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 search engines are the method by which people find products or information that they are looking for on the Internet. To find those products or that information, they type key words into the search boxes of the search engines. For example; they might type in 'fish bait' or 'fishing lures'. The results that the search engines provide are based on the key words that the searcher uses.

The other thing about the title or headline of your article is that it must be attention getting. You can't just title your article 'Fish Bait'. You have to make your title interesting enough to entice the reader to keep reading. 'Fish Bait that Works'...that isn't very good either. How about, 'Fish Bait from Heaven' or The Fish Bait the Fish Can't Resist'? Either of those titles would entice the person who was looking for information about fish bait to keep reading.

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. It's easy to get carried away and suddenly have an article that is 1000 words are 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.

Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Remember that short attention span that we talked about? Don't use big words and don't use run-on sentences. Make you article easy to 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.