back to the future w/ old-school website promotion

submitted by John Hillage

Search engines didn't always own the web... Way back in the old days, when search engines were just toys that gave you a random list of irrelevant websites and doorway pages, people still managed to get traffic to their websites.

Some of the tactics we used back then are still useful today. Last week, I talked about using content distribution to build links. This week, I'm going to dive a little deeper into the methods used to create and distribute articles to e-zine publishers.

E-zines, or email newsletters, are more popular than ever, and more numerous than you can probably imagine. No matter what the topic, there are probably dozens or even hundreds of email newsletters going out every week, to untold numbers of subscribers.

So how can you get started? The first step, and it’s very important, is research. You need to find out what kind of information your target audience is interested in. If you’re a mortgage broker, for example, folks might enjoy an article explaining what the heck “escrow” is.

Once you’ve selected some topics, you need to write the articles, or pay a professional to do it. Good ezine articles run 500-1000 words, are written with simple language, and provide clear, useful information. Many professional writers will be happy to write articles for you.

My recommendation for those just starting out is to produce no more than 2-3 articles at first. Once you’ve written your articles, it’s time to distribute them. I’d recommend sending out no more than one article per week. You have a few good choices for this:

1. You can distribute them yourself, via the “article announcement” mailing lists that many ezine publishers use to find content. Start here: http://www.all-in-one-business.com/groups/
2. If you’d rather not do it yourself, you can hire someone to distribute articles to ezines. My students and I have used the Phantom Writers (www.thephantomwriters.com), iSnare.com, and others, with great success.
3. You can submit to article database websites, such as goarticles.com, ideamarketers.com, isnare.com, valuablecontent.com, and others. You will find a regularly updated list of article databases at http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html
4. You can use also software like Article Submitter Pro (http://www.articlesubmitterpro.com/) to submit your article to multiple databases at the same time.