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 writers, anyone can publish on the internet. With article marketing, you can take advantage of this freedom and use the medium to drive traffic to your website or blog.

So how does it work? You write 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 uses keywords that are relevant to the author's target audience and often includes a numbered or bulleted list to make the article clearer and easier 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 different categories, and the author of an article must decide in which category he or she wants to publish it.

You are also encouraged to tag your article with a group of relevant keywords and 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 staff who approve each article before it is published on the internet.

So how do you drive traffic? Firstly, the directories, which are very content rich, have high search engine rankings and often your article will be discovered there and an interested reader may click on your link and come to your website. However, the real purpose of directories is to provide a place for e-zine editors to publish free and relevant content. Every day, editors of a variety of topic-specific e-zines 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 must publish the article complete and unedited and always retain the author's list of sources and links. This way, a single article can easily be found in many different places on the internet over 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 ranking.

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 writers, anyone can publish on the internet. With article marketing, you can take advantage of this freedom and use the medium to drive traffic to your website or blog.

So how does it work? You write 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 uses keywords that are relevant to the author's target audience and often includes a numbered or bulleted list to make the article clearer and easier 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 different categories, and the author of an article must decide in which category he or she wants to publish it.

You are also encouraged to tag your article with a group of relevant keywords and 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 staff who approve each article before it is published on the internet.

So how do you drive traffic? Firstly, the directories, which are very content rich, have high search engine rankings and often your article will be discovered there and an interested reader may click on your link and come to your website. However, the real purpose of directories is to provide a place for e-zine editors to publish free and relevant content. Every day, editors of a variety of topic-specific e-zines 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 must publish the article complete and unedited and always retain the author's list of sources and links. This way, a single article can easily be found in many different places on the internet over 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 ranking.