Article writing and article marketing today are very effective means of getting traffic to your website. I look at articles that I have written over a year ago and still see traffic being sent to my website from these articles. The key is to write an article that is high enough quality so that web masters want to publish your articles on their web sites, and for your readers to have enough interest to go to your web site after reading your article. This article goes over the features your article should have that will achieve these results.

1. Your Article Should Provide A Solution Or Answer A Common Question

Your article should provide a solution to a common question or a problem that your target audience has. You can easily research questions that your target audience has by going to places such as yahoo groups or yahoo answers to see what people are discussing and wanting help with. Another great place is to find great topics is to search for niche forums within your target market and see what questions people are asking in these forums. This exercise will give you a goldmine of very relevant data that you can use as subject material for your articles that will be valuable to your readers.

2. Your Article Should Leave The Reader Wanting More

Your article should be useful and provide valuable content, but let's face it, you can only do so much in an article, even if it's 750 words or so. You should write your article so that the reader feels like they have received some value, however your article has now generated greater interest, and they would like to know more. I have found that using lists such as ("The Top 5 Things People Can Do To Relieve Stress") and then make it clear to the reader that there are 5 additional things they can do that are also just as effective as the things listed in your article, is a good way to create further interest in the subject.

3. Your Article Should Give The Reader A Strong Call To Action

Your article should end by giving the reader a strong call to action. This is telling the reader where they should go to get more information (the rest of the stress reduction tips). Creating a strong call to action in the conclusion and stating it strongly in the resource box is a powerful way to create your call to action. Remember, your article is not a sales letter, so the call to action is really the only place that you have to get the reader to go to your website, sign up for your mailing list, call you on the phone, or anything else you want them to do.

If you are going to set up your call to action in the conclusion, then you should make sure you recap the article, and then just add a sentence or two that brings up a question or similar thought that would cause the reader to want more information. Most English teachers are probably rolling over in their graves right now, but you are writing your article to get more traffic to your website, not to win an essay competition.

A quality article will be published by others more often as well as demonstrate to your readers that you know what your talking about, so they would feel comfortable finding out more about what you would have to say on your particular topic. It is relatively easy to find topics that will be of interest to your target market, as well as structuring your call to action so your article drives visitors to your website in larger numbers. These tips combined with other tips such as how to structure your resource box and how to use keywords in your articles increases your traffic to greater levels. These are things that you need to keep in mind when writing your articles to make them even more effective in driving traffic to your website.