Article marketing is a means of using articles to generate traffic to your website. You achieve this initially by writing articles containing useful content, relevant to the topic of your site, and then submitting them to article directories. If your writing is sufficiently compelling, readers will want to know more about what you have written, and will click on the link you provide to your website.



Article submission does two things. Firstly it provides you with the opportunity to persuade the reader to find out more from your website, as inferred above, and it also provides you with a one way link back from the article directory. The higher the page ranking of the directory, then the more credit the search engines will give you for the link. Engines such as Google take your link popularity as a significant factor when calculating where your webpage should be listed in the index for the specific keyword your page relates to.

Your Article Must have Merit

However, it does not stop there. Should the visitor consider that your article is of sufficient merit to warrant them using it as content on their own website, they are entitled to copy it so long as they include your name as author, and your author's resource box, complete with webpage URL. You then get a one way link back from all the sites that use your article, and also visitors that click on your link from these sites.

That's the theory, but how about the practice? In fact it is slightly more difficult that that. The article has to be well enough written to be accepted by the directories first, though from what I have seen that is not too difficult. Some directories are quite liberal as to what they call ‘writing'. It is not the directories that are the problem, it is the readers. People have a certain standard that they expect of internet writing, and if they feel that it is not met then they will click away from the article.

Don't Try to Fool the Reader

The article must also be of interest and relevant to the theme. You don't get people clicking to visit your website unless they find your content of interest and feel that your website could be of potential use to them. So write about what you know, and don't try to fool anybody. Many people who access your article will know more that you about the topic, and will spot any inaccuracies immediately. Be accurate and try to provide information that will help them. Visitors to your website want to be helped, have a question answered or a problem solved.

Your resource box is also important. Don't say too much about yourself: readers are not interested in your life history. Just tell them that they can find out more on your website. Provide them with a link a page in your site that deals exactly with what you wrote about and preferably with the same title, so that when they get there they will start reading.

Use Anchor Text where Possible

If you provide a link to a page within your site, rather than just the home page, it is regarded as of being more important to a search engine, especially if that link is provided by means of anchor text. That is text that indicates the topic of your web page, rather than being just a URL. You can do this if html is allowed. If you don't know how to use html, just write something to the effect “more information on this topic can be found on my web page This Topic.

Write that exactly, inserting your own website and page URL, and your resource box will have ‘This Topic' as a clickable link. The search engines will associate your web page as being connected to This Topic, and that will improve the listing of that page.