Published:

01/24/2013 06:55pm

Article Marketing Advantages For Business

Article marketing on the Internet harnesses the power of the Web and the hunger for written content. Article marketing allows writers to promote themselves, their websites, products or literally anything, by writing about them and making the content freely available for reproduction on other Internet sites and electronic mediums.

To use it as a marketing tool you first need to create the article on the topic you want to promote. Once created, the article can be uploaded to any of hundreds of article directories allowing others to 'reprint' your article, usually for free, in exchange for posting your article bio, or resource box, a small section of text, usually at the end of the article, where links can be included.

These links are used to drive traffic to your website or blog to capture and entice prospects to consider your offerings. If your article is of interest to a broad audience, it's likely to be picked up and reproduced in a number of ways relating to the subject matter.

The fact that one link has now turned into several links without you having to do anything, will have a positive impact on your search engine page rankings. The more backlinks you can get to your site across the Web, the greater the perceived importance of your website, in general terms. The reproduced backlink is the valuable item in this case. The more your article is picked up by others, the more times your backlink will be reproduced.

Carrying your name across the Internet can also give you some excellent reputational benefits. To build your reputation, focus the resource box more on you and less on a target website that you want people to visit. Writing quality articles will help you build your own reputation as someone who knows their subject and through time, helps you establish yourself as an authority on the subject.

When writing your articles be sure to provide information and resources, not an ad for you or your website. No one will be interested in using this type of article. Many unsuccessful article marketers make the mistake of using sub-standard articles and expecting good results.

Your article should always be of good quality. If it isn't, then you are telling prospective visitors, or customers, that quality is not important to you and that they can expect poor quality information on the target website. Equally, because others will not wish to reprint your article, the reproduction of backlinks that you so badly want, will not happen.

Don't get carried away with website promotion and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Remember that your article needs to be of interest to people, not for search engines to browse. You're looking to have your article picked up and reprinted by real readers so that you can promote yourself, your subject or whatever you've included in your resource box.

In short, to make article marketing work for you, you must:

• Make sure your article is related to your target website/market and is relevant.

• Use good quality, well written original articles.

• Make it readable and interesting.

• Be patient. Traffic and backlinks won't appear overnight.


Jeannine Clontz, IVAA CVA, MVA, EthicsChecked™, provides marketing and social media support, training and consulting to busy entrepreneurs. For information about finding a VA, download her FREE 10-Step Guide to Finding the Right VA, or to learn why Social Media should be an important part of your marketing plan with her FREE Report, Social Media Marketing Benefits, visit: http://www.internetmarketingvirtualassistant.net, or contact her at info@internetmarketingvirtualassistant.net