Article Surfing Archive

We all know how great articles are for generating free traffic to our sites but are you just leaving them in an article directory expecting the best, hoping they turn up in the search engines and get spotted or are you out there promoting them?

What I mean is the majority of people submit their articles to article directories and expect their website stats to change overnight. It isn't going to happen.

Yes, if your article if written properly and targeted to the right keywords it will do well in the search engines over time and start sending you free traffic.

But should you just sit back and wait for those results to come in or should you get out there and start the ball rolling yourself?

If you're like me you want free traffic and you want it to your site now not weeks or months down the line!

Here are 4 things for instant traffic...

1. Stumble It: Stumbleupon.com is a fantastic site for getting traffic to anything fast be it an article or a website. What you can do it put your article in an article directory under a different pen name and stumble it. This way there is no connection to you and it won't look like your promoting your own work.

A word of warning though don't submit any old garbage, you may get away with submitting a pieces of junk on your first few attempts but people are going to start to notice a trend and lose interest in anything you start to recommend and you'll quickly lose fans.

2. Digg It: Get it up on digg.com, There are some things that work best on digg like entertainment news etc. Yes you may get some visits to your site from dig.com but it really depends on what you're article is about.

But the reason to digg your article is for the quality back link and to get your article noticed in the search engines faster.

3. Yahoo Answers: Go to Yahoo answers for a group that's related to your niche and look for what people are talking about. If you find someone asking a question that has something in common with your article give them a link back to your article for added reading.

By doing this you show your target audience that you know what you're talking about also you come across as a great guy/gal who really wants to help others.

Plus the best part is, if your answer gets selected as a best answer it gets stored away with all the best answers for other people to browse through months from now so you can expect to get more lovely free traffic.

4. Forums: Like the Yahoo answers look for forums related to your niche and either bring your article up in conversation to promote it or put it in your signature of your posts. This works best if you have a catchy headline that makes people curious and gets them clicking.

To get the best results look for an active forums with lots of recent posts. There's no point in putting it in a dead forum that's never going to get read.

The best thing about tips 3-4 is that over time the search engines will pick up on your posts in the forums/Yahoo answers and you may find your posts showing up in the search engine results.

Finally,

As you probably know articles are a great way of getting free traffic but sometimes it doesn't show up for weeks/months from now. But this doesn't mean you should sit back and wait for the traffic, get out there and put your article out in front of your target audience now.

Yes, your article may work and get noticed in the thousands of other articles out there but why sit on your laurels with fingers crossed expecting the best it mightn't happen.

So why not light the touch paper now and get that baby flying.