Dreaming of getting tons of targeted traffic to your site without spending a red cent? Fantasizing of effective free advertising? Then you should definitely start writing articles for promotion! The things you’ve gotta love about articles are:

A. They are free to submit, allowing thousands of people to read them (and see your web link) without costing you a dime.

B. They prepare a visitor for purchasing your product or service much more effectively than a three line Pay Per Click ad possibly could.

C. They create a ton of inbound links to your website, which in turn boosts your Search Engine ranking (making it easier for people to find your site).

So, whether you have a product to sell, an affiliate product to promote, a newsletter, or just want more truly targeted traffic to your website, writing articles is THE way to go.

Here are the 4 steps to getting NON-STOP traffic using articles:

1. Write an informative, interesting article that your target audience would enjoy reading. Make sure that the subject covered in your article relates to the content on your site or you won’t convert very many sales or opt-ins.

For instance if your website caters to dog owners: DO write an article on the different breeds of dogs or anything else to do with dogs, but DON’T write an article about cats.

2. If you don’t believe you can write a very good article then pay someone else to write it for you. Elance.com is an excellent place to find potential article writers. Someone on Elance will write you a quality article for a low one time fee, and then you just slap your name on it and promote it as your own (this is perfectly legal).

3. The next step is writing the ad that is inserted at the end of your article in the byline, authors bio, about the author, resource box or whatever else it may be called. This little 3 to 5 line ad will entice your readers to visit your site.

EXAMPLE:
Jane Doe is the author of Hot Copywriting Tips, a must have online newsletter for all website owners. Go to http://www.JanesSite.com to grab your FREE copy now.

4. Submit your article to every article site that has a category relevant to your article, and you’re ready to roll.

My favorite article sites are:

www.ideamarketers.com

www.goarticles.com

www.articlecity.com

www.articlesfactory.com

www.buzzle.com

www.ezinearticles.com

www.netterweb.com

www.isnare.com

Now get started promoting your articles. Get them out there fast if you want to set your traffic counter spinning.

1. Write Articles. We all know that the major search engines rank websites more highly if there are a lot of links pointing back to that particular web site. The search engines assume that the more links which point to you, the more important and relevant your site is.

Getting other sites to link to you can be a major chore, and you want to avoid free for all link farms, so what to do? A lot of webmasters have begun to write articles which they allow other webmasters to freely display on their sites, so long as they provide a link back to the authors website. If you list your article in the major free content article directories, you can easily build up 500 to 5000 links back to your website. This boosts your PR rank, making you easier to find in the search engines, and you’ll also get traffic from people who read your article and click on the link.

2. Banner exchanges. Banner exchanges can provide a steady stream of visitors if used correctly. Most banner exchanges work like this – you display their banners on your website, and upload a banner of your own. For every 2 times you show an exchange banner, they’ll show your banner once on another exchange member’s site. Banner exchanges have been around a long time, but they still work.

3. Traffic Exchanges. Unlike banner exchanges, traffic exchanges are a fairly new idea. The basic premise is that a large group of website owners agree to visit each other’s websites. for each member site you visit, another member will visit your site.

Some exchanges, like www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?412437 will give you multiple credits for each site you visit, and credits for each person you refer. It’s possible to get thousands of new visitors each day.

Summary: There are many ways to get new traffic to your website. The three methods I outlined here are absolutely free.