There's been a lot of talk about article marketing in the online world for a long time, but I still get asked a lot about what it is and how it works. Here's a brief explanation. Like any large medium, the internet is hungry for content.
But unlike other media such as television, radio and newspapers, which generally only use content from professional authors, anyone can publish on the internet. Article marketing is a way to utilise this freedom and use the medium as a means to drive traffic to your website or blog. So how does it work?
You are writing an article. A typical article for the Internet is between 250 and 750 words long. It is carefully focussed on a specific area of expertise, the author's niche. It contains keywords relevant to the author's target audience and often a numbered list or bulleted list to make the article clear and easy to read.
You publish the article on the Internet. There are now hundreds of article directories in which any author can publish almost any article. Most are free, but some specialised directories charge a small fee. One of the largest free directories is EzineArticles.com, which contains the work of nearly 70,000 authors.
The directories are divided into several categories, and the author must decide in which category they wish to publish their article. You will also be asked to include a group of relevant keywords with your article and to include your personal or business details and a link to your website in your 'resource box', which is a short paragraph about you or your work that appears at the end of each article. The directories employ a team of people who approve each article before it is published on the Internet.
So how does this drive traffic? Firstly, because the directories are rich in content, they rank highly in the search engines and often your article will be discovered there and an interested reader may click on your link and go to your website.
However, the real purpose of the directories is to provide e-journal publishers with a place where they can find free and relevant content. Every day, publishers of a variety of subject-specific e-journals visit the article directories and download new articles that are relevant to their readership. This saves them having to write the articles themselves. The only condition imposed is that they publish the article complete and unedited and always retain the author's bibliography and links.
This way, a single article can be found in many different places on the internet over a period of time, each time with a valuable backlink to your website, which not only drives targeted traffic to you, but also helps to improve your search rankings.

There's been a lot of talk about article marketing in the online world for a long time, but I still get asked a lot about what it is and how it works. Here's a brief explanation. Like any large medium, the internet is hungry for content.
But unlike other media such as television, radio and newspapers, which generally only use content from professional authors, anyone can publish on the internet. Article marketing is a way to utilise this freedom and use the medium as a means to drive traffic to your website or blog. So how does it work?
You are writing an article. A typical article for the Internet is between 250 and 750 words long. It is carefully focussed on a specific area of expertise, the author's niche. It contains keywords relevant to the author's target audience and often a numbered list or bulleted list to make the article clear and easy to read.
You publish the article on the Internet. There are now hundreds of article directories in which any author can publish almost any article. Most are free, but some specialised directories charge a small fee. One of the largest free directories is EzineArticles.com, which contains the work of nearly 70,000 authors.
The directories are divided into several categories, and the author must decide in which category they wish to publish their article. You will also be asked to include a group of relevant keywords with your article and to include your personal or business details and a link to your website in your 'resource box', which is a short paragraph about you or your work that appears at the end of each article. The directories employ a team of people who approve each article before it is published on the Internet.
So how does this drive traffic? Firstly, because the directories are rich in content, they rank highly in the search engines and often your article will be discovered there and an interested reader may click on your link and go to your website.
However, the real purpose of the directories is to provide e-journal publishers with a place where they can find free and relevant content. Every day, publishers of a variety of subject-specific e-journals visit the article directories and download new articles that are relevant to their readership. This saves them having to write the articles themselves. The only condition imposed is that they publish the article complete and unedited and always retain the author's bibliography and links.
This way, a single article can be found in many different places on the internet over a period of time, each time with a valuable backlink to your website, which not only drives targeted traffic to you, but also helps to improve your search rankings.