When most people think about the Internet, they think about music downloads, images, streaming video movies, games, all the neat bells and whistles. The truth is, the Internet was first developed as a way to share information in text format between people, and it's never really lost that focus. Search engines need good focused text in order to tell what your site is about. Even when you see image or audio search engines, they're not really searching for images and audio – they are searching for the text labels behind those things. No matter how you look at it, the Internet is first and foremost a text-based tool. If you can't write well, if you write slowly, or if you just don't have the time or energy to write articles and other information for your website, you might have a problem.
Search engines catalog text. They do not look at your lovely Flash animations, your interactive games, or your beautifully laid out catalog. They are interested only in text.
So how can you get it?
Private Label Rights Articles – Your Best Option
Private label rights articles, also called PRAs, are articles that are sold to you in their entirety, with the copyright in your name alone. The original writer of these articles has agreed to give up any right to them he or she might have. Basically, you can do anything you want with these articles: you can edit them to be more pertinent to your own website, you can add or delete text, and you can publish them on your own website or anywhere you want under your own name.
They can be a remarkably powerful tool. With good PRA, you can show your customers that you are an expert. You can give them information and news they're hungry for, and you can develop a real online relationship with them, that of a mentor and a friend.
In short, good PRAs can make you into an Internet guru.
Other Options
Of course, PRAs aren't the only way to get articles for your website. You also have the option of taking advantage of article directories. These are large online repositories of thousands of well-written articles, many by experts in their fields, that webmasters can download free of charge and use on their own websites.
So if these articles are good, they're free, and you can get them, why aren't they the best option?
They don't belong to you. You cannot change anything in the text, and you are required to duplicate the resource box at the bottom of each article that contains the name of the writer and, usually, a link to their website. This means that anyone coming to your site isn't going to see you as the expert; instead, they are going to put their trust into the writer of the article you used, and eventually they're probably going to visit the other website. In short, you're advertising for the competition.
Free isn't free; there's almost always a catch.
How To Leverage Your PRAs
With PRAs, you're not limited to using them as articles. Instead, you can feel free to compile them into ebooks and reports, which you can distribute free to your customers.
Again, of course, there's a catch, but not for you. Ebooks have a surprisingly high perceived value, and your customers will respect the fact that you can not only write an ebook for your area of expertise, but also afford to give it away for free. Basically, you're trading the books for an elevated level of respect from your customers, and that's going to translate into trust.
And trust, today, is how business is really done on the web.
Your customers must trust that you know what you're talking about, that you are selling them a product that you really care about (and therefore will sell them only the best and most cost-effective), and that you will take care of any problems they have.
All these intangible qualities are tied up in your demonstrating to them that you are, indeed, a guru.
And gurus are made online by great content. Maximize your sales potential. Show your customers that you're a guru with the help of PRAs.
Cody Moya writes about Article Marketing in his free 50 parts course on Internet Marketing. You can sign up for his Free Internet Marketing Course and get additional information at his website: http://www.marketing.us
