Lets start by saying "Once upon a time" article marketing, the submission of articles to article directories was a sure fire way to promote a website and allowed that website to dominate any niche with ease.

Not anymore. Is article marketing dead? Well not yet it is not, but using old techniques - it may as well be.

I will touch more on that below, but for now, I want to introduce you to thinking outside the square on your article marketing techniques and ask you to consider other marketing ideas.

Article marketing has come a long way in the past one or two years and is an area only few know about and are taking advantage of.  Imagine getting in on the ground floor with your keyword, command that keyword so no one else can take it away from you.

What would that mean? Your keyword on top of all search engines generating massive amounts of organic search engine traffic to your site.

I know what it means. I have tried and tested all of the techniques I will provide to you here and I have been lucky enough to get one keyword that generates for me thousands, no exaggeration, of visitors a day.

This is what thinking outside the square is all about. Try something new and hope that one of those attempts actually might work. All you need is for one marketing idea to work and your wildest dreams are then in your control.

Good question to ask, "what is wrong with article marketing"?

Let's first look at duplicate content. No such thing really is there. What it means is, if you put the same article on ten, twenty or one hundred article directories, there is no way a search engine will list each article.

Only so many angels or stars can sit on top of a Christmas tree!!

The reason why a search engine will not list each article, is because the search engine is looking for the one very best article to put in the index.

The very best article is usually the one that has relevance from the site, lots of high quality links pointing to it, where other webmasters have placed a link to the article giving it a vote of confidence and authority.

That's why, when you first put your article in a directory your article is number one. But, when another webmaster comes along and copies your article and puts it on his high page rank, relevant to the content, well visited authority site with tons of incoming links, your article falls to oblivion.

The name of the game is generally links inbound to your page, whether that's a blog post, html page, article page or sales page. To rank, the page needs authority and authority comes from incoming good quality links.

This is why article directories are faltering, search engines are placing more importance on relevance of the site and incoming links. For that reason, some will say, search engines no longer place any real importance on article directory submitted articles.

There's your problem. Your article can be used by someone else who can make the article their authority article and therefore you have lost it.  Search engines place less importance on article directory backlinks based upon relevance of the site and linking power defeating the purpose of you writing that article.

Lastly, your article can be reproduced on a site without any links to your urls in your author biography box.

So, how do we do it? Let's now step outside the square - join me....

Everyone has used a search engine. I will start by saying an old addage - "some people look at something and others appreciate what their looking at".

Same thing in a search engine. When you look at a search engine, do you see the url's of the sites on page 1?

There is a new contender on the block now for article marketing and they're called Web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 sites are new, they are full of authority with fresh content that search engines love to eat up and crawl by the minute.

It was once blogger dot com where every post was immediately listed in a search engine. Then it was the free wordpress platform with the same results. Squidoo is another good example.

You want an example of a Web 2.0 site that is packed with authority and search engines love? Its right under your nose, HUBPAGES is a Web 2.0 website packed with unique fresh content with tons of incoming and outgoing links. This is an authority site.

Now when you visit a search engine, start looking for other Web 2.0 sites such as Blogsome or Scribd (a pdf repository) Docstoc is the same and many others.

You will find Web 2.0 sites like these platforms where you can post your article just like here on Hubpages where your keyword is tops, it's number 1 and very likely to remain number one due to the authority the Web 2.0 site holds.

If you use article marketing software, see my hub Rewrite Articles Magic Article Rewriter you can still submit your articles to article directories as they still amount for something.

Now take your articles and put them on the free blogger platforms just as you do here on Hubpages. Open a Blogger or free Wordpress account and start a blog with your chosen keywords.

Look for other Web 2.0 websites when you visit the search engines and open an account there targeting your keyword.

This is thinking outside the square. Placing your articles on Web 2.0 websites and making them your authority websites all pointing a url using anchor text to your choosen pages.

For example, I could spin this hubpage and using those articles I have spun put them on Blogger, Wordpress, Scribd, Docstoc and a few other sites all pointing links at each other to build authority to those platform pages.

From what soon will become my mini network, I can have a link on each of those sites pointing to this hubpage. Wow, what power will that be in absolutely nailing the position of number 1 on a search engine for this hubpage!!!

I hope I have given you some food for thought. Think outside of the square to article marketing by re-directing your efforts to the new Web 2.0 websites.

Remember, build a page then start building backlinks to that page.