Article marketing, in an internet sense, is a modern promotional phenomenon which harnesses the power of the interconnected nature of the internet and the hunger for written content on websites. Article marketing allows writers to promote themselves, their customers, websites, products or literate anything by writing about them and making the content freely available for reproduction on other internet sites.
So how does it work and what does it offer as a marketing tool? Firstly, you need to produce an article on whatever subject it is that you want to promote, or on a related subject. Once created, the article can be uploaded to any number of article directories which will allow website owners to 'reprint' your article on their site, usually for free. The genius comes in the form of the article bio, a small section of text, usually at the end of the article, where links can be included. This is sometimes called the resource box. Using these links to drive website traffic to another page can be very useful, but it's not the traffic from the article site that is the real benefit. If you have produced a high quality article, it's likely to be picked up and reproduced on a number of websites, probably all relating to the same subject matter. You will get some traffic from these websites as well but the fact that one link has now turned into several links without you having to do anything, will have a positive impact on your search engine results page rankings (SERPs). It is well known that the more backlinks you can get to your site across the web, the greater the perceived importance of your website, in general terms. The reproduced backlink is therefore the valuable item in this case. The more your article is picked up by others, the more times your backlink will be reproduced.
Having your work reproduced, carrying your name around the internet, can give you some excellent reputational benefits. If you're intent on building a personal reputation, your bio may focus more on you and less on a target website that you want people to visit. Again, writing quality articles will help you build your own reputation and standing as someone who knows their subject and you can, through time, establish yourself as an authority on your own particular subject.
Many webmasters get frustrated that their article is not getting traffic or that article marketing is not working for them. In most cases this is usually because the article writer has not fully appreciated that the article being written is an ad for you or your website. Many unsuccessful article marketers make the mistake of using sub-standard articles and expecting good results. Your article should always be of as good a quality as you would use for your own site. If it is not, then you are telling prospective visitors or customers that quality is not important to you and that they can expect poor quality information on the target website. Equally, website owners will not wish to reprint a shoddy article on their website and so the reproduction of backlinks that you so badly want, will not happen.
Do not get carried away with the whole website promotion and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) thing. Remember that your article needs to be for people, not for internet search engines to browse with their robot spiders. You're looking to have your article picked up and reprinted by real readers so that you can promote yourself, your subject or whatever you've included in your bio.
In short, to make article marketing work for you, you must:
- make sure your article is related to your target website or market and is there relevant.
- make sure you use good quality, well written and original articles.
- remember that your article will be read by a human being, so make it a readable and interesting article.
- be patient. Traffic and backlinks do not and will not appear overnight.