Re-Purpose Your Content For Article Directories For More Traffic
Another good technique for increasing the traffic to your blog is to turn each of your blog posts into a ezine article that is posted to the popular ezine directories.
In fact, you already have a pretty good inventory of article content. Two or 3 blog posts a week amounts to over 100 posts per year. This is a good inventory of writing that can be turned into a potentially great asset. Here are the steps to take in order to do maximize your content like this…
- Each blog post actually NEEDS to be transformed, as most blog posts will not stand on their own as formal articles. The transformation process begins with a very basic step; turn each of your posts into a .doc or.txt file. They’re now ready for you to add an appropriate introduction and conclusion to each of your posts.
- Make sure each new article stands independently enough on its own. This means
:
- Filling in any supporting information that will be required in support of each point you make. You need to treat the forum reader like someone that knows nothing at all about your blog, and
- make sure your article meets the word count and grammatical requirements of the directory in which you intend on having the article published.
- Begin submitting your articles to the major ezine article directories. The following directories are the best place to start – they’ll get you the best return for your effort:
- Each directory has its own particular guidelines that must be followed; so it’s a more efficient use of your time to focus on preparing quality submissions to only 3 – 5 directories, such as the ones above. This way you can ensure each submission is accepted the first time without the need for extensive re-work on your part.
- To further support the distribution of your articles, consider giving them to your affiliates for their own use; e.g. on their own blogs or as website content. If you want to do this, there’s a couple of other things you should do.
- Figure out how your affiliates will get each article. A page on your website often works well for this. The articles can be downloaded as promotional material for your product.
- You should also develop a fairly plain and simple license page that automatically goes with the article or needs to be agreed with prior to the download. This will detail what CAN and CANNOT be done with the article.
- Here’s where the traffic comes in! At the end of each article you submit to the directories, you’re allowed to include a “Resource Box.” In this resource box you’re allowed to include a link back to your blog, and this has TWO main benefits. Firstly, you’ll get visitors from people who read your article and click on your link because they want to know more. And secondly, you’ll get a boost in the search engines because you have another link pointing to your blog, which acts as a “vote” for your site, so Google and the other search engines will push you up in the rankings!
For maximum effect, your “resource box” should tease the reader into clicking on your link to find out more. Something like this:
James T Noble is a 10 year veteran of the online marketing industry and has helped some of the world’s biggest brands and companies market their products and services online. Read more about Search Engine Optimization on his blog.
TIP: If you link the specific words that relate to your blog, as I have above, Google will rank you more highly when people search for that SPECIFIC phrase (in this case, Search Engine Optimization).
So there you have it – a quick and easy way to re-purpose your content to gain a brand new source of traffic. When you publish great content to these article directories, other people will begin to re-publish the content on their websites too. This is GREAT, because it means you’re getting your content in front of a wider audience (which means more people clicking through to your website from the link at the end of the article) AND you’re getting more links on more websites, all pointing back to YOUR website… which all count as extra “votes” for you in the search engine rankings!
So just go and do this stuff. Why not? You’ve already got the content almost ready after all!
If you do it consistently you’ll be very pleasantly surprised at the new stream of traffic you’re generating!
Get more tips, advice and free training from my newsletter. It comes out about once a week and you can always sign off if you don’t like it.
Article by James T Noble
James makes small businesses bigger. He's previously worked with some of the world's largest brands and companies to market their products and services online - including Disney, Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, Virgin, Coca Cola, MTV and many others. Read more about James...
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
If you do it consistently you’ll be very pleasantly surprised at the new stream of traffic you’re generating!
I agree. The main article directories get a LOT of traffic and also give you good “link juice” for your search engine rankings!
James, Great information. You really make a potentially complicated topic very simple. How many links do you usually put in the resource box and if you put more than one do you use the same link?
You can usually put up to 2 links… that’s the maximum allowed by most article directories.
I often just put one… or sometimes put 1 to the homepage and 1 to a specific page on the site (e.g. a blog post)
{ 1 trackback }