However, unlike other media outlets such as TV, radio and newspapers, which generally only use content from professional writers, on the internet, anyone can publish. Article marketing is a way of taking advantage of that freedom and using the medium as a way to bring visitors to your website or blog. So, how does it work?

You write an article. A typical article for web consumption will be between 250 and 750 words long. It will be carefully focused round a specific area of expertise; the writer's niche. It will use keywords relevant to the writer's intended audience and often it will contain a numbered or bulleted list for clarity and ease of reading.

You publish that article on the web. There are now hundreds of article directories, where any writer can publish almost any article. Most are free to use, but some more specialized ones charge a small fee. One of the biggest free directories is EzineArticles.com which carries the work of nearly 70,000 writers.

The directories are organized into multiple categories and the article writer must decide which category to publish under. You are also encouraged to attach a group of relevant keywords to your article and to include your personal or business details and a link to your site, in your 'resource box', which is a brief paragraph about you or your work which will appear at the bottom of every article. The directories employ a team of staff to approve each article before it becomes available on the web.

So how does this drive traffic? Firstly, the directories, being very content rich, have high rankings in the search engines and often your article may be spotted there and an interested reader might click on your link and come through to your website.

However, the real purpose of the directories is to provide a place for e-zine publishers to find free and relevant content. Every day, editors of a huge range of subject specific e-zines, visit the article directories and download new articles that are relevant to their audience. This saves them writing it themselves. The only stipulation made is that they must publish the article in full, without editing and always include the author's resource box and retain the links intact.

So over a period, a single article can easily, be found in many different places on the web, each time with a valuable back link to your website, which not only leads highly targeted visitors to you but also helps to improve your search rankings.