Article Surfing Archive

This is an introduction for the beginners to the powerful world of Article Marketing.

What is Article Marketing?

Recently SEO expert Jim Boykin was asked a question "Content or links?". According to him both are equally important. The days of just relying on links for the most part are history now.

You have a good web site with lot of useful and original stuff, but you are not getting enough traffic from Search Engines. Your analysis points to lack of back links coming from web sites with high PRs. You are wondering how to fill this void. This is where Article Marketing comes into picture. It is this space that Article Marketing fills.

Search engines give a lot of importance to back links coming from sites with higher Page Ranks. And almost all good sites with higher PRs are hungry for good content. Search Engines tend to give importance to sites with compelling content provided they have good number of votes (back links) too.

So, How Does Article Marketing Work?

To understand this, we need to understand the terminology and the players in this game.

The Author: One who owns the content and it is his details that the Author Resource Box will contain.

Author Resource Box: This is nothing but a small paragraph about the author. It typically contains the name of the author, his/her professional/personal capacity which makes him/her an authority for the content, the web site that he/she belongs to and a few words from the author addressing the reader.

Article Directory/ Distribution Service: This typically is a free repository for the authors to submit their articles. Once the editors of these directories approve, the article goes live on the directory.

The Publisher: These are webmasters looking for high quality content to enrich their web sites. They browse these directories and pick the interesting articles, relevant to their sites. The TOS of the Distribution Service dictates that they publish the article "as is", including the "Author Resource Box".

That's it. Now you have high quality one-way links from web sites (many a time with high PRs) to your site. In the eyes of Search Engines, the higher the number of these links are, the higher are the votes for your page and higher your page's importance is.

Thus Article Marketing helps the link building aspect of SEO for you and the content aspect for the publishers.

There are also article publishing services that charge as low as $1 per article. These sites proactively publicize your content to tens of thousands of webmasters through their mailing lists (please note that this is not spam, mostly these will be registered users).

OK. Now that we understand the mechanics of this link building exercise, let us focus on writing good articles that are likely to be picked up by webmasters to be included in their sites and thus giving you the much needed votes (links).

Keep the content as generic as possible. Better if it is not about a particular web site nor about the products you promote. After all, the webmasters want useful content not some marketing buzz.

Research, Research and Research. Get a grasp on the topic you intend to write. Let the content flow from your understanding. Continuity is very important. After all you are taking the reader through your thoughts and your understanding of the topic at hand. See your article through the eyes of the reader.

While style is a matter of comfort, I usually enjoy reading articles where the author talks to me personally and that is naturally my style as well.

Good authors usually end articles with a summary section with highlights and a conclusion. Make sure that your Author resource box is interesting and tempting enough for readers to opt to look you up.

Follow the usual writer's checklist, like spell check, grammar check and good formatting.

** Important **: Author Resource Box is the sole reason for the creation and distribution of your articles. Write a simple and professional one or two line introduction about yourself, your web site and where to reach you. Please understand the philosophy behind the ads getting clicked more if they are at the end of a good article. This can be a great way to get good targeted traffic apart from getting the much needed votes.

That is all there is to know about article marketing. You have now understood how the content you provide fetches good links to your site/pages. You are now familiar with the mechanics of how article marketing works and the importance of author resource box.

You are fully equipped now. Get going. Give your creative powers the much needed vent, earn powerful back links and prosper.