by Jennifer Eblin

Created on: June 12, 2009

When I first started dipping my toes into the world of online writing I ended up on Helium and Associated Content. Looking back on those articles now makes me cringe just because of how bad my writing was originally. I had no clue how keywords worked and then once I started learning more about them, somehow my articles looked even worse. Suddenly I found myself stuffing the keywords into the article, which writers know doesn't work.

In those early days I did a lot of self-promotion. I posted my links on forums I frequented, used social networking sites and basically tried to get page views in any way possible. Then I realized that if I wanted to get the page views, I had to do a combination of many different things. The fact of the matter is that getting page views doesn't require just one thing and if you try only one thing, you're bound to fail.

The first way to go about getting page views is by writing on popular topics. I love writing local histories and stories about ghosts, but I'm lucky if those articles get 100 page views every month. Instead I have to mix things up by writing about some of the more popular or hot topics. One article with the largest amount of page views involves a reality star causing a scandal by posting nude photographs of herself online. It wasn't a topic that I loved, but it did earn me quite a bit of money.

The next step is to use keywords, but use them in the right way. Have you ever read an article that used the keyword so many times that the article didn't make sense, or contained no useful information? That's not what you want to do. You want to aim for 3-5% keyword density, meaning that you use the keyword or key phrases that many times in the article. For example in a 500 word article, the keyword should appear 15-25 times.

The last way to get page views is to promote, promote and then promote some more. There's always the chance that people will find your article by accident, but you should also work on getting people to your article or articles. If there's a forum or message board that you visit often, add the link to your article in your signature line.

You should also consider doing a little social networking. Many sites now let users automatically post their articles to Facebook and Myspace, which lets friends and family view your articles as soon as they publish. You can also use something like Twitter, to make new friends who might find your work interesting. If you really want to get the page views, you have to put in the time and make the effort.

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