Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Why Writers Need To Write and Submit Free Articles

Sharon Hurley Hall first told me about submitting to article directories in a writer mentoring chat in the InspiredAuthor.com chat room. I learned a lot about freelance writing in my early days through those chats and writer workshops.

I took her advice and it's helped me tremendously. Using article submission /directory sites is a great way to help your career in many ways. As a freelance writer, you often write for others and you rarely get to see your name on any of your work. This won’t help you further your career and get new clients. In order to do that, you have to market yourself and article directory submissions are a great way to do that. Here is an illustration:

You write articles about niche topics you enjoy writing about. This helps you establish yourself as an expert in a niche topic. Your articles can be syndicated throughout the web and be published in many places. You can also get jobs, help your SEO and earn affiliate income through those articles.

In your articles, your link directs people back to your blog or website. This does multiple things for you. First of all, it helps you with your search engine rankings or SEO. You anchor words that you want to be your target keywords like freelance writer or nutrition writer or Dallas journalist, etc. Not only will people reading the articles have the ability to click through to your website but you will also have organic search engine results that can propel you to the top of the rankings for your targeted keywords.

Also, you can use these articles for samples when applying to jobs. If you write articles in subjects you’re passionate about, it will show through in the writing. If you write articles and post them on these article sites, potential clients might also find you. I have had other websites and blogs feature some of my articles and I’ve had traffic to my blogs and websites because of it. This can also earn me income as an affiliate or for my revenue efforts on blogs such as Adsense, Amazon and others.

Some clients of mine hire me to write and submit to directories for them. Some use this for bum marketing or to help them with their own SEO for their websites as well as to help them be considered an expert in their niche.

There are dozens of free article submission sites and this is also a great way to build your online writing identity. When you Google yourself, your articles will come up. If you are not writing articles yet, get started. Here are a few sites that accept articles and will distribute them for you:


www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
www.articleson.com
www.1888articles.com

Some sites have differing results with Google and at the moment, www.ezinearticles.com is considered the most effective option by many experts. There are requirements and limitations of what you can write about and your links so be sure to read the fine print when submitting at any of these sites.

Writing for article directories and posting your own work online is a great way to be sure you’re building a name for yourself, creating buzz and seo rankings for your website not to mention ensuring you don’t focus all your energy writing for others.

3 comments:

Sue Jeffels Writing said...

Good post again Dana. I agree with you that writing for these article sites can get you known. It can also bring in offers of paid work.

sue

Unknown said...

I found your blog through the wahm.com message boards. There's a lot of information here. Thank you!

Dana Prince said...

I agree, Sue!

Thanks Merri for stopping by and saying hello :) I'm at the wahm.com message board far too often. LOL.

Cheers,
Dana