What Is Article Marketing

I'm going to be covering WHY you should do article marketing further down in this article, but first,

What Is Article Marketing And How Do You Do It?

It's a very simple concept really.  You, or someone you hire, writes an article around a particular keyword for your website or niche.  That article is then submitted to, and hopefully published, on article directory sites (where other web publishers go to find good articles to build content on their site) as well as the websites which are published by the people seeking content and which are typically also within your particular broad niche.

You may choose to submit the article yourself to a few select high ranking and high traffic article sites such as Ezinearticle.com, or you can submit it to less fussier, but consequently less popular sites.

You can do it individually or you can buy into a service which does the submission process for you, and it is this route which I recommend if you want to make a dent in your market.

Constructing An Article For Article Marketing

I need to explain this bit up front, because the rest of it won't make sense otherwise.  Your article for marketing will consist of two parts, the article and the resource box.  The resource box is the bit which goes at the end and directs the readers to your website and gives them a couple of links to click through on which takes them to a particular web page.  Here's an example..

Before you buy anymore haemorroid treatment remedies, make sure you Dr Bowels' excellent free report on avoiding and curing haemorrids, and horrid problems.

Why Do Article Marketing?

Many people assume the purpose of article marketing is to get readers to click through on the links in the resource box and arrive at your web site or squeeze page.  And it's great if that happens, but it's not the main reason for doing article marketing.

Here's what article marketing is all about…

The links from your articles to your website are taken into account by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc), and this can create a significant traffic boost for your website.

It's not going to happen overnight after you've published your first article, it's a slow burn which builds up over time until one day you appear at the top of the search engines for a particular keyword.  Please note the particular keyword emphasis.

This is not about randomly flinging out articles all over the internet with links back to your website. It is a tactic to deliver your main strategy of showing up for a particular keyword which you are using to get customers to your website.  That doesn't mean you can't keep on doing it over and over again with different keywords of course, but it does mean you have to be organised and consistent.

And sitting at the top of the page for a keyword makes a huge difference to your traffic because the #1 ranking site in search results gets around 8.5 times more traffic than the website that is ranked 5th.

Of course you need to have done your keyword research and picked the right ones, and that's covered in the main members area and too big a subject to be working on here but we do need to consider it because it's key to the whole strategy.  You are seeking to get to get high ranking for a particular keyword which relates to your website.  If you have a website about Home Schooling, then a likely keyword term that you want to rank highly for would be “home schooling”. So, when anyone goes to Google and searches for information on “home schooling”, your website (in particular a specific page) comes up high in the rankings. That is what we’re talking about when we refer to “website rankings”.

Just a little bit more on ranking here – the more relevant the topic of a particular page to the rest of the website then the higher the search engines will rank it overall for a specific keyword.

Let's continue with our 'Home Schooling' example:

• A web page about Home Schooling Curriculum on a general site about education.
• The same web page about Home Schooling Curriculum on a site that is all about education for school age children.
• The same web page about Home Schooling Curriculum on a site that is devoted to Home Schooling.

Assuming everything else is equal then web page in the third example is going to rank highest because it has the closest relationship with the overall theme of the website.

There is another benefit to article marketing which isn't often mentioned but can be relevant and that is to help position you as the author as an expert in your field – but clearly you need to know what you are talking about and be able to communicate it effectively within the general article publishing framework.

How To Do Article Marketing

1. Pick your keyword and the page which will be linked to from your resource box

2. Write your article(s) – you will need at least 10 to make a dent.

3. Submit your articles to the directories, either manually, which takes ages, or using a submission service.

I hope that's given a broad overview about what article marketing is and why you would bother to do it and remember to check out the in depth resources on the main part of the Smart Marketing Warriors Site