Article marketing is a very popular topic in the online marketing world. The reason is simple. It is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to any website. And the best part is, it is Free yet effective. I have personally driven more than one million unique visitors to my sites over a period of 12 months using only one method – article marketing. No prize to you for guessing it.  This Hub is aimed at giving every soon-to-be article marketer an easy article marketing guide to get started. 

1. Article submission is free

There are thousands of article directories out there that accept your articles without a fee.

2. Traffic

There are 3 ways article marketing can drive traffic to your websites. One way is when your articles are ranked within the search engines and start pulling organic search traffic to your websites. The other way is when visitors browse through the article directories, see your articles and click through to your website. The third is when webmasters use your articles on their websites while publishing your website links and giving you credit for the articles.

3. Establishes Expert Status

By writing and submitting articles regularly on a certain niche, you can quickly establish yourself as a expert in the subject. This is similar to creating Hubs and becoming an expert with a fan base. As an expert, readers trust you more and are more likely to take up your product recommendations.

4. Build Backlinks

Submitting your articles to as many article directories as you can. This has the effect of increasing the number of quality backlinks to your websites. By doing so, it improves the ranking of your websites for the anchor text keyword you are targeting. 

What are the 4 components in article marketing?

We are going to look at the few components that make up the entire article marketing process.

They are keyword and content research, article writing, article submission and creation of landing pages.

The entire process works like this.

1. You create a landing page

2. You conduct research to find targeted keywords as well as relevant content.

3. You write an article and link your article to a landing page

4. You submit the article to one article directory or many article directories.

The landing page is essentially a page which you want your visitors to see. It can be a sales page, ie where your affiliate link leads to. Or it can be your own website, blog or even a name squeeze page.

This landing page is where you want your visitor to take an action, be it to sign up for your newsletter, join your list, buy your product or to click on an Adsense ad for income.

Keyword research is important to find keywords that are low in competition and easier to rank for in Google. Example, “make money online” is a tough word to target but you stand a much greater chance if you target “make money online for teens”.

The article is your content that you are using to attract traffic. We will look at the components of an article in the next section.

Once the article is written, you will need to submit the article to an article directory to be published. Submitting to as many directories as possible is a great way to get as much exposure to your article as possible.

Once your article is published, the whole process of article marketing is completed.

Every article should have an introduction, body and a concluding paragraph. An article is ideally 400 to 500 words. Writing too long makes your readers bored. Writing too short an article makes it rather short of substance. Balance it well and you have a nice length.

Optimizing your article for your target keyword is important. Never keyword spam your articles. Target anything between 1 to 2 keywords per 100 words of content.

The introduction should tell your reader what to expect in the rest of your article. It is simply an outline with a promise to entice your reader to continue reading.

The conclusion is a paragraph that calls your visitor to take action, which is to click on the resource box. If it can do that well, it is an excellent conclusion. If it prevents readers from clicking on your resource box to get to your website, then it is a lousy one.

The same goes for the author resource box. This is where you can pre-sell your reader so make the best of it.

Some article directories allow you to use your affiliate links directly so there is really no need to creating the landing pages.

However, from my personal experience, creating a landing page improves the conversion rates. If you are promoting an affiliate product, it is always good to create a review page. This page can explain the pros and cons (remember to include cons to appear unbiased). Give your honest opinion and you can build a rapport with your visitor.

It always helps to talk about the pains and problems they face and how what you are recommending will take away the pain and hassles.

Naturally, you may wish to send your visitors to your squeeze page to build your list. Make it simple and sweet and you are quite likely to get a high conversion.

Aim at the main problem that your visitor is facing and offer them your solution. Do just one thing and do not put any distraction on your squeeze page.

If you are promoting your Adsense income site using articles, optimize the positions of the ads. Research on the “click” hotspots and put your Adsense ads right there and you will get a good clickthrough.

Submitting articles to article directories can be a tedious process but has far-reaching benefits.

I used to do a fair bit of manual article submission but soon realized that it was too painful and boring.

Nowadays, there are automated article submission software and services like Article Post Robot and Unique Article Wizard that does a great job in submitting articles.

See the recommended links below.

Here are the top 10 article directories you can submit to:

EzineArticles

ArticlesBase

SearchWarp

GoArticles

ArticleDashboard

Buzzle

ArticleSender

IdeaMarketers

ISnare

ArticleAlley