Article Marketing Information

It's no secret that article marketing has quickly become one of the hottest ways to market your website. This is because when it is done correctly, it can create huge amounts of highly targeted traffic to your website. And since it is free to submit your articles to the thousands of directories, ezines and websites that accept articles, it is by far the most cost effective traffic building strategy as well.

Anyone can start an article marketing campaign. All you need is basic grammar skills and an internet connection. Of course, you will need a website, service and/or a product to market as well.

The information below explains the general idea of article marketing and how it is done. For detailed information on article marketing and secrets to make your article marketing efforts crush your competition and how to take it to the next level, be on the lookout for our new ebook, "The Official Article Marketing Handbook" due to be released in February of 2008.

How Article Marketing Works:

Your job:

You'll begin by deciding on a topic to write an article about. It should be a topic related to your website, service or product.
Write a 300-700 word article on the topic you chose in the previous step.
Write an About the Author line (aka: resource information section or resource box) which includes information about yourself, your service and make sure to include a text link to your website.
Using your internet browser, visit article directories, ezines and other websites (within your niche) and submit the article to them, making sure that your resource information section is also submitted.
Repeat the steps above with a new article.

Their job:

Once your article is submitted, it is reviewed and either accepted or declined.
If declined, you will receive an email with the reason it was declined. Simply fix the problem and resubmit the article.
If accepted, your article will be posted on their website in the category or page that was suggested by you or decided upon by the website administrator.
Your article is then available for redistribution to other websites (via RSS Feeds) or to be sent to email lists and to be indexed and ranked by the search engines.

The result:

If done correctly, your article will begin to propagate across the internet. People will find it, read it and click through to your website from the link you placed in the resource information section. This equals more traffic.
The traffic that you receive in this manner is highly targeted and can be immediate. This traffic will consist of hungry consumers looking to purchase what you have to offer. Conversion rates will go through the roof.
People will begin to see you as an expert in your particular niche. Trust will be gained which facilitates follow-up and future purchases by the consumers. This also increases traffic.
The search engines will begin seeing one-way backlinks to your website all over the internet. This will cause your website to jump considerably in the search engine results pages, leading to even more traffic.
Massive increases in traffic and resulting sales.

Let's Discuss the Sections Above

First of all, you need a website, product or service. Since you found this page and have been reading to this point, we will assume that you already meet this criteria.

So what are you going to write about? Anything you can think of that is related to your website, product or service. The main point here is that the article must be related in some way to your niche. There are two main reason for this:

You want the readers of your article to go to your website and purchase what you have to offer. If you are selling herbal supplements and you write an article related to light fixtures, you're not going to get many click throughs to your website, not to mention sales.
Search engines are smart...and getting smarter every minute of every day. If they see an article written about herbal supplements and see links to a website called www.lightfixtures.com they will immediately know that the links are unrelated and either not give your website credit for the link or, worse yet, they will see it as a form of article spamming...and that would mean bad news for your online business!

Make sure that when you complete your article that it is between 300-700 words. If you fail to meet this requirement, your article will be declined by just about every website you submit to without ever even being read. It is OK to go over 700 words, however try not to write more than 1,000 words and NEVER submit an article under 300 words.

The same goes for your "resource box" section. Make sure that you follow the policies of each site or your article will be declined without even being read.

You see, as article marketing continues to quickly grow in popularity, directory and ezine editors have more and more articles to review every day. Some of them have thousands upon thousands to review daily! I can tell you, first hand, that the very first thing they do when reviewing your article is to look for obvious problems such as the ones discussed above simply so that they can decline the article without having to spend their time reading it. Remember this!

Article Marketing Now that you have submitted your article, there's nothing you can do about it except sit back and wait to see if it is accepted or declined. It is at this point that you should get your creative juices flowing again and start creating your next article. In general, it can take anywhere from 24 hours to several weeks to get a response from an article submission. Do not stop and wait to see what happens. It is crucial that you continue writing and submitting articles. It is also a good idea to keep a log of each article and each directory you have submitted it to. See our article submission tools page for some great software that will keep track of it all for you!

If you ever have an article that is declined, do not get offended or aggressive toward the website that declined it. They are by no means required to accept your article, nor are they required to correct a simple error or typo on your part. Simply make the changes that (they say) need to be made and resubmit the article. If you respond in a negative way, directory and ezine owners will have no problem whatsoever in deleting your articles and wiping out your account altogether.

For other tips and general submission guidelines, it would be a very good idea for you to read through our article marketing tips page and follow the guidelines you'll find there. Doing so will guarantee an almost 100% acceptance rate for all of your articles, provided they are free of grammar and spelling errors.

The ideas discussed above are general article marketing ideas and are far from the total picture. Be on the lookout for our new ebook (expected to be released February, 2008) entitled, "The Official Article Marketing Handbook" which will give you the complete, all-inclusive picture of article marketing as a whole and will include insider secrets to getting the most out of your article marketing campaign.

That being said, lets move on to a few other article marketing concepts.

Article Marketing Concepts

In order to develop an effective and profitable article marketing campaign, you must see it for what it is. In the past, people used article marketing as nothing more than a way to get backlinks to their website, thus increasing their rankings in the search engine results pages. Still today, a gross majority of people believe that article marketing is still done solely for this reason. This is no longer the case.

Although the backlinks do create higher rankings for your website, there are other reasons for article marketing.

Article Marketing Ideas First of all, your article has a great chance of being published across the internet to millions of people via RSS Feeds that are picked up from the directory you are submitting to. The people who find it will read your article and, if written well, they will click through to your website ready to buy! If your article is picked up by one of the major ezines or email lists, you will see immediate and massive results as well. And as you continue writing and submitting articles, you will become more and more of an expert, or authority, within your niche. If you know what you're talking about, people will trust you, buy from you and come back again for more.

One of the best things about article marketing is the fact that once you submit an article once, you never need to do it again...and it will continue bringing in targeted traffic for years to come.

So you see, there are more reasons to launch an article marketing campaign other than simply to get backlinks to your site. As it has evolved, the backlinks have moved from the main reason for article submission to a bonus by-product...all of which lead to more traffic and sales.

Quick note: Please don't make the mistake of submitting your articles to article directories that are not established and well-known, and by all means, NEVER use a third party submission company. There is a current trend with owners of well-established article directories where they are no longer accepting articles from such companies.

When submitting your articles to article directories, you are allowed to add up to three backlinks to your website in the resource information section. BAM! Just like that you have three free, one-way backlinks to your website and you're on your way to seeing more traffic, higher conversions and a higher revenue potential. And that's just one article. Imagine how many backlinks (votes) you can build after submitting ten, twenty or more articles to dozens of different directories.

If you are trying to get more traffic to your established website, or if you are just starting out with a new website, article marketing should not just be a serious consideration in your traffic generation efforts, it should be a priority. The most important thing to remember is to submit relevent and meaningful information in your articles. If a person decides to click on your link from a submitted article, you can be guaranteed that that person is looking for the information, product or service that you are providing.

We have experienced, first hand, the power of article marketing. We have used this strategy for years and are always testing different ways and means of article marketing. When done correctly, you'll see traffic start pouring in within a few days. More traffic means more customers and more profit potential for your business.

One last thing, as you search the internet for article marketing information, you'll see a general trend. All of these sites (including ours) are saying that if article marketing is done "correctly" that you will see swift and massive results. So, what exactly is "correct", why should you trust what they have to say and what kind of proof do they have that it works?

We are going to explain every aspect of article marketing, what to do, what to expect and we'll show you solid proof that we know what we're talking about and that the results are truly effective. Bookmark this page now and come back in February for "The Official Article Marketing Handbook."