Article Marketing is among the most popular and most effective SEO tools in use today. However, most people don’t realize that this is also among the oldest forms of print marketing. Even before
advertisements were printed on a regular basis, publishers would include articles from local business leaders in their publications.

The founding fathers of America used this model to talk about their revolutionary ideas, but as an added benefit their businesses and skills would also occasionally be spread among the readers making them very popular business people.

Just as it was in the days of American independence, article marketing is a simple process. Average people write about what they know or what they are passionate about. Publishers then capitalize on their writing to gain readers and expand their distribution without having to pay writers. In exchange for the article, the author gets to list their name & company information. Then when the reader views the article, they also see this business listing and are made aware of the products or services of the author.

This approach is not limited to revolutionary leaders or future presidents. Average Joes have perfected this art for centuries. Regardless of your industry or education level, you too can take advantage of this marketing approach. To show two opposite ends of the spectrum I’ll list two examples: A mechanic down the road recently wrote a one pager teaching people how to change their own oil. On the other hand a major corporate CEO writes articles regularly about his experience leading people. Both attract people to the companies these individuals work for.

While the approach of writing articles is unchanged, the way you distribute the articles & their impact has changed dramatically, in ways that really benefit SEO practitioners. In today’s article marketing plans, the author posts their articles on internet based article directories. Search engines then see the link back to the corporate website in the article and consider it to be a vote for the company’s website.

These “votes” are the secret sauce in most SEO strategies. The more “votes” or links to a site the higher the search engine will rank them. When the link contains text that relates to the pages title or specific keywords, the vote has even a higher value. When the page containing the link is on a website like an article directory that already has a high rank, the vote is even more valuable. An SEO consultant can help you define a specific strategy for articles and linking, but you could get part of the way there on your own if you have the time to research article marketing and keyword strategies.

This approach can be so effective, that it even dwarves many of the paid forms of web marketing. Some sites even see a return on investment 5 times higher than what they get from paid search engine tools. That said, this is one of the most effective organic search engine optimization techniques in today’s market. However, obtaining those types of results can be rather challenging and is not the norm.

If you are brave enough to try for huge lift in your search engine rankings through article marketing, then you will need to get used to a few popular tools and then spend serious amounts of time writing.
First and foremost, you will need to leverage twitter, facebook, and other social networking sites. On these sites you can encourage people to read your article. Often times, they will like the article and pass it on to others through links or general buzz. That buzz is then registered as another form of vote on the search engine. Second, you will want to find several relevant article directories to publish your articles in as many unique places as possible. This will encourage a lot of linking and re-linking. Finally, you will need to write a lot. The more you write and distribute the more attention you can draw to your site.

In closing, Article Marketing is perhaps the most effective internet marketing tool at your disposal. It’s easy to use, doesn’t require extensive training to get started, and most importantly it can have real results quickly. Just remember to think through your article marketing strategy and plan out what you will write about so you can build a strong presence and ensure continued growth over time.

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• How Mom and Pop Shops Benefit from Internet Presence
• Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimizations (SEO)
• Press Release Distribution and Article Syndication Services

Tags: seo