One of the hottest methods of driving traffic to web sites today is through article marketing. Believe me, I know, as of this writing I am the number three author at Ezine Articles. If you are unfamiliar with the term "article marketing", it means to either write articles or have them written and then submit them to the various article directories, like Ezine Articles for example. The ideal length is around 500 words; most article directories will not accept an article of less than 450 words and on the other side if you get too wordy people won't take the time to read it.



Website owners are continually searching for content for their sites and for people who have numerous sites it is far easier to get articles from article directories and use them than it is to write it themselves or pay to have it done. So, how do you benefit? The people using your content must keep the resource box at the bottom of the article intact which has a link back to the site you want to promote. We will go more into that later. If you want to get the best bang for your buck you should aim to write an article a day for a new site. If you do this and submit it to all of the major directories you will get a big boost in traffic and consequently, more income. Search engines love articles and they constantly crawl the article directories looking for the content which also makes article submission a good way to help get a new site indexed. By placing unique articles on your own web sites it will also help increase your page rank from Google.

As you become more prolific with your article writing you will become well known as an author. If you specialize in a particular niche, this will help to give you a reputation of being an expert in your chosen field. For me, I write on a wide variety of subjects due to the fact that I own so many websites and also write for other people. I have actually been contacted to do interviews on TV and radio stations just from the articles I have written. So, another added benefit is that you may receive publicity from offline contacts as well.

One piece of advice that I would give when writing an article is to think about the audience that you want to pick up and republish your article. Generally, it is better to write about as broad a subject as you can in order to receive the most backlinks from publishers picking up your articles from the directories. Also, the popularity of the niche you have chosen will also come into play as far as how many people choose to republish it. I wrote an article titled "The Secret To Getting Indexed In Hours By All The Major Search Engines" and it was picked up initially by over 6,000 webmasters! Conversely if you were to write an article about a more obscure topic it may only get picked up a few times.

Now, let's go over the resource box. This is where you are allowed to promote yourself. Most article directories only allow you to place one anchor text link here. What I like about Ezine Articles is that they allow you to put three. This allows you to promote three different links along with three different anchor texts which is a huge benefit. To see samples of good resource boxes check out mine as well as some of the other top authors such as Tim Gorman.