Article Marketing - Write Your Way Into Search Results - Traffic And $$$

In my regular scouring of the internet marketing do's and don'ts, I come across an endless sea of opinions, many of them contradictory of other opinions by internet marketers and gurus. You may have seen something like what I'm referring to. Some internet marketers will tell you "Adsense is dead", while others assure you that "There's still life in Adsense and other Pay Per Click programs!" One of the topics that has come to my attention recently is regarding the use of articles to raise the search ranking of your website and do some honest to goodness SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

There are several aspects to SEO, of course. This article takes a look at articles and how their content can be used to your advantage to build your website popularity.

One opinion I've seen time and time again that has been trumpeted by scores of marketers, and that has never been contested, is "search engines love content." I'll go a step further and say, "Search engines love original content."

If you want to see what I'm referring to, do a search under "article sites" and see how many directories you pull up. Article directories are out there in droves, keeping a large supply of articles that can be (and usually are) used by people publishing ezines or adding content to their sites. I've submitted articles to several of these sites for free. Here's why submitting articles is a win-win situation:

Win for you: You get to include a "resource box" with your article, which can be a link back to your website (or the affiliate site you are promoting)

Win for them: ezine publishers need to come up with articles every day/week/month. Webmasters want their proverbial "regularly updated content." Article directories give them the ammo they need to keep their updates regular and their content fresh.

Of course, this does mean you will need to write. If you like to write already, great - get started! If writing is about as fun for you as pulling your teeth with rusty jumper cables, all is not lost. My suggestion is to look at sites like Elance (www.elance.com) and look for writers on the topic you want to cover. Elance has a bidding system, which allows you to post a project for bids and let prospective writers bid on it. Once you have your article written, you will need to submit it. There is an endless array of article sites on the web. You can also take a shortcut by trying an article submission tool.

Something else to remember - SEO will take awhile. Even if you have submitted articles, you must give them time to make their way into the hands of those people who will publish them on sites and on the web.

So there you have it - articles help you promote your web site the write way!

Paul Heingarten is an entrepreneur, author and consultant. He owns several websites and has assisted business owners with website design and marketing. Take a look at his site http://www.theebookstar.com to see a great collection of ebooks available on topics like website marketing.