You are just getting yourself online. You have a new site that you paid good money to have built. Your web designer did a great job. You are ready for the world to come to your doorstep? what? Nothing happened?

You have people visiting your website, but they don't stay and they certainly don't buy. Why? Could it be that they don't know or trust you? The concept of article marketing is to take authored content that you create and distribute it to websites in need of content. When you distribute your article, you include links back to your website (usually in the About the Author section). These links help to improve your website's link popularity and therefore search engine results.

Writing articles is a guaranteed solution to both of these problems.

Here's the deal: You need to get in front of the people who are looking for you. This is the heart of marketing. You also need to gain some popularity on the internet if you want your website to rank well with the search engines. And you need the people in your target market to think you are smart and worthwhile.

Yep, marketing through articles can do all of that and more. But you'd better know: It's not hard, but it is a bit tricky. With a bit of guidance you can become an Article Writing Master in no time!

Here are 7 things you have got to do when writing your articles:

1. Build your articles around keywords that your prospects use to look for you.

2. Use your keywords in the right places and in the right amounts. Too many uses of the same keyword phrase will get you penalized by the search engines.

3. Make it interesting. If you find it boring to write, your prospect will find it boring to read.

4. Not to long, not too short, just right. Don't keep them too long. Be interesting and useful but don't drone on and on and on?

5. Make sure your resource box does what it's supposed to do. If you write an article about golf and your resource box talks about your site on fitness training, you will not get the response you are looking for.

6. Give your reader an incentive to seek you out. Offer a free special report, mini-course or some other freebie for clicking to your website from your resource box.

7. Leave them wanting more! If you solve the problem in the article your reader will have no need to learn more. Hence, they won't click on the link that leads to your website.

Article marketing has an art to it, there is no doubt. But it can be mastered quickly and easily. Article marketing done routinely, over time will get you in front of people you would never have reached otherwise.