Article marketing is basically writing articles that promote...

• You
• Your web site
• Your product
• Your affiliate products
• Your expertise
  

Th greatest thing about article marketing is it costs you nothing to get started, and you can be promoting yourself within minutes. Hundreds of thousands of web masters are using this form of promotion every day, so if you're not involved then you're missing out on free traffic to your web site.

When you write articles for article web sites you're promoting yourself and your knowledge. An article is an advert that lets people know you're an expert in your chosen niche so they will then want to read more about what you have to say.

You get a resource box at the bottom of your article that you can use a bit of self promotion to encourage people to click through to your web site or blog.

The Tips List

Tips lists are great ways to write article and get them read. If someone is looking for information on a subject and they see your article heading telling them about tips on their subject they will read your article.

If someone wants a leaner body, and you have an article "7 tips for a leaner body" you'll have their attention.

The "How To" Articles

Just like the tips lists' articles, "How To's" grab someone's attention if they are looking for information on a subject.

With a "how to" article you're going to get teh attention of someone who wants the answer to a specific problem.

"How To Get A Leaner Body"  will answer questions that people are searching for.

Once you start giving people the answers to their problems you'll attract more visitors to your web site.

Review Articles

Review articles are another great way to give yourself and your web sites attention. You could write a review on the latest product out that you think your readers will benefit from. Or you could write a review of something you want people to avoid. Either way, you're helping them out.

People are always looking for information on the latest products for sale, and web masters like putting news on their web sites. Your articles will get used more by web masters if you write compelling news stories, and this gets you more backlinks.

These are all teh most popular forms of articles you'll find. They answe specific questions, and your honesty will build trust with your readers.

Keyword research is an important part of your article marketing. Your keywords are what helps you get found in the search engines, and the search engines are what bring visitors to your articles an your web sites.

You're looking for keywords that aren't too competitive. if you're subject is fitness then you're going to be in competition with millions of other web pages. But if you're subject is fitness for the over forties, then you'll cut your competition down.

The less competition you have, the more chance you have of getting your articles ta the top of the search results. This means more free traffic for you, which leads to more sales of your products.

There is an excellent free keyword tool here - Wordtracker free keyword tool

Wordtracker get their information from smaller search engines so you should multiply yoru results by 10 to give you a search figure that Google gets every day.

The headline is the most important part of your article. This is what everyone will see first, and this will get them to read what you have to say. You want your readers to know you have the answers they are searching for, and they should know this just by reading your headline.

Your keyword that you have just researched should be in the headline, as the headline is a very strong part of your article in the eyes of the search engines.

The first paragraph of your article is what builds the desire in your reader. You need to follow your headline up with a paragraph that will keep them reading the rest of your article.

Backup your article headline by letting your reader know you have the answer to their problem. This is what keeps them reading to the end of your article.

When writing your articles keep your para graphs short. Long paragraphs make your articles seem long and boring ( even if they aren't ), and big blocks off text can put readers off straight away.

Use subheading as well between your paragraphs. Most people scan the text when reading online, and sub-headings create stopping points because they catch the readers eyes.

When you finish your article you want to leave the reader satisfied. You don't have to give away the farm in your article, you want to use it as a teaser for your knowledge so they want to read more about what you have to say.

A short summery of your article, and how the reader will benefit from your advice is a good way to end it.

The resource box is a paragraph you can write at the end of your article, and this is where you can give yourself a bit of a sales pitch. You can add 2 to 3 inks as well that lead to your web site or blog.

The resource box also gets used when someone else publishes your article on their site. This gives your site or blog some link juice, and then your site will start moving up the rankings in the search engines.

The links in your resource box should have the keywords you want the page they're pointing to rank for in the search engines.

An excellent example of this is the "Click here" test. If you type click here in Google the number one spot is Adobe Reader. This is because the page at number one spot has thousands of links pointing to it saying "click here."

Click here is what a lot of article writers put in their resource box so they are losing a ton of free search engine traffic because their pages are competing for the term "click here" instead of what they want to get ranked for.

So instead of "Click here for fitness tips" ( with click here being the link, you want to write something like, "For more information on fitness visit Fitness Tips ( with Fitness Tips being your link ).

That way your web page will start ranking for "fitness tips" instead of "click here."

Article length is something a lot of people struggle with. They can be too long or too short. This means some don't answer any questions, and some answer the question in such a long way that the reader gets bored before the article has been fully read.

300 to 400 words is perfect for an article. This is more than enough to answer almost any question.

This is a list of the top 10 article directories for you.

Ezine Articles

Article Base

Buzzle

SearchWarp

Go Articles

Article Alley

Article Dashboard

Article Snatch

Idea Marketers

Webpro News

To get the most out of your article submissions you should write a unique article for each directory. You can do this manually, which does take a long while or you can get a service to do it for you.

A service that submits a unique version of your articles to thousands of directories and blogs is Unique Article Wizard.

When you submit unique versions of your articles it means more of them will get listed in the search engines, and the links in your resource boxes will be stronger. When you submit the same article to thousands of web sites the search engines will only count a few of the links so you won't gain as much page rank as the links from unique articles.

You can read a lot more information about Unique Article Wizard here - Unique Article Wizard

Once you've been article marketing for a few months you will see a difference in the amount of traffic to your web sites, and you'll see an increase in your earnings.

All the web sites at the top of the search results will have some sort of back link strategy, and the easiest and cheapest way to get back links is through article marketing.