Article Marketing has been the talk of the online world for quite some time, however, a lot of people still ask me about what it is and how it works.
This article will explain what Article Marketing is all about and will explain some of the steps involved in this rewarding form of Internet Marketing.
The internet is a channel that has vast amounts of information.
While most traditional channels such as Radio, Television or Newspapers only develop content from professional authors, the internet is absolutely different in the respect that almost anyone can publish their own content.
Article Marketing takes advantage of this ability to self publish and to drive traffic to your blog or website.
What are the key components of Article Marketing? Firstly you have to write an article.
The usual web article will vary between 250 to 750 words and will tend to border on the 250 side as most online readers scan through websites and do not like to read lengthy articles online.
The fastest way to write an article would be to write on something that you either have an interest in or something that you are an expert in.
The next step is to then publish your article.
Currently there are hundreds of article directories where authors and writers alike can publish articles of almost any topic under the sun.
The majority of article directories are free to use, however certain directories that are specialized do charge a fee which can vary quite widely depending on the niche.
One of the biggest free directories is Articles-Updated.
com which has more than 80,000 articles contributed by more than 2,000 authors.
These directories are organized into a number of topics and you must then decide which topic to file your article under.
You should also include a number of keywords that are relevant to your article.
A trick here is to start with keywords that are specific to your article and then to become more general.
You should also include your business and personal details and link to your site in what is called a "resource box".
This "resource box" is a short blurb about you and why the reader should click on the link to your article.
It appears at the bottom of all articles that you write and it is important that it contains a call to action for the reader.
So how do you get free traffic to your site? The first thing is most article directories have lots of original content and tend to have high page rank (ranking) with search engines like Google.
This has the twofold effect of having your article been seen (or spidered) by the search engines and secondly passing some of that page rank to your linked site.
This means that your article would be easier to find by people searching online and if the article and resource box are compelling enough, readers will click through to your site.
These directories benefit by having new, fresh and original content being provided to their sites and therefore being able to offer this for free to readers.
In the case of the article directories that charge a fee obviously benefit through an increase in revenue with more articles.
The more directories that you submit to, the easier it makes for your article to be found.
This also means that you will have more links (or backlinks in Internet Marketing speak) back to your website which means that you will rank higher in the popular search engines like Google.