When you’re first getting started with internet business, it’s easy enough to do your own web writing – whether it’s a 100-word product description for your e-commerce store or a longer article for directory submission.  Unlike more complicated skills such as web design or internet programming, almost anyone can throw together enough coherent senteces to fill a web page.  However, as your business begins to grow past its introductory stages, it’s time to think about adding a professional ghostwriter to your team. 

Many people struggle with this step – after all, if you’re perfectly capable of writing your own content, why should you pay someone else to do it for you?  For many internet business owners, the decision comes down to time.  Yes, you can write your own website text, but how long does it take you to generate that single page of content?  And what could you do with your business if that time were suddenly freed up?  Most online business owners find that the additional income they earn as the result of the increased productivity they’re able to achieve with a ghostwriter far outweighs the cost of these services.

However, beyond the simple time-versus-money equation, working with a ghostwriter offers another significant advantage.  Writing for the web is different than writing for traditional media outlets, so finding a professional ghostwriter who has experience with web content is crucial.  A good web ghostwriter should be aware of the following rules:

Good web writing speaks to the lowest common denominator

Writing for the intended audience is important in any situation – you wouldn’t submit a highly-technical, jargon-filled journal piece to a popular magazine, just as you wouldn’t submit a simple report to a complex medical journal.  However, writing for the web is a little more complicated in that you can never be sure who’s visiting your site.  Sure, you can conduct in-depth market research to determine which demographic ranges your visitor most likely falls in, but you’ll never really know who’s on your site.  Therefore, a good web writer understands how to write in a simple, yet sophisticated style that’s easily read and understood by all possible visitors to your site.

Good web writing takes on a conversational tone

Formal grammar and syntax are great for academic writing, but web content is all about the conversational tone!  Therefore, web writing tends to use dashes, contractions and fragment sentences more often than traditional writing rules allow.  For example, the sentence, “A word of caution, though,” is technically considered to be a fragment, even if it’s something we’d say naturally in real life.  Good web writing attempts to mimic these natural speech patterns in order to form a connection with the reader – which brings us to our next point:

Good web writing builds a relationship

One of the challenges facing internet businesses is that we – unlike our brick-and-mortar relatives – rely on the language and images on our sites to create a sense of professionalism.  Although people are slowly becoming more comfortable with e-commerce, the natural inclination is still to be distrustful of online sellers.  And quite frankly, this makes sense – it takes a lot to trust someone you’ll never meet with your credit card information!  Good writing can help bridge that gap by helping you connect to your visitor through the text on your site, eventually leading to more sales.

As I’m sure you know, there are literally thousands of professional ghostwriters working online today.  Just do a search at Guru.com or Elance.com and you’ll turn up hundreds of names for both qualified and unqualified writers.  But if I may make a brief plug, I highly recommend that you check out New Arbor Enterprise.  Sarah, the owner, works with a small team of writers from around the world to produce some of the best quality content you can buy today.  With over 500 articles published online – as well as several longer reports – she has the talent and experience to take on any writing project you need, regardless of the topic. 

I’ve used her for a ton of my articles and she always goes out of her way to write informative, high quality content.  For more information on her services, check out her site at www.NewArborEnterprise.com.

Submitting articles related to your site’s content to article directories is another great way to build your backlinks. Most article directories allow you to include links to your site in the resource box. This box just gives readers the details on how they can get more information relating to the topic of the article. Carefully choose the anchor text in the resource box in order to see an increase in search engine rankings for these keywords and keyphrases.

In addition to building backlinks, you’ll also likely get traffic from the articles you submit to popular article directories. Some of your articles may even be re-published on other sites, generating even more traffic and possibly more backlinks. In theory, the better the article, the more likely it will be re-published on other sites. This should lead to more backlinks to your site (which the search engines see and reward you for) and more traffic from the links you include in your resource box.

If you are writing articles for SEO purposes, it’s crucial to spend the time selecting a good anchor text strategy for your resource box. In fact, I spend more time on this than anything else.

Once you’ve determined your article marketing strategy, you’ll need to actually write the article or outsource this task. Make sure that your article’s title pulls readers in … something like “3 tips on how to make money online with affiliate marketing” would do fairly well. People love easy-to-read content, so breaking down your article into specific bullet points will encourage more traffic.

Of course, if you choose to use this type of article title, you will need to identify the three tips you’re going to cover. The good news is that doing this will help you to quickly structure and write out your article. Articles published to article directories should be between 200-750 words. Most article writing experts recommend starting out with an introduction to help draw the reader in to the article before they continue with the main points of the article.

If you’re having trouble getting down to the business of actually writing the article, consider the following tips. First, don’t put too much thought into it – try to write naturally, as if you’re writing the way you’d talk about your target subject. Don’t get bogged down on whether you should be using a colon or a semicolon in a particular sentence – just get the words down on paper and you can come back and edit them later. If writing still isn’t coming easily to you, search for articles on similar subjects to see how they’re structured and what kind of voice they use. Don’t plagiarize – use them only to get a feel for how your own articles can be written.

The final element of your article is the resource box. The resource box is your chance to introduce yourself and convince the reader to visit your website. Different article directories differ on whether you’re allowed to use anchor text links in your article text, but almost all of them will allow you to put a link to your website in the resource box – so you can see what a powerful tool this section is.

Since most article directories will allow you to use anchor text in your resource box, you should take advantage of that instead of just listing your URL. Adding in anchor text is crucial for SEO so make sure to select a good keyphrase for this. I also suggest listing your URL as well, just in case the HTML link doesn’t work. In addition to an anchor text link + the URL, you should try to make your resource box interesting, to encourage readers to click through to your site.

Here’s an example of a good resource box with anchor text for the keyphrase ‘make thousands of dollars online’.

“Want to learn how I ‘make thousands of dollars online’, every month, working only a few hours each week? Check out my FREE report at www.howtomakemoneyonline.com!”

Including the anchor text with a link back to your webpage will boost the rankings of the page for the keyphrase ‘make thousands of dollars online’ in the search engines. Just make sure the anchor text you use is something people are searching for in the search engines.

Once you have all your article elements ready, it’s time to submit them to the directories. Google seems to give the most weight to articles posted on
EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and SearchWarp.com, so make these directories the primary focus of your article marketing campaign. It’s easy to sign up for a free account at each of these sites, and you’ll find more complete results on entering and submitting articles on each webpage.

Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion