What is Article Marketing and How Do I Use It?

By: Cindy Dykstra

Article marketing can be described as writing articles and submitting them to directories to generate backlinks for your web site. Article marketing is a proven way to establish yourself as an expert, increase web site traffic, generate leads and improve your search engine rankings.

While article marketing is one of the most effective forms of on-line advertising, it is one such method that is often overlooked by business owners. The business or web site owner who does take advantage of article marketing has a leg up on their competition.

Article marketing has several benefits, including establishing yourself as an expert, lead generation, increased site traffic and improved search engine rank. How does this work? Let's explore each of these benefits.

Establishing Expert Status

To get the most from your article marketing efforts, the articles you write should pertain to what you do for a living and what you want to promote. Just like your local store owner who recommends a particular product or answers questions about using one, sharing information with readers sets the impression in their mind that you are experienced and knowledgeable. They will begin to trust your advice and look to you for further guidance.

Lead Generation

After reading an informative article, readers often look for more information. At the end of each article, there is what's called a "Resource Box" or "Author Bio". This is where the author gets to give some information about themselves, request the reader to take action and provide a link for them to follow. Since the reader has already shown an interest in the material in the article, clicking that link is the natural progression. This link can be used to drive visitors to a specific product page or a newsletter sign-up form

Increased Site Traffic

Article marketing is a proven traffic producing strategy. Each article can be republished thousands of times, gaining interest and attention and a further reach. When you submit a site to a search engine or a directory, it takes a while before it gets listed and the effects start to show in the way of increased traffic. Writing and submitting articles to directories which see large amounts of traffic can generate increased traffic to your web site in a short amount of time.

Improved Search Engine Rank

Each article you publish with a link to your website is considered by the search engines to be an incoming link for your site. The combination of increased traffic and interest, and a respectable number of incoming links will produce a higher page rank and better listings in search engine result pages for a web site.

Successful article marketing requires you to write and publish consistently but the secret value that article marketing holds is in the fact that one well-written, interesting article can generate literally thousands of visitors and revenue over time. The more quality articles you write, the more quality, targeted traffic you receive.

You can dramatically cut your Internet marketing budget by using article marketing to establish credibility for your web site and build incoming links from high ranking web sites. All of this in turn creates high page ranks for your website and creates more search engine traffic for you. Article marketing is and always has been one of the best methods a business owner could use to promote their web site.