You've heard that writing articles is a good way to get people to visit your website. So you've written a few articles and put them on a bunch of article sites. Then you just sit back and wait for the traffic to come pouring in. And hold on. There's nothing going on. What's going on?
The deal is that your links might not work if your article is republished in a certain place. Putting up articles is a great way to get people to visit your site. Search engines love it, and if you do it right, it will bring more people to your site and help you move up in the rankings. When article writers, authors, and publishers don't all follow the same rules, that's when things go wrong. These are the main problems:
- Links don't work with the new publisher
- The original article wasn't set up right
- Copying and pasting an article into a new website without links
Let's start with #2, "Original article was not formatted correctly." Not every site with articles is the same. On some sites, you can just type plain text and it will be formatted correctly. For example, it will know that http://www.yoursite.com is a live link and treat it as such. On some sites, you may need to use HTML to format everything. The easiest way to do this is sometimes to type your article in a web design program like "Dreamweaver," then look at the source code and copy and paste it. If you don't have a program like this, you should learn some basic HTML tags:
Look at the page's source to see the HTML tags.
This is a "break" tag. You use a "break" tag to end a line without starting a new paragraph. The break tag makes a line break wherever you put it. It is a very common tag that most article sites understand.
Anything you want to be bold should go between these tags.
Anything you want to make italic should go between these tags.
Some sites will know that this is a link that works. Many people won't! Here is where you'll lose your connections! If someone copies and pastes your article into another website or ezine, the link won't work. If someone really wants to go to your website, they can copy and paste the link into their browser, but it's much easier if they can just click on it. No matter how many times it is republished, search engines will not follow a link that can't be clicked on. Imagine that your article is reprinted 1,000 times. That's 1,000 potential backlinks to your site, but if the link isn't clickable, you won't get any benefit from them. This is how your links to your sites should always look:
YourWebSite
If you use the right HTML formatting for links, the links on your website will always work. Google "HTML tags" to find out more about HTML tags.
- The links don't work with the new publisher. All article sites have a policy that says, "You are free to republish the article as long as the links and author bio stays with the article." Some don't realize your links are dead or don't know how to make them live. Others just don't use them at all or don't make them live on purpose. You can write to the site owner and ask them to make them live, but that's about it. Some will do what you say, but others won't. Just think of it as the price of doing business. For every site that doesn't make your links work, 10 will.
- The article was copied and pasted into a new page, but there were no links. Your article may be formatted correctly on the article site where you posted it, but when you copy and paste it into a new website or ezine, some of its formattings may be lost. Some of the best sites have an option called "ezine ready." If you choose this, your article will be shown in the right HTML format, making it easier to copy and paste.
Don't stop writing! Still, writing articles and posting them all over the Internet is a great way to get people to visit your site. Content is king, and people who own websites and publish ezines are always looking for new, original content.
