One way of improving your search engine ranking involves writing interesting, informative content articles. Search engines like articles and many people will read and link to articles that can provide information relating to subjects that they are interested in.

Articles are a low cost way to generate links, boost your search engine rankings, locate new prospects and open up a flood of targeted traffic to your web site.

As more and more of your articles appear on different websites, the total number of links to your site increases. Your websites placement in the search engines will also increase as the incoming links to your website increases.

Article directories are not going to accept your article automatically. They now have guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting. Using the same articles that others have already submitted may not be a good idea since the articles have already been listed on the search engines and article directories and this means that they are linked to other web sites.

Most importantly, you can not expect people to want to read, link-to and circulate an article that is poorly written, full of mistakes, lacking content and does not provide any new or useful information. The main reason for you to write an article is to inform your audience. If it is not focused on this purpose then you will fail to achieve the benefits of branding, generating leads and promoting your web site.

Many thousands of people are looking for specific information on a specific topic. You can save them countless hours of fruitless searches by writing good content articles with useful information written in an interesting and thought provoking way, on the topics that interest them.

You must figure out how to get people to read your article! Then get them to click on your resource box.

A resource box is usually found at the end of an article. So what should you put in your resource box?

It should contain the name of the author, a brief description of the author, a brief description of your web site and a link. The resource box is your readers link to the source of the article and if they liked your article it will entice them to go to your site. Good content for your resource box must contain keywords that relate to your site. Make people click your resource box by providing creative and interesting content that touches your readers curiosity.

Interesting, informative, professionally written articles with the appropriate content can provide you with targeted traffic and high quality permanent links to your web site.

Quick tips for writing an article:

1. Do not write a classified ad, do not try to sell anything in your article.

2. Do not include affiliate links, publishers do not like them.

3. Avoid spelling mistakes, does not show professionalism.

4. Keep your paragraphs short, readers will ignore long batches of words in long paragraphs. Use bullet points and numbered lists.

5. Three sentence formula, use a verb as a command, followed by the cost of not doing it and then end with a positive comment.

6. Make your heading compelling, people will delete it or move on to something new. The following "grabber" words will help get responses: Discover, Guarantee, Health, Love, Money, New, Proven, Results, Safety, Save, You, and Free.

7. Get to the point quickly, in the title and the first line. Keep your introduction down to a sentence or two, the same for a conclusion.

8. Make your copy clear, tell your readers what you want them to do.

9. Target your information, not everyone will want your information, so focus your information, and write more compelling copy.

10. Place keywords in strategic places throughout your article, but do not overdo it. The keywords should be related to your site. Try to identify your keywords before you begin writing your article.

11. Keep your articles short, 500 to 1000 words. You do not want to write long articles because people are limited for time. You can write an effective article with the main points in less than 1000 words.

12. Do not forget to include a link to your site in the resource box. If people like your article, they will probably click on the link so they can visit your site.

Keep these tips in mind, so that your article will bring people to you and your web site.

Can you think of a better way to improve your web sites search engine ranking?

Copyright 2006 by Joe Rispoli