Article Marketing: Establishing Yourself as an Expert
The term article marketing involves providing articles that you have written to other web sites, blogs or ezines, usually for free. In return, you can include a short biodata and links back to your site in the "resource box" that appears under your article.
Article marketing allows you to establish yourself as an expert. Public recognition of your name will increase traffic to your site which greatly improves your search engine rank and generates leads. The popularity of article marketing has led to development of software packages and websites that help authors syndicate articles to thousands of websites.
To quickly increase your search rankings, you may want to consider subscribing to a service that will re-distribute your article to other distribution lists. As your article gets disseminated to a larger group of viewers, the chances for web hits increases exponentially. Usually the companies that distribute your article will accept it free, but charge a small fee, commonly less than $10, to make it available to other sites.
However, article marketing is not just for internet marketers. Different sites have a variety of topics on which they accept articles, and they are always looking for new topics to spice up their website. So whichever is your area of expertise, there will always be someone out there who wants to learn more, and webmasters who are ready to accept free content.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, also merits consideration in article marketing. A publisher must be know commonly used search terms and understand the mechanisms by which search algorithms work. These tools will ensure that only those articles will be placed which match site visitors with the information they require.
Remembering SEO does not necessarily point to publishing more searchable information, though. A webmaster might sometimes incorporate SEO into the structure, presentation, and coding of a site during its development phase, so that it may be more appropriately indexed by search engines. Unique content might also be considered for inclusion, as it is readily indexed by search engines, and simultaneously appeals to visitors.
Writing an article and getting it published on a website is an easy way to establish oneself as an expert. The best articles stay focused. They are easy-to-understand and help the visitors in some way or other. An article should not be used for plugging your product or service, at least not obviously. Otherwise many websites may not put it up. In short, the most successful article is one that satisfies some need of the visitor.
Published February 19th, 2007
