Distribute Your Content and They Will Come

Your website is done. Your content is really good. Your design is elegant and complements to your content beautifully. You’ve set up your enewsletter campaign with a great giveaway. Now, all you need is traffic. So how do you get it.

The answer is obvious, right? You need to get in the search engines.

Everyone you know has told you this. They even suggest search phrases (or keywords) that you should be using to get ranked high in search results. And, of course, you have your own ideas for search phrases as well. All you have to do is put those keywords in your web pages and sit back and wait for the flood of visitors.

If only it were that simple.

Search engine placement and optimization takes a lot of time and effort. More time, even, than effort. And today, with so many websites vying for those valuable positions at the top of the search results, it can be very difficult to make your website visible. Especially if you’ve just finished your first website or if you content has greatly changed. So while your efforts with the search engines will payoff in the long-run, don’t expect too much from them immeditately.

But don’t loose hope. In my last newsletter I covered seven strategies for building traffic without concerning yourself with the search engines. Today I want to expound a bit on, perhaps, the most useful and powerful of those strategies: Distributing Your Content.

There are many website owners who are constantly looking for good content. Guess what, you likely have good content. Not only that, you know how to write good content. And even if you don’t feel you content is good (who ever thinks that their writing is good, anyway?), it probably has more value than you think. So share what you have; share what you know.

Even better, write some new pieces that are targeted specifically to each of the websites you want to submit content to. Your articles don’t need to long and the writing doesn’t need to win you a Pulitzer. You just need informative and helpful articles that will add value to people’s lives.

But how do you find the websites to submit articles too? The answer is even more obvious than you think…use the search engines. Search for every topic and keyword phrase that relates to your business. Ask friends and collegues for suggestions of search terms. And be broad. If you’re a business coach, don’t just focus on business. Find avenues for men’s and women’s issues, general service-oriented articles, better lifestyle, spiritual success, making bigger profits, etc. Write on everything that is even remotely related to your business.

Now as you find websites that you’d like to submit articles, create one or more folders in your web browser’s bookmarks or favorites to save those links. And as you find more websites, add them to your bookmarks.

Now, don’t stop just websites about your area of business. Pick your favorite hobbies or areas of interest and write articles to submit to websites in those areas. You could write about tennis, photography, pottery, eBay strategies, home decorating, or anything else that’s an interest to you. Offer people your unique perspective on any topic and you’ll find an audience. And from that audience you’ll find clients.

Now, you may be asking why you’d want to write all this stuff for other websites. Well, here’s the most important thing you want from publishing on other websites – a link back to your own website.

Usually at the end of any article there’s room for a short bio. In your bio, be absolutely certain that you can include a live link back to your website. And ideally you’d list your full domain name to give your website even more visibility. Your bio might look something like this:

Dawud Miracle has been designing websites since 1998. He currently works with service-oriented professionals who love their work and who need a website to fully meet their business needs. You can find out more at www.healthywebdesign.com (domain name would be live link).

Your website address in your bio is a gateway to your website. Every single person who reads your articles, regardless of what they’re on, will have the chance to click-through to your website. And, if they’ve read to the bottom of your article, where your bio often is, you have a good chance that they will be interested enough to find out more about you and what you do.

Can you see why I’ve titled this, Distribute Your Content and They Will Come?

This method of marketing absolutely works. It’s not all too difficult to get published on other websites – remember most websites are looking for good content…especially the most popular ones. Occasionally you’ll run into websites that don’t want content. Don’t worry. Just move on to the next website and before you know it, you’ll have a number of articles on other websites that will all focus attention back to your website and your business.