In this article, I'm going to assume a little that you know how search engine optimization works. Generally speaking, there are on-page and off-page factors that you have to take care of. For the on-page elements, that's easy to take care of, since you have full control of your web pages. But for off page elements, it's going to be a little tricky.

When it comes to off-page elements, know that it's all about getting highly relevant links from authoritative sites. Authoritative sites are sites that have a history of providing quality content. They're useful to people, and most of these sites have many links pointing to them. So if your links are found on these sites, your site will get a better ranking in the search engines.

The wrong way to get back links, is to assume that any links will do. So some people just focus of getting more and more links to their sites, without thinking about how the links are impacting their search engine rankings. They spam blogs with their links, participate in dubious link exchanges, and eventually find that their sites are dropped from the search engines.

The business of search engines is to deliver relevant content to their visitors. So they hate any attempt by anyone to try and manipulate the rankings. Every now and then, the algorithm for the rankings change and sites who don't play by their rules get dropped.

However, one tactic remains unaffected for years, and it has made many people a lot of money. And that's article marketing. Here's why article marketing has continued to work over the years.

Article marketing continues to thrive because the Internet can always do with more useful content. As long as the content remains useful to people, the search engines will still index them. After all, many people are searching for information on the Internet, and articles written by experts are a very good source of information.

Successful article directories are ranked very well by all the major search engines and submitting articles to them not only get you better rankings for your sites but also get you long term direct traffic. To date, this is the most highly rated link building strategy that has withstood the test of time.

The expert marketers know this. So they keep a strict discipline to distribute articles on a regular basis. On a schedule of twenty articles distributed to two hundred sites, and only a hundred directories approve the articles, that's still two thousand back links per week. Across the span of four weeks, that's eight thousand links in a single month. No wonder article marketers can get their sites to rank well so quickly!

Remember, the key to beating the competition is to be consistent in your article marketing efforts. Distribute a few articles every week, and you can see the results for yourself. Your traffic will start to grow, and what you want to do with that traffic is completely up to you.