you must order at www.linksvana.com then use the contact form on this site to forward your purchase receipt. I’ll then send you the video for you to watch.

Have a great day, and happy link building.

Gary

In an online world where everyone is trying to make money quickly and where everyone wants everything right now without having to work for it, it’s easy to see the appeal of blackhat search engine optimization.

With the relative ease of use (if you have the right tools and knowledge), and the speed at which you can make money, a lot of people have flocked to using blackhat search engine optimization techniques.

I’ll even admit to having ventured over to the “dark side” for a couple years. However, I got out of it once I realized that I wasn’t building anything of value, and that I’d have to continue working hard for a diminishing return.

You see, that’s the problem you face when in the world of blackhat search engine optimization. Like an outlaw, you’re always running from the law – or in this case the Google. There’s just no long term value in the blackhat world.

You’ll spend your time trying to keep the websites you build under the radar. Instead of trying to get listed on the first page of the search engines, you’ll be happy with page two or three because you know that page one would simply bring too much attention to your site.

You’ll actually get nervous if you have a website that gets over 1,000 visitors in a day because you’ll realize that the life cycle of your website is about to end (trust me, it is), and you’ll have to start back at square one as soon as the website gets banned.

Blackhat search engine optimization can even cause problems in your personal life. People will ask you what you do, and you’ll give some vague answer so as not to reveal what you actually do because you’re not proud of it and certainly don’t want people to see examples of you work.

Conversely, when you’re dealing in the world of whitehat search engine optimization you’ll notice that it takes a little longer to get a lot of traffic flowing into your website, but you’re not in constant fear of it disappearing.

If you suddenly start getting thousands of visitors a day, it’ll be cause to throw a party, not panic. You’ll know that the work you’ve put into the site is paying off.

Whitehat search engine optimization is a long term strategy whereas blackhat search engine optimization is absolutely a short term strategy. With whitehat you’re building an asset that you could eventually sell if you chose to, but a blackhat website has almost no value on the market these days – nobody wants to own a website that is in imminent danger of getting banned by the search engines.

Don’t let the dark side tempt you – stick to the light side and you’ll be a lot better off two years down the road than your colleagues that decide to go blackhat.

Want more great tips and strategies for getting traffic to your website? Then be sure to sign up for my printed monthly newsletter - Traffic Transformation Monthly. You’ll get exclusive content and strategies for getting traffic to your website.

When it comes to hiring someone to create content for your website, it’s important to know what language your writers speak.

First, you’ll want to consider what language is their FIRST language. If it’s not English, and they haven’t spent the last 10 years living in an English speaking country, then they probably aren’t going to be up to snuff for your article writing projects.

I’ve hired a ton of different writers over the past few years to create content for my webistes, and I’ve had to learn this the hard way. I’ve tried to get cheap and take the writer from India over the qualified writer from the U.S. Even in cases where the person from India has a masters degree in English, I’d still have been better off with the native English speaker.

In my experience, even the excellent writers from India still tend to make small mistakes that make it obvious they’re not a native speaker.

And the ones I’ve hired who have masters degrees in English, they use a lot of big words that just aren’t in common use today, and they may have sentences that are grammatically correct, but are very awkward to read.

I seem to have hit a nerve with writers from India who don’t seem to appreciate my take on their writing.

Just recently I had one write the following to me:

“Wish you’d kept off that snide remark about writers from India. You guys will never improve. The white skin reflects your mentality - shallow, pale and totally colorless!”

Obviously this person is ticked off, but I still stand by my original assessment that Indian writers are a major step below American writers. If I wanted content written in Indian, I’m confidant they’d do a good job, however, for content written in English, I’ll stick to my team of American writers despite the extra expense. They can insult me all they want, but as they say, “the proof is in the pudding.”

Having writers whose first language is English is very important, but it’s not the only consideration you need to make.

The next thing you need to know is if your writer knows American English. With apologies to the British, American English is the standard language of the web. Unless you’re serving just one particular country like England or Australia, you’ll want to stick to American spellings, and American slang, otherwise you’ll be turning off a large portion of your reading audience.

So while it may cost a bit more to get a person who grew up and lives in the United States to write your articles, the investment will be well worth it.

If you’re using your articles for article marketing, you’ll get more people republishing the article, and more people clicking through your links which means more people visiting your website.

If using articles as content for your website, you’ll have people spending more time on your site, linking to it, and spending money on your website.

The last point I want to cover is making sure your writers speak the jargon of whatever niche your website is in.

If I said I have an MS63 PCGS certified 1907 High Relief Wire Rim St. Gauden, what did I just say? Unless you collect coins you probably have no idea what the heck I just said. If you collect coins, you probably know I’m talk about a $20 gold coin (that one in particular is worth almost $25,000). The point I’m trying to make is that when you hire someone to write articles for you, make sure they’re familiar with the lingo in that area. If they’re not, your visitor will be able to spot that quickly, and you’ll end up losing credibility.

Follow these guidelines for your articles and you’ll find that increasing traffic and revenue to your website is a whole lot easier than when you try to use 3rd rate writing services just to save a couple bucks.

If you found this article valuable, you’ll get articles just like these and a whole lot more when you sign up for my traffic generation newsletter - Traffic Transformation Monthly. It’s a printed newsletter that will be shipped to your home or office every month.

I study traffic generation. I really do. I spend thousands of dollars each year buying products that promise to help me get an edge in the traffic generation market hoping that I might learn just some small twist I didn’t know before. I read tons of blogs every month looking for the latest in what’s working, and I read several monthly newsletters that all talk about traffic generation. Heck, I even write one myself.

If you’d have asked me a month ago if I knew of all the major strategies to get traffic to a website, I would have opened up a gigantic mindmap stored on my computer that includes everything from SEO to Social Media to PPC to Radio to JVs to Video to Postcards to Writing Books. It’s huge. Writing a manual on the full gambit of those strategies would be likely result in 50 lbs of manuals.

I’d have probably acknowledged some minor ones I didn’t know about, but I would be pretty sure I knew all the strategies for getting A LOT of traffic to a website.

Well, I was wrong.

I recently purchased a product – it was cheap so I thought what the heck – that taught me about a major source of traffic that I’d completely missed.

In my huge stack of manuals, newsletters, and audio programs nobody had ever talked about it. Not one single mention.

And this isn’t just a few visitors a day type of traffic or even a few hundred. This method can result in thousands of extra visitors per day. It’s a resource that has been overlooked by most marketers for years, and the select few that know about are making a killing from it.

Would you like to know what it is?

Software.

By creating freeware/shareware programs and distributing them to the major software directories, you can get thousands or even tens of thousands is extra visitors a day to visit a website, sign up to a newsletter, or even go to an affiliate page of yours.

In the manual, Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate, the author Chris Rempel covers how to use this strategy in detail, and how to create program even if you couldn’t program your way out of a box. I’m not a programmer either, and I can do this.

This software strategy isn’t all he covers either. He actually talks about how to build traffic to affiliate sites using good old fashioned SEO. And the best part is that he actually knows what he’s talking about.

It’s the first affiliate manual I’ve ever read where the author truly understood search engine optimization and how to build real traffic from the search engines. And he took that understanding and has used it to generate a healthy six figure income with a relatively small number of websites. It’s definitely a worthwhile read.

And if you’ve been reading this blog for a while or you’ve read my Ultimate Traffic Blueprint or taken my link building course, you’ll find that my strategies are completely compatible with his.

And the product is under priced, so even if you’re on a tight budget, there’s no excuse.

If you’re looking for a fairly easy way to make some extra money this year, then I’d highly recommend giving this system a shot.

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