Don't Lose Your Article Back Links!
You heard writing articles is a great way to drive traffic to
your site. So you have written several articles and posted them
to dozens of article sites. Then you sit back and wait for the
avalanche of traffic. And wait. Nothing is happening. What's the
deal?
The deal is depending on where your article gets republished
your links may not be "live". Writing articles and posting them
is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Search engines
love it and if done correctly it will help drive new visitors to
your site and get you listed higher in the search engines. The
problem comes when article writers and authors and publishers
don't all follow the same rules. The main problems are:
1. Original article not formatted correctly 2. Article copied
and pasted into new webpage without links 3. New publisher
doesn't make links live
Lets start with #1 "Original article not formatted correctly".
Not all article sites are the same. On some sites you can simply
put in plain text and it will format it correctly, paragraphs
will be correct and it will recognize http://www.yoursite.com as
a live link. Some sites you may need to format it all in html.
Sometimes the easiest way to do that is type your article in a
web design program such as "Dreamweaver" and then view the
source and copy and paste the code. If you don't have access to
such a program then you should learn a few basic html tags:
View the source of this page to see the html tags.
This is a "break" tag, The break tag is used when you want to
end a line, but don't want to start a new paragraph. The break
tag forces a line break wherever you place it, a very common tag
and one that is recognized by most all article sites.
Bold anything you want in bold should go between these
tags
italic anything you want in italic should go between
these tags
http://www.yoursite.com--some sites will recognize this as a
live link. Many will not! This is where you are going to lose
your links! If your article is copied and pasted into another
web page or ezine your link will not be clickable. Someone who
really wants to go to your webpage can copy and paste it into
their browser but it is alot easier if someone can just click on
it! If it is not a clickable live link search engines will not
follow it not matter how many times it is republished. Imangine
your article being reprinted 1000 times, a potential of 1000
back links to your site but without it being a clickable link
you won't reap the benefits of those 1000 links. Your links to
your sites should always be formatted this way:
YourWebSite
If you follow the correct html formating for links your website
links will always be clickable. To learn more about html tags
search google for "html tags"
2. Article copied and pasted into new webpage without links.
Your article may be correctly formatted on the article site you
posted to but when it is copied and pasted into a new webpage or
ezine it may lose some of it's formatting. Some of the better
sites have a choice of "ezine ready", this will display your
article in the correct html formatting which makes it easier to
copy and paste.
3. New publisher doesn't make links live. All article sites have
a policy that clearly states "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 no longer live or
don't know to make them live. Others leave them off all together
or don't make them live on purpose. Not much you can do except
write to the website owner and request they make them live. Some
will comply, some won't. Chalk it up to the cost of doing
business. For everysite that doesn't make your links live, 10
will.
Keep publishing! Writing articles and posting them across the
internet is still a great way to drive traffic to your site.
Content is king and website owners, and ezine publishers are
hungry for fresh new original content.