If you want an effective way to get traffic to your website one very effective way is to write articles. Most veterans of internet businesses know this, but many newcomers or those not owning websites may not know the value of articles. Articles can quench the thirst for information and knowledge. They also provide many other benefits for a site.



Articles provide an important element in the search engine rankings if they contain content that is relevant to the particular web page or the site itself. They can help place a site higher in the ranking of search engine results of keywords and phrases on a site. They also can attract more website visitors when they are linked to your site from another website or even email. Articles help give more credibility and higher trust levels to customers and potential customers when they visit your site. Would you feel better to see great content on a site? I think so, and articles can help do that.

Often articles are beneficial to both your website business and its traffic. They must be relevant to the website and are very effective if focused on the particular theme of the site instead of general topics. When readers like articles, they often tell their friends, family and others. They will recommend your site, thus helping create a larger volume of traffic. You make more sales when your traffic trusts and believes in you. Your product or services are easier to sell if the visitor believes you know what you are doing and articles can help you do that.

If you want to stay higher in search engine rankings you should have articles on your website. This is easier said than done, however, because you really do not want the same articles that many other sites have. Search engines may ultimately penalize websites with too much duplicate content on them. There has been talk of them possibly instituting some rule to keep duplicate content at bay by potentially reducing the rank of those sites that sport duplicate content, which can include articles. To assure that you will not be penalized you need fresh content or content that is not available in too many places on the web.

Unless you are good in writing it can be best to spend your time on other facets of your business. Most website owners of small to medium size websites cannot afford the necessary resources to hire professional article writers since the cost can be prohibitive. You also cannot copy other articles since most are copyrighted. It is not worth getting sued or penalized by doing such as a shortcut to writing your own articles. Is there anything you can do to get low cost or free articles?

You can get free articles. They are all over the Internet, but mind you there will likely be many others getting the same articles. This will expose you to the duplicate content dilemma. To help avoid this, look for free articles in the public domain. Because this can involve more work, unless you use software to help you, there is quite likely to be fewer people using this method than getting them from the free article directories, a main source of free articles.

In the public domain you will not have problems with copyright infringement or resultant penalties. You can copy these works in their entirety or mix and match to your hearts content. Public domain articles are articles freely given to the public. Be sure the articles you find are truly in the public domain. There are strict rules to determine what constitutes the public domain. You can do whatever you want with articles in the public domain. You can place them on your site, name them as yours, use in a report or for whatever you decide works for you. Keep in mind the articles must be relevant to a website to be effective in helping any particular site.

Another way to get free articles is to allow other sites with the same or similar theme as yours to submit articles to your site. This would be to complement your existing content. Just make sure you realize those articles will have other author's links in their resource boxes that could direct the readers to their site. You will normally want a minimum of that as you want to keep visitors on your site. That fact makes it important to have your own articles. Then your resource box would link to your site if others had your article.

There is a downside to public domain articles. Other website owners, often your competitors, may use them as well. This could be a predicament you need to avoid as much as possible. You may have to edit them, change them somewhat, add more keywords or make other changes to make them unique to yourself.

Whenever possible, you need original articles. There are many article writers who do part time and freelance article writing jobs that charge reasonable fees. You can have good articles created that have keywords and keyword phrases to match your particular website theme. The investment in such articles could be worthwhile because you could use them for content and to help generate traffic and links to your site. You would hold copyrights to them and you can use them anyway you want, including in eBooks, reports or other information products.

If you don't have time to search the public domain for articles there is another source for articles. They are not public domain, but are articles written for niche themed websites. Articles with limited circulation are available from a few sources on the web. The articles are written to help website owners with corresponding themes to use on their sites. There won't be nearly as many websites using them since they are of limited circulation and not available for anyone else to use other than those who purchased them. These articles are very cost effective and easily beat trying to write your own. In most cases you could create a quick Adsense site and use the articles to make excellent relevant content much faster than almost any other way. This would be great for Adsense monetized sites or other sites where you will be making money from the site. These can be one the best sources of inexpensive articles you will find on the Internet.

All in all, articles are one of the very best ways to add content to a website. Bonus qualities for articles are potential for increased traffic to sites that use them, increased search engine traffic, increased Google Page Rank, and links to authors of the articles if they have their website links in the resource box. If you are the author articles can help boost your internet presence and recognition.

Copyright (c) 2006, Charles Harmon