Article marketing is one of the most effective forms of online advertising. The term speaks for itself. It is basically combining marketing with articles. An article packed with tons of useful information would be well read by lots of people, and possibly your potential customers. It also presents you, the face behind the article as an expert with credibility in the topic of the article. Business owners who have not been using article marketing to promote their businesses are missing out on sales and business growth.

What goes into article marketing that makes it such a powerful marketing technique?

We will have a walkthrough on the entire process of article marketing so that by the end of it, you have the necessary knowledge to employ this for your business.

An article should ideally be at least 400 words long. Search engines used to love articles that have 300-word length, but it appears to have changed its taste. Once you know what topic you are writing about, decide on the outline of articles. The strategy is to single out a main subject such as a vacation in Hawaii, and then develop sub-topics such as how to find the cheapest airfare and accommodation and the fun activities you can do there. With an outline, you can then elaborate more on each sub-topic to develop the content. Stay on topic and do not venture to other unrelated stuff. Sprinkle the relevant keywords 5 or 6 times throughout the article.

The one most important thing to do in article marketing is to include the resource box or author box at the end of your article. This resource box allows you to introduce yourself and your business. You are also given the opportunity to list your website link. Readers who read your article will find the link and follow it to your website. This is how it drives traffic and visitors to your website.

Do not worry if you do not write well. You can still use article marketing as your promotion strategy. There are always ghostwriters who are willing to write quality articles for low fees. $5 an article is reasonable. Check out Script lance, Enlance and Rent Coder etc.

Once you are done with article writing, you are halfway in your article marketing process. You need to now submit your article to article directories. There are hundreds to thousands of article directories that would accept your article for free such as EzineArticles, Search Warp and Go Articles to name a few. Of course there are some that requires payment as well. But submitting to these free ones is good enough for your article marketing efforts. But make sure that you submit to at least 100 ? 200 of them for maximum exposure.

As you do that, something is happening behind the scene. Readers looking for information either at the directories or search engines will find your articles. If the articles are well written, informative and entertaining, they would be enticed to click on the resource box link to your website. So, you now have targeted visitors at your website, and there is a probability that the visitors would become your customers.

Your articles may be selected by online or printed publications or press release companies for publishing. Your article marketing initiative would be richly rewarded when readers of these companies get to see your products and services.

Another advantage of article marketing is that many websites in the same or similar niche as yours are hungry for content. The webmasters would prowl the article directories for new fresh content and when they pick up your articles for publishing on their websites. Your business can enjoy much better visibility since you get a big pie of their traffic. Targeted traffic is it.

I forgot to mention about two big pluses of article marketing. While your articles get read, simultaneously, your website is linked from article directories and websites. The links are all one-way backlinks, the most valuable in the eyes of search engines. Some of these sites have high Google Page Rank and therefore would transfer some of that to your website. In short, you are ahead of those who are paying through their nose for high PR link partners. You get them free and rank in the search engines higher and faster. Again, more traffic is on the way.

Search engine spiders hang out at article directories and would find your website link and index them quickly, sometimes within the same day. Being indexed can take weeks or even months but you have shortcut that using article marketing.

That is it. The essence of article marketing wrapped in a few hundred words. Give it a go and enjoy the benefits and profit potential article marketing can do for your website.