Copyright © Liane Bate
http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com

One of the best ways to promote your business online is to write articles and distribute them to thousands of publishers across the internet. Publishers and website owners are constantly looking for good, original content for their websites, and chances are pretty good that if you've submitted your article to various article directories, that your article will be read and used in someone's newsletter or on their blog. This is a fantastic way to get the links to your website in front of the public's eye, which leads to clicks, which may lead to sales. This is why article writing is so important to your online business.

A good article should have a title that captivates those who see it. There are millions of articles circulating around the internet and posted in article directories, so you want to make sure that your title stands out from the rest and makes a reader want to click on it. The title should cover the main topic of the article, but it's also a good idea to include relevant keywords in the title that you use to promote your website. For example, if you have an article-based website, and one of the keyword phrases you use in your site's meta tags is "writing articles", then you should have the term "writing articles" in your title which will help it get picked up and indexed by the search engines.

I cannot over-state the importance of keywords when writing articles. It's great to sit down and write an article about anything and everything, but if you want your article to be easily found, you want to include good keywords throughout your article. What do I mean by "good keywords"? Good keywords are keywords that people use when they do a Google, or other search engine search to find what they are looking for. For example, "make money online" is a popular keyword phrase that people might type into the Google search box. If this is one of the keywords you are targeting, then it's a good idea to include this in your title and throughout your article.

However, if you want to avoid competition for over-popular terms such as this one, you may want to use a keyword research tool to choose keywords that get 5000-10000+ searches per month. "Money making ideas", for example, is popular, but not so competitive that you can't achieve a higher rank in the search engine listings if you use it in your title and throughout your articles. You can go even more specific than that and find lesser searched terms that you will have little competition for.

The introductory paragraph should include your chosen keywords at least once. Remember that you don't want to clutter up your article with your keywords just to get noticed by the search engines because those search engines will know what you're up to and it may backfire on you with the opposite results of what you expected. You don't want to get penalized for trying to get noticed! The main body of your articles should also have your keywords scattered throughout, and your concluding paragraph should again state your keywords once.

Article writing is not only about keywords. It's a great idea to write in a style that comes naturally to you, as if you were almost talking or telling your own story, in your own way. This is what really separates original articles from the rest. An easily flowing, conversational style of writing is best, which shows your own unique character. The articles written by ghostwriters may sound like they are generated by a machine rather than by a live person with personality. This may turn out looking more like duplicate content, which you definitely want to avoid.

Remember that the main elements of a good article are a captivating title, an introductory paragraph with good keywords and a bit of a teaser to make readers interested in reading more, a main body scattered with good keywords written in a conversational tone, and a concluding paragraph that includes your keywords once. If you can do all that in about 600 words, and write as many original articles as possible, you've found the key to promoting your business online!

About the Author:
Liane Bate owns a Plug-in Profit Site web business, and is a member of the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs (IAHBE).
Visit: http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com, Plugin Profit Site, and HonestMoneyMaking.com's Home Business Blog