Article Marketing is a form of Internet Marketing where you write articles related to your website niche and submit them to article directories. Articles can include anything from how-to’s to product reviews.

I am an avid believer in Article Marketing as a way to increase website traffic as well as a great method of Internet Marketing to promote your websites, and it is also one of the best techniques to build one way backlinks to your sites for your link building campaigns, which is needed for SERPS (search engine pages results), Search Engine Optimization and Page Rank.

Take a look at the screenshot below which shows a page from Google Webmaster Tools on How can I improve my site’s ranking?

3 Huge Benefits of Article Marketing

SERPS & Page Rank, Direct Targeted Traffic & Website Promotion

1. SERPS & Page Rank

In order to increase your Page Rank and rise in SERPS of the major search engines, and especially Google, you must build lots of backlinks to your websites. And one-way backlinks, such as those that you get with Article Marketing, hold a lot of juice.

Here’s the Nut Shell:

Articles = Backlinks = Higher Search Engine Result Pages (serps) and Page Rank= Increase in Web Traffic.

The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in search engines, which gives you better exposure in search results which means an increase in web traffic, that is also targeted IF you make sure to use relevant targeted KW (more on this below)

Basically “backlinks” are links that guide readers back to your website. When other sites link their pages to yours then that’s a BACKLINK!

In the business of Internet Marketing it is a well known fact that a strong linking strategy is the basis of Search Engine Optimization and backlinks are the biggest thing since electricity or MTV (depends on who you ask ).

That’s because the major search engines bots use the presence of backlinks to give your site authority and therefore decide where your site ranks in the search engine results (SERPS). These backlinks establish authority for your site and relevancy for the keywords your are trying to rank for from the anchor text you use in the backlink.

You can learn the details of Anchor Text by reading my post: The Importance of Anchor Text in Backlinks

And the more articles you have out there the more backlinks you get. That ladies and gentlemen is Search Engine Optimization done right!

2. Direct Targeted Traffic

Article Marketing is also a very effective Internet Marketing method and a quick way to increase relevant targeted web site traffic to your site and get sales if you use relevant targeted KW, mainly due to the ability of article directories to rank high in search results and the fact that many article directories, such as Ezine Articles, have very high levels of direct traffic and members.

Relevant Keywords in Articles

Yes, keywords rear their ugly heads again. It is important, as always, to use relevant, sales targeted keywords in your articles. In Internet Marketing, as with any type of marketing it is important to target your audience and your audience are buyers.

Side Note: The KW of the article does NOT have to be the same as the anchor of your backlink, and most of the time won’t be. The Article KW is for targeting the readers of the articles and the anchor text KW within your backlink is for SERPS and Page Rank of your website.

For example, I have a website for which I want to rank for the KW “Cheap Laptop Computers.” I am going to write an article with a backlink to my website that is a guide to buying laptops.

So, I research the best keywords for my article on Guide to Buying Laptops and I find “Laptop Buying Guide.”

So the KW for my article will be “Laptop Buying Guide” AND the anchor text I will use in the backlink to my website within the article is “Cheap Laptop Computers.”

…Back to Relevant Keywords in Articles – Here’s the Nutshell:

Articles with relevant KW = Readers who are Presold for whatever you’re selling and THOSE READERS get a link to your site = Increase in relevant and targeted traffic to your site = Sales and Conversions

For example, let’s say I am writing an article about laptops. The KW “laptops” is NOT a highly targeted KW, it is too broad and could mean Joe Blow is just surfing for anything having to do with a laptop.

Conversely the narrow KW’s “How to Buy a Cheap Laptop” or “Laptop Buying Guide” are KW’s that target the audience looking to buy a laptop and that audience will get a link to my laptop store. Another good idea is to stay away from KW that have the word “free” in them, you will see this a lot in your KW research. The more targeted the KW the better the sale conversions will be.

How to Utilize KW in the Articles:

This will make sure your articles rank in SERPS for the article keywords you are using.

1. Make sure to use your article KW’s in the titles of articles. You can add other words to make the titles more interesting as long as the main KW’s are there.

You can learn 5 Tips for best Article Titles at: Are you Writing Garbage? Keys to Writing Great Articles.

2. 3-5% KW density throughout article body.

Don’t forget to use the keywords you want your website to rank for in the anchor text.

3. Website Promotion

Last but not least, Article Marketing is also a great way to promote your sites not only because of the high traffic that many high quality article directories get, but also because of the viral effect that articles can have.

If you write quality articles they can be picked up by other webmasters and publishers and become syndicated, and then they spread all over the net, and the link to your site will, of course, come along for the ride.

You can learn the how-to’s of writing quality articles at my post: Are you Writing Garbage? Keys to Writing Great Articles.

The Relevance of How Articles are Submitted

There are two ways to submit articles to article directories and the submission process is another important aspect in regards to your sanity, as well as, your campaign.

Manual Article Submission can be a tedious process where you add each article to each article site one by one. This means that you go to each site (and there are 1000’s of them) and manually submit each of your articles one at a time.

Remember that you are looking for maximum exposure and massive backlinks so about 40% of your Internet Marketing time should be spent on submitting articles. If you only submit to a couple of sites that only means a couple of backlinks and very little exposure.

Also, with manual submission you have to bookmark them on your computer, read each of their submission guidelines (they all have them), make sure you stick to those guidelines to get published and keep track of what you submitted to who in order to avoid duplicates.

Here is a small list of some of the top article directories that you can submit to:

Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
Go Articles
Article City
Article Alley
Amazines

Submit Articles Automatically – A Better Way To Do Article Marketing

A much better submission process is to submit articles automatically using either a service or software. Many softwares are expensive and really quite tedious to use, Magic Article Submitter is a great, inexpensive and highly effective and easy to use article submission software.

3 Big Reasons Why Magic Article Submitter Rocks

1. Over 800 article sites in the software, and you can add your own if you wish.

2. Magic Article Submitter allows you to submit unique versions of your article, with spin syntax, using a tool like the Best Content Spinner, which is truly the best spinner ever made. Submitting unique versions of articles is better for SEO, as the backlinks will have more weight with Google, than those coming from the exact same articles.

3. An amazingly easy automated process that creates your login for the over 800 article sites in the software AND even automatically confirms those accounts for those article directories that require it. This is SO great, takes about 20 minutes to set up a profile, sign up and get started submitting your articles. I highly recommend it and use it myself.

I also use Unique Article Wizard, though this service is pretty expensive and is more of a blog network than an article marketing tool, it is very effective, but generally meant for advanced users that understand its benefits. Basically it is used to submit unique versions of posts to various blogs in the system.

The greatest benefits of using UAW is that it allows lots of time to write instead of spending that valuable time on submission and it allows for mass website and marketing exposure in the quickest time.

Happy Writing!