Writing and submitting articles to article banks has been proven to be one of the most effective of all traffic generating techniques. You may not actually generate any real traffic for your website in the next few days by learning to write and submit articles but this technique will serve you very well and it is worth the effort to learn how to do it and use it to your fullest advantage. You may think that you have no writing ability at all but you are probably wrong. You might not be ready to write the Great American Novel but you can write articles about the topic of your website and about the products that you are selling. You just need to know the rules for making them effective. The first and most important few words of your article are in the title or the headline. The title MUST contain the key words that relate to the topic of your website and to the products that you sell. This is the first thing that other website owners or E-zine publishers will look at when they are deciding whether to reproduce your article on their websites or in the publications because they know that the key words are what search engines use to determine the results of searches.

* Note: The way people find products or information on the internet is by the use of search engines. These people use key words to find what they want by entering them into the search box and clicking “Search”. One such search may be for “car parts” or “car tires”. What is returned by the search engine is based on whatever key words the searcher used.

Another thing of importance regarding the headline or title of the article is that it MUST draw attention. Using something simple like Car Parts won’t do. Your title MUST be interesting enough to grab the reader’s attention and keep him reading. “Car Parts for Your Mercedes”…well, that isn’t really great either. How about, “Car Parts for your SL-600″ or “Car Parts For Your SL That The Women Can’t Resist”? These last two headlines should encourage someone looking for parts their Mercedes to continue reading the article.

The second most important few words in your article are in the first line of the first paragraph. Internet surfers have a notoriously short attention span and rarely actually read anything word for word unless it is information that they believe will serve their needs, solve a problem or make life better in general for them. So…the title…and the first line are the bait and the hook that you use to entice a reader to actually read the article. The first line needs to contain the key words, as well, and it also need to be attention getting. The fish were begging for more of this fish bait after my first cast! If you were a fisherman, you would keep reading.

Another thing about writing articles that you plan to submit to article banks is that they need to be short. Very short! They should be a maximum of 400 words and closer to 300 would be better. Its easy to get carried away and suddenly have an article that is 1000 words or more when you are discussing a subject that you know a lot about and are interested in. If you start writing and forget to stop, break long wordy articles down and make three or four articles out of the one long one.

Keep in mind that short attention span we discussed earlier and use short sentences and paragraphs. And don’t use big words or run-on sentences. Make your article pleasing to the eye and it will be read.

Go easy on the exclamation points, as well. One exclamation point indicates importance or excitement… a half a dozen are just rude.

Your resource box at the end of the article is the part that is most important to you. Other website owners or E-zine publishers who download and reproduce your article are required to include your resource box. This box needs to contain your full name, your contact information and, most importantly, a link to your website. That link is the little thing that is going to help increase traffic for you.

Warning! Do NOT word-wrap this link! Type it out in full, http://www.whatever.com. All email programs that E-zine editors use to send out their newsletters and E-zines do not support word-wrapped links so you can defeat your own purpose by word-wrapping the link to your website.

Submitting Articles: You can find article banks and article repositories on the Internet by simple doing a search for them using your favorite search engine. When you have located them, you must submit your articles according to the guidelines that each site sets forth.

You will likely be told that there is software available that you can use to automatically submit your articles to banks and repositories…and there is, in fact, such software. The problem with the automated submission software is that most of the larger (and more effective) banks and repositories don’t accept automated submissions. So, while this software can in fact save you time by submitted to the smaller sites, it isn’t going to help you much with the bigger sites.

Yes, submitting articles is time consuming and tedious (not to mention boring) work but it is work that can provide your site with a lot of targeted traffic. Each person who reads an article that you have written will also be exposed to the link to your site. If the article is good and if it provides good information, these people will visit your site. They may buy what you are selling or they may opt-in to your mailing list… or maybe they will do both. By the way, there are services that will do article submissions for you. Of course this is a paid service.

Another solution which I use is Unique Article Wizard. UAW submits unique articles to hundreds of article publishers at the click of a mouse. Spend a couple hours writing your article, click Publish and watch the traffic grow to your site.