What is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is a great way to get traffic and backlinks to your website or blog.  Rather than paying for traffic, you simply need to write articles and submit them to article directories.

An article directory is an online database of articles from various writers.  They generally accept article submissions and place their own ads on the articles, but in exchange for using your content you are allowed to put a couple of links of your own in a box at the bottom of the article.

This box, usually called a “bio box” or “resource box”, is your space to tell a little bit about yourself, your website, your blog, or a product you want to promote.  I would suggest talking more about your website, and let them know exactly what they could find there that would be beneficial to them.

For example, if you’ve written an article about how to find comfortable shoes, your bio box might say something like, “Visit JennysShoeHut.com for our free report entitled ‘The Top 10 Most Comfortable Shoe Brands’!”

You could then write up a quick report and offer it in exchange for them signing up to your mailing list.  This is a great way to build a targeted list of people you can sell to over and over.

Article marketing is not only good for direct traffic, but it also provides you with backlinks.  This can help you improve your ranking in the search engines.  Sites like EzineArticles.com and ArticleCity.com have good PageRank, and they can pass some of this to your own site, improving your position in the SERPs.

You can use article marketing to promote affiliate products, as well, but I would send traffic to a blog or website first.  There are several reasons for this:

1. You’ll be building an asset that you can sell later, or make use of for years to come.
2. You have the opportunity to build a list.
3. You won’t have to worry about your traffic drying up if the article directory closes or removes your article.
4. You have more control over the traffic.
5. You won’t have to worry about losing the traffic if the affiliate program you’re promoting closes down.

Article marketing is a very powerful way to get traffic, just remember to focus on building your own assets rather than the article directory’s!