If you found yourself in this situation you might find it useful to know that articles can boost your Page Rank. So you can actually prepare for the next Page Rank update by implementing your article marketing strategy right now.

Articles affect Page Rank in two important ways. First, a little about what Page Rank is:

Google instituted Page Rank in 1988 to measure website trust. Google's philosophy of linking is that website owners link to other websites because they like them and trust them.

Google decided to make inbound link quality a major factor in determining Page Rank. But they also look at on-page factors as well. If your outbound links and internal links are relevant and not broken then you build trust for your Page Rank score as well.

So what are the two ways that articles build trust? By providing website owners ways to build quality inbound links to their website and by giving website owners useful content to put on their websites that will build trust.

Here's how it works: You write an article and submit it to several article directories. Those article directories are not your primary target. You want publishers related to your niche to pick up your article and publish it - on their website, their blog, in their newsletter, and wherever you might find targeted traffic related to your niche.

Every time one of these related website owners or publishers uses your article you get an inbound link from a relevant website. That is a trust building factor.

If you put your articles on your own website then you also encourage people to link to you because if your article is worthy anything - that is, it provides valuable content - then people related to your website will want to link to it. That's another trust building factor.

Your article content itself is useful in building trust among your target audience. It also helps with branding and reputation management. The more articles that are out there on the web with your name on it the better, (as long as the articles are well-written and informative to readers).

People want to know that you are well-informed about your topic if they are going to do business with you. Great articles that help people learn more about your topic is one of the best ways to show that you are an expert on your topic.

Poorly written articles on the other hand can damage your reputation. Don't buy cheap content like PLR articles if you really want to boost your reputation online.

Don't buy content for your articles from freelancer websites where people promise to write your articles for an unbelievably low price either. If it sounds too good to be true you know it is.

Well-written articles on your topic can be written by you personally or you can hire a real ghostwriter to write them for you. But quality costs more. Average prices for well-written articles vary from around $20 per article to over $100 per article.

When choosing a content provider, search for their name in Google. Look over the articles they put their own name on. Judge the quality from that, not from what they say on their website.

Article marketing works. It drives traffic, builds trust for your website, and can be used to increase your Page Rank. All it takes is a little hard work, a good strategy, and the drive to pursue it.