The first thing you need to consider when you start writing articles designed to attract traffic to your site is the topic of the article. It may seem silly to spell this out, but the topic of the article needs to be related to the content of your site.

If not, the traffic you attract isn't likely to hang around your site very long!

Such a simple consideration but I'm often amazed by how often people will write and submit articles that are not related to their target market. Maybe certain information is easier to come by so researching a particular niche can generate lots of information to contain in an article.

But if that information isn't related to what is on your website or to the product you are marketing, then really you need to ask yourself why you would bother. It may take a little longer to create a good quality article on information related to your own business or product, but the payback is that the traffic you attract is much more targeted and hence much more likely to earn you some money.

Any article that you write needs to provide good quality, useful information to the reader. If not, your chances of having the article submitted to any of the article directories is extremely slim.

And even if you manage to get a poor article submitted, your chances of generating any traffic from it practically non existant! Let's face it, would you buy anything from someone if the free sample they gave you was rubbish?

So be sure your articles provide useful information that is relevant to your target market. If you are selling a weight loss product, then research the problems of weight loss and provide helpful advice based on what people are looking for.

Be sure to include keywords in your article. Research the keywords that your target market is using to search for information and include them in your articles. These articles should also be included in your website. Search engines need to be able to find you when people search for specific keywords.

Everything in life is 'give and take'. By providing good quality, relevant information to readers you are 'giving' to your target market. The author's resource box is where you 'take' your reward.

Try to keep your resource box focused. Don't put in too much information. The resource box should tease people into clicking on your link and visiting your site to find out more of the information that you have available.

Again, be sure to use keywords in here. Especially important is to be sure your actual anchor text contains your keywords. Never put 'click here' as it's meaningless. Not only is it unappealing to the reader, it won't do any good in the search engines, unless your site happens to be named 'clickhere.com'.

There are far too many article directories to list them all here. But I've included links to a few of the most popular. As these are widely used there is more chance of your articles being picked up and used by others.

As your articles start being spread on the Internet, more people see them and more traffic is generated. A good idea is to set up a 'Google Alert' for your article titles. This lets you know if your article is published elsewhere on the Internet.

Anyone publishing your article should publish it 'as is' with all your links, including your resource box intact. However, this doesn't always happen. I've personally had to contact website owners and ask them to either include my link or remove my article. Not everyone is an honest publisher unfortunately, but this is a minimal drawback compared to the advantages of being a published author.