What You Must Know About Article Marketing

It’s not surprising that nearly everyone who wants to increase visitors to his/her website is heavily involved in article marketing.

There are two essential keys, and two essential keys only, to a successful website … good content and traffic. And, traffic can originate from many sources, the most valuable traffic comes from organic listings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Although there is no getting around it… it takes substantial time and effort to develop and optimize a website which ranks well in the big three search engines, the traffic your site gets from the search engines is free. If you advertise, it may cost you $10 or more to produce a visitor to your site. And, research has clearly demonstrated that people who reach you because they found your site in a Google or Yahoo query are far likelier to be ready to buy than those who reach you as a result of advertising. Four times as likely, in some marketing studies.

If you think about it, it’s not surprising. The person who visits reaches your website after clicking on a link of some kind or getting an email message may have some level of curiosity about what is on your site. The person who conducted a search to find pages like yours is a far more likely prospect to purchase your product or service .

That is why savvy website marketers devote significant time and effort trying to earn high search engine rankings. And, since obtaining links is essential to achieving such rankings, virtually all site owners are engaged in link building campaigns of some kind. In most instances, article marketing is a major part of their campaigns because few other link building activities can be counted on to produce a comparable volume of links in as short a time. In fact, a single popular article can produce dozens of links within days and hundreds of links within a few short weeks.

Most often, website owners write about subjects closely related to the subject of their sites. Overall, that’s a sound strategy.

But, the largest error website owners make, and they do it all the time, is to limit themselves to writing and submitting articles only about topics closely related to their website content.

By writing on a limited range of topics, they also limit the websites and article directories which will be inclined to publish their articles. And, by doing that, they significantly reduce the number of links their writing efforts will get them. As an example, I have several online college sites, so my articles are most often about college admission, scholarships, online education, and similar topics. I’ve gotten thousands of links with these articles, but there are thousands of article directories and websites that have no interest in those subjects. Therefore, by writing occasional articles on other topics, I am able to find a whole new audience, and get a much greater number of links.

Not very long ago, I wrote an article on winning strategies for casual sports bettors. I have written about search engine optimization, teaching teens safe driving habits, helicopter parents, and dozens of other areas. My most frequently published article was on great backyard hamburger grilling recipes. The single most important tip I can offer other authors is to produce and distribute periodic articles on at least ten or fifteen subjects in addition to the subject(s) of their websites. The rewards, in terms of links, are tremendous.

Manny Diaz is an independent college counselor who advises adults on accredited online degree programs and online education options.