Encyclopedia >> Types of Marketing >> Article Marketing

Article Marketing - An Overview

Article marketing is the process of writing and publishing articles in order to promote your business. Most often, article marketing is used as an online technique to increase traffic to a business website, and to increase the website's search engine ranking. This discussion will therefore focus on the use of articles as an Internet marketing tool

How This Marketing Strategy Works

The goal with this marketing strategy is to write quality articles that relate to your business in some way, and then to publish those articles through as many channels as possible. At the bottom of each article, there will be an "author's note" that mentions your credentials and points to your website as a related resource.

This is the key to article marketing success — to direct readers to your own website, where they can learn more about the subject. This is what leads to website traffic and, ultimately, an increase in business.

Tools for Writing & Publishing Articles

One of the big benefits of article marketing is the low-cost nature of it. All you need is the ability to write quality articles about your industry or niche, combined with the time and energy needed to publish those articles online. You can start by publishing your work on informational websites that welcome articles from writers, such as:

• www.21Facts.com
• www.Buzzle.com
• www.EzineArticles.com

After you publish your articles through sites such as those listed above, you should then take your article marketing program to the "next level" by seeking out websites related to your industry, and offering your work there as well. You would offer your article on the standard condition that the publisher / webmaster keeps your author's note with the link to your website.

Best Practices for Article Marketing

In our experience, articles that are genuinely helpful achieve the best results with this marketing strategy. In other words, they travel further online and lead to more exposure and web traffic for you. You should avoid writing "fluff" articles — generic pieces that lack substance. The Internet is already crowded with this kind of content. Few publishers will accept this kind of material, which defeats the whole purpose of an article marketing campaign. Spend the time necessary to make your articles shine.

Process Overview - Writing and Publishing

As mentioned, the concept behind article publishing / marketing is fairly simple. You will write an informative article on some aspect of your business or industry. Then you will publish the work through (A) websites like those listed above and (B) other websites related to your industry.

By including an author's note with a link to your website, you can use this marketing strategy to increase your website traffic and search engine ranking at the same time. All of those links pointing to your website (from your published articles) help to increase your website's "link popularity," which in turn will boost your search engine rankings.

That's the gist of it. Now here's some more in-depth instruction on the article marketing process:

Step 1 - Choose an Article Topic

This part of the process should be quick and easy. Within the context of an article marketing campaign, the best topics are those related to your business in some way. Remember, you'll be linking to your own website in a "learn more" fashion, so it only makes sense to choose a topic relevant to your business or industry.

Keep your topic reader-oriented. Inform them. Help them. Enlighten them. Here are some fill-in-the-blank exercises to get you into the right mindset:

• I'm going to show you 10 ways to ____________ .
• I'm going to teach you how to __________ .
• I'm going to explain the importance of ____________ .

Step 2 - Choose a Title for Your Article

The title of your article will directly affect how many times it gets viewed by potential publishers, which in turn will determine how many times your article gets republished across the Web. Remember, the more times your article gets republished, the more inbound links you'll acquire. The more inbound links, the stronger your "link popularity." The stronger your link popularity, the higher your search engine ranking.

Make your title intriguing by highlighting the value of the article. You can also increase the readership of your articles by using titles with a "how to" approach, by using titles with specific numbers in them, or by using the ever-popular "top ten" approach.

Step 3 - Write the Article

It is beyond the scope of this entry to teach you how to write an article. But suffice it to say that you don't have to be an expert writer to succeed with an article marketing campaign. You simply need to write clearly while offering helpful information. Those are the two most important things.

Here are a few guidelines to remember when writing your articles:

• Make sure your article follows some sort of logical flow. This will come from the outline you create. Choose a path (step-by-step, top ten, a series of related items, chronological order) and stick to it throughout your article.
• Optimize your article for online reading. Use short paragraphs, meaningful sub-headers, list, bullets, etc. Keep your language simple (Hemingway, not Faulkner).
• Keep the article reasonably short so it can be comfortably read or perused online. Aim for 500 - 700 words, but don't obsess over those numbers. Shorter articles are also easier to write, so you can create more of them.

Step 4 - Create Your Author's Note

So you've chosen a topic, created a great title and completed your article. But what's the point of all that labor? What do you do next to make your article-writing efforts worthwhile? You create your author's note, with a call-to-action and hyperlinks.

The author's note — also known as the author's bio or "resource box" — tells the reader about the author and points them to additional resources. In an article marketing campaign, the additional resources will be your business website or blog.

The example below will make this a lot easier to understand. Here's an actual author's note I have used many times while publishing articles online:

Step 5 - Publish Your Article

Now that your article is ready to be published, where do you go, what do you? You go to an article directory or distribution site, for starters. These websites give authors a place to publish their articles, and they give editors and publishers an ever-growing source of content for websites, ezines, newsletters and blogs.

I've given you a few examples earlier in this lesson. You can find more simply by typing "article directory" or "article distribution" into any search engine. Just know that there are hundreds of these sites, and not all of them are quality operations.

But the key to article marketing success is to publish beyond these websites. You should also seek out informational websites that are related to your industry, and offer your work to the publishers of those sites. When you take this approach to article marketing — and when the publisher includes your author bio with the link to your website — you can achieve a lot more success in the end.

Related resources:
SEO Consultant Blog |