Promoting a website by writing articles

We have recently launched a website, and we are now going through the promotional phase of 'getting the word out'. One of the ways we are doing this is by writing a series of quality articles to promote it. The website is in the 'investment and personal finance' space.

We are trying to come up with a list of 'target websites' that we will be using to publish the previously mentioned articles.

Ideally, these 'taget websites' will be websites with high visibility (i.e. page ranking) and high traffic. My initial thought was www.ehow.com, but we are thinking that perhaps, it is not 'focused' enough (since it seems to cover everything from aromatherapy to zoos).

The main (i.e. obvious) desirable characteristics for a target website where we will publish our series of articles are:

• target audience
• 'footfall' (daily unique visitors or similar traffic proxy)

The problem is that we are not likely to know the traffic numbers of our target websites (or is there a way of finding at least a reliable proxy for the traffic numbers)?

My question(s) then can be summarized as follows:

1. How may I formulate a plan to help me select 'target' websites to publish my articles on
2. Which is more important (traffic volume or target audience) - 'adult' themed sites excluded of course
3. Can anyone suggest some sites that would be a good place to submit/publish good quality articles (initially, these articles will be focused on an introduction to trading, but over the course of several weeks, they will become more specialized/advanced).

The key is to indeed write "a series of quality articles"
Here's how I would approach it.

1. Get a twitter account if you don't already have one.
2. Write a few of these articles and host them on your website under an "articles" section. This is the baseline to establish that you're a serious resource.
3. Start following people in the finance industry and establishing a conversation. Some of these will start following you.
4. Start posting comments in financial blogs. Make sure that your signature points to your web site.
5. Keep posting articles, and announce them on twitter whenever you do as well as keep doing 3 and 4 above.
6. By now you have a little bit of reputation. Offer to write a guest post on some of the other blogs in the industry, that'll provide you with more exposure.

Publishing on places like ehow doesn't buy you as much as you might think. Yes they have a high ranking, but they also have a huge amount of articles. It's better to build your web site's reputation and pagerank. Doing a guest post is different. You're working with someone specific, and down the line, they'll return the favor. Also, make sure in your articles to mention other sites. They'll return the favor sooner or later.

Writing articles can be a part of Social media marketing. You are reaching your audience. I suggest you do Social media marketing along with this to maximize your results. You can check out www.lynda.com/home/Player.aspx?lpk4=58031 (SOcial media marketing on Facebook and Twitter DVD). It'll help you get started.

How may I formulate a plan to help me select 'target' websites to publish my articles on

You need to go where your audience is. Writing articles on forums/communities is the best thing ever. Provided you insert your website address. You can also help your customers on answer sites much like this one. (yahoo answers is popular). Put your address in and they'll come ;)

Which is more important (traffic volume or target audience)

Your question isn't right for what you are doing. You are writing articles related to your market. People are interested in that market because they are reading that article. They visit your site because A) they liked the article or B) They want more information. Either way, they are already your target audience!

If you do SEO and Adwords, then you can say target audience is more important but it seems you are not doing SEO and adwrods. Basically, in your case Traffic = Target audience (if you only write articles and do Social media marketing, they only visit if they are interested therefore they are your target audience).

Suggest some sites..

1. Yahoo Answers
2. Any other answer site.
3. Forums related to your niche/market (google search)
4. Ezinearticles

I know I am not really suggesting a site when I say search for this and that, but thats what you need to do.

• For technology related articles, there are a lot of websites like dzone.com, etc. which a lot of geeks follow. Add your articles there.
• Follow people / bloggers in your space and interact with them, get to know. Provide a back-link to your site.
• Encourage people to share on twitter / Facebook / Google status messages.

Morpheous, I think you'll find guest-posting on blogs with an audience in your market to be much more effective than posting articles to generic sites like EzineArticles.