by John W. Paulus

Created on: March 11, 2008

No matter what kind of articles you write, whether they are for a blog, a web site, or for an article directory like Helium, there are some specific things that you can do in order to get your articles more views and more traffic. While there are some things that may be unique to each of these particular formats, here are some of the universal methods for driving traffic and views to your articles:

* SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO refers to the process of writing an article or designing a web page that is "friendly" to search engines. For example, if you write an article about Humphrey Bogart, Google, Yahoo and the other search engines look for "Humphrey Bogart" to appear a certain number of times in your article. While each of the search engines operates a little bit differently as far as how they handle SEO, in general you will want to include your keywords with a density of between 1 percent and 4 percent. This means that, in a 400-word article on Humphrey Bogart, you would use "Humphrey Bogart" between 4 and 16 times. Learning about and using SEO techniques will get your articles more views and traffic.

* Build Incoming Links. When you link to an article from another web site, this increases the importance that the search engines assign to your page. By building incoming links to your article from other web sites you increase the priority of your article. When this happens, search engines are more likely to send web surfers to your article, creating more views and traffic for your articles.

* Use Social Bookmarking. Sites like Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon.com are all designed so that web surfers can share sites that they have enjoyed with other web surfers. In some cases, you might be able to promote your own article through these sites. In other cases, you will need to try to convince your readers to "Digg" or "Stumble" your article.

* Promote your articles. Finally, you can get your articles more views and more traffic by talking about your article or articles. Mention them in relevant forums, or post a link to your articles in the comments of popular related blogs. If you have an e-mail newsletter with a strong subscriber base, promote your articles there, as well.

Many Internet writers prefer to focus on one of these methods exclusively, while other Internet writers choose to use many different forms of marketing for their articles. It may be, at the very least, trying several of these methods to see which will provide you with the most views and traffic.

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