Key Tips For Getting Lots of Article Click Thrus

It’s a no-brainer that in order to get people to your site, they need to click on your link at the bottom of your article first.

But before that, they need to read your article.

So let’s back up here and look at the 3 most important things your article needs to have in order to get lots of click thrus.

• A great headline.
• An interesting opening paragraph.
• A compelling call to action.

To put it another way, you want a great headline that will interest a person enough to want to read your article. Then you need a good first paragraph that entices the reader to really read the article. Lastly, you need to flow into a compelling bio call to action that makes the reader want to click your link.

A great headline

Certainly you should include your keywords in the title to help search engine traffic find your article, but your headline, or your title, should be more than that. The title’s other important job is to get people interested in reading the article.

Think about making the title eye-catching, humorous, emotionally appealing, curiosity-arousing, attention-getting, a bit outrageous, and certainly NOT boring. And use trigger words in your headline: how to, question, tips, numbers, story, the benefit, secret, the truth, the cure for, or mistakes.

An interesting opening paragraph

You’ve only got a couple sentences, at most, to really get the reader’s attention before he’s lost interest and has moved on. So when writing the article you’ll probably want to spend most of your time on this.

If you want good examples of opening paragraphs, just read the newspaper. You’ll notice each newspaper story uses a technique to entice the reader. They might make an outrageous claim, stir up some controversy, hit our hot buttons, use a scare tactic, predict the future, or use some similar technique that draws us in. That’s what you want to do with your article.

A compelling call to action

When you write your bio, you should always include a call to action. Don’t give them details about you and include your website. Ask them to come to your site by offering something they value for free. What do they value? What would motivate them to click thru to your site? Perhaps you can give information away for free that other marketers are selling. Make it clear, easy, and irresistible.

Take a look at other successful article marketers’ bios to get some examples of what works. If you visit EzineArticles, check out some of the articles that interest you and examine which bios make you want to click thru.

Last but not least, test your bio. Sometimes you need more creative wording, or sometimes a better offer, but you won’t know until you test.

The more articles you write with purpose, the better you’ll get at it. Concentrating on these three areas; the title, opening paragraph and bio, whenever you write an article should help your article click thru rates increase.

How to Leverage Your Articles

You’ve gone through all the hard work of writing a great article and you’ve sent it off to an article directory. Is that it? Are you done with it? Not by a long shot. Don’t let all that sweat go to waste, use your article again and again to squeeze the most out of it them as you can. In other words, leverage your articles. If you do this you won’t have to spend so much of your precious time writing new articles.

Assuming you have a well-written article of at least 400 words, here are some ideas for getting the most out of that article:

* Start off submitting the article to EzineArticles. This is the biggest article directory, and it makes sense to start here. You’ll stand a better chance of getting traffic because of their traffic ranking. In fact, if you do a search of your targeted keywords, you’re more likely to find your article showing higher in the search engines on EzineArticle’s website than from your own website.

* If the article topic is something that would interest your list, you can send it to them in an email. This works better if the article is shorter rather than longer.

* Alternately, you can lightly rewrite it, being sure to change the title, and add it to your blog. Then instead of sending the whole article to your list, you can send them a short email and use curiosity or a call to action to send them clicking the link to read it on your blog. This strategy gets them to your blog where they might take further action; like comment on your post, click on your AdSense, or buy one of your products.

* If you’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the article, post it on a forum in your niche. This helps brand you as someone who is an expert as well as a helpful marketer.

* Have your own article directory on your website. Set up a page with a list of all the articles you’ve written in this niche. Each article can have a blurb at the end that tells people they are free to publish the article on their site as long as they don’t change the article and keep the bio and link intact.

* Rewrite your article and give it to affiliates so they can use it to promote your product. Affiliates appreciate having material they can use rather than having to come up with something from scratch.

* Repurpose the article by shortening it and adding it to your newsletter that goes out to your list. Valuable information never goes out of style.

* Take your article and split it into chunks to create an ecourse. You can easily add further detail to each chunk and end up with a 3-5 part ecourse.

* You may have written several great articles on a specific subject. Bundle them together and create a report or ebook to give away, sell, enter in a giveaway, add to another product as a bonus, etc.

These are only a handful of suggestions on how you can leverage your articles. Every time you write an article, use it as many ways as you can and you’ll find you don’t need to write quite as many new articles.

There are many things you can do with your blog to help you get more traffic and make more sales, and I’ve listed 7 blogging tips here just to get you started.

1. Post lots of content, and do it often. For one thing, readers like to read blogs that have fresh content published regularly. It’s hard for a reader to get into following you, if you only post once in a great while. They don’t have to be monster posts, they just need to be timely and relevant. Also keep in mind that search engines also like to see you publish fresh content often.

2. Put your longtail (phrase of keywords relevant to your topic in search)  keywords  in your post titles so that people searching those words on a search engine will find your post. It’s nice to have as many people as possible read your posts since you’ve gone to all the work to write and post them – so think of your current readers as well as what you need to do to bring in some organic traffic.

3. Before you even put together a blog post, decide what you want the outcome of that post to be. Is it to promote an affiliate product or your own product? Is it meant to stir up a little controversy so that you get lots of comments and it goes viral? Is it to establish yourself as THE expert? Is it to leak some information and prime the pump before your product launch? You can give solid, valuable information in your post as well as have it point in the direction you want your readers to go next.

4. Keep your blog design pleasing to the eye and structure it so the person coming to your blog isn’t confused as to what he or she should do. What do you want them to do? Read your post then subscribe or buy something? Read your post, laugh at your wit, then go away?  Whatever you want them to do, don’t have your blog layout so confusing they don’t know where to turn next.

5. Use PLR (Private Label Rights) to help you post more often. A PLR article might give you a spark of an idea for a blog post or you might take some PLR and lightly rewrite it to add your own personality. Either way, it can help you take action and get you publishing your blog on a regular basis.

6. Learn from other great bloggers how to blog. There is always something to learn, whether you’ve been blogging a short while or a long time. Subscribe to the best blogs, listen to what they have to say, and analyze everything about those blogs so you can make yours better.

Some blogs I would suggest you follow include:

• Copyblogger  by Darren Rowse
• Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn
• Firepole Marketing  by Danny Iny
• Social Triggers  by Derek Halpern

7. Find out which WP plug ins will make your blog friendlier to the search engines as well as to people.

Some of the plugins friendly to search engines are:

All in one SEO

Yoast SEO

These are some of my favorite blogging tips. There is always more you can do with your blog to make it better, even if you’ve been blogging for years. So keep on learning, testing, tweaking, and posting.