How 2 Create A Website | Get Website Traffic With Articles
Article Marketing 101: a Cost-effective Method of Business Advertising
Most of what you know about a business, a brand, a service or a product will come to you via a method called article marketing. Although it is currently one of buzzwords in the online business industry, it's actually been used for a long time. In fact, its use goes as far back as the advent of mass printing. So what is it exactly and how does it impact a business?
What is article marketing? At its core, article marketing is actually advertising, a means to promote something related to a business or brand. It comes in the form of a short article, which can contain news, an explanation, directions, clarifications or any relevant information about the product or service being promoted. Articles can appear in all types of media, more commonly in print and online.
Materials used in article marketing are distributed and published for free.
How is it used? Article marketing is often used in conjunction with an advertising campaign. Notice how write-ups in related subjects often appear in newspapers or on websites each time a company or brand is launching something?
A company producing cocoa powder, for example, will come up with articles discussing the different types of cocoa and how best to use them for cooking or baking. A car company can publish or post write-ups about road safety and vehicle maintenance prior to a promotional blitz for a new model.
Online article marketing
Traditional article marketing is similar in many ways to its online counterpart. However, there are also several differences, many of which are considered beneficial by business owners. Some of these are:
Keyword relevance
People who use the Internet look for information in a different way. In traditional media, promotional materials have to catch the viewer's eyes. In online marketing, an article can appear solo on a web page and have all the attention of the visitor.
In online article marketing, a write-up has to be search engine optimized, containing the necessary keywords that will help it appear high on search engine listings. As such, articles become highly targeted promotional materials, able to hone in on the relevant market – the kind that will be interested enough to buy, subscribe or participate.
It can go viral. Online article marketing allows limitless access and use of articles. Visitors can flag them, share them, vote for them or interact by leaving comments. If the article impresses a visitor, he or she can even promote it to others, thus spreading the word about the business without the owner having to pay extra.
Articles also get spread online a lot faster and can reach more people than traditional methods. It's quite possible, for example, that a write-up posted today can reach thousands within 24 hours and millions within two to three days.
Online article marketing is free.
There's no need to pay for a half-page ad or a 15-second spot on TV. Articles may be sent to an article database or directory, a website that serves as a repository of write-ups.
Directory or database owners offset the cost of providing the site for free by charging advertisers instead. Articles are categorized so visitors easily find them.
Authors and business owners have more control. With online article marketing, the author can pretty much do what he wants to do with the write-up and how it appears on his website. He can, for example, post the article with just one single ad or post only the kind of ads that will be relevant to the article.
Article marketing continues to be a popular method for business promotions. The only disadvantage is that the method becomes overused and abused – hence, the appearance of low quality write-ups. Hopefully, with more discerning readers, article marketing will regain its respectability as a very effective means of promoting a business.
Create Web Traffic With Article Marketing
The one thing that a webmaster cannot live without is traffic. It is the holy grail of all web mastery, and is constantly sought by all web site owners from Google to the smallest startup. The one thing we know for sure is that if you want to make money online, you need traffic to your website. In this article, I explain how Article Marketing can do just that.
You may have the best product on the web, and you may be able to convert 90% of your visitors to a sale. But, for conversion to matter, you need traffic. Having a website with a SEO optimized design coupled with fantastic content centered around keyword-optimized tags is the first step. There are two parts to SEO — content relevance to keywords (thing one) and authority (thing two). It is “thing two,” largely measured by the strength of backlinks, that determines how you rank against your competition.
For the record, it is important to clear one thing up — Article Marketing is often confused with “bum marketing,” but they are not really the same thing. Bum Marketing (not covered here) is a marketing strategy that sometimes uses Article Marketing to convert traffic to sales. Article Marketing is a technique for driving traffic and creating page authority. In this article, some key ideas behind article marketing are explained.
As mentioned before, article marketing refers to a traffic generation method. This method depends on submitting informative “articles” to sites called “article directories.” These articles generally consist of an article body that has generally useful information, and an article resource box that contains links back to the author’s site. This is the technique that is sometimes mistakenly called “Bum Marketing” (so named since it is so easy even a bum could do it.) (Getting the bum a laptop and a high speed internet connection is a social problem that is beyond the scope of this article.)
Good article directories have great traffic and strong Google page rank, so publishing your information there increases the chance that people will see and read what you have to say. Additionally, article directories allow people to copy and republish their articles, provided the article is unchanged and the resource box is preserved. This means that your article with your links could end up on multiple sites with lots of exposure. That means lots of backlinks and click-throughs to you. If you can convert that traffic, you can make money.
There are literally hundreds of article directories. The fact that there are hundreds of article directories opens up the interesting possibility of submitting your articles to many directories and multiplying your exposure. (There can be downsides to this, however, as will be discussed below).
The strength of article marketing is the promise of two complementary sources of traffic.
This is a key idea that is often not understood. When you initially submit your articles, if they are well written, you should expect that they will be spread wide and read often. If you write an effective resource box (the box at the bottom of the article), those same readers will want more information and click the links in the box – landing on your site. Instant traffic.
This simple idea generates immediate traffic to your site. Once your article has spread around the net with links to your site at the bottom, Google will see these links as backlinks to your site. Done properly, these backlinks can help you rank for the pages that the links are pointing to. So, while your direct click-through traffic is falling off, your organic search engine traffic will increase.
Earlier, it was mentioned that you could submit the same article to multiple directories. You can, but you need a strategy for that as well to balance the effectiveness of the submission against the impact of duplicate content. Google expects syndicated content to be duplicated, but there are still tradeoffs that need to be considered (beyond the scope of this brief article).
Article marketing is a fantastic way to promote your website, affiliate products or affiliate program. You can use article marketing to take over almost any keyword in Google (given enough time and effort). By writing an article that delivers value and offers a subtle mention of your affiliate product or critical keywords, you’re well on your way to getting the proper exposure for your promotion. As such, Article Marketing is a great way to promote your business online.
About the Authors:
Trish Calderon - If you're looking for the best articles to populate your site with, Article Shark. Mark Mason - Want more information about article marketing strategy or other information to help make money online?
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