subject: Is Article Marketing Worth The Time? [print this page] There are two important reasons to consider article marketing when promoting your online products. The first reason is an SEO purpose. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and article marketing offers a method of satisfying the off-page SEO requirements for ranking a website well in the search engine result pages.
Most article directories allow the writer to place at least one do-follow back link in the article. Most often in the article this is done in the bio area at the bottom of each article. This back link to the article is important because it shows Google that there are sites out there willing to have links back to your site. Many article directories are human moderated and thus have gained great respect with Google and the other search engines.
Google realizes when they see an article and a back-link from many of the top article directories that this is not a spam link or article because humans have moderated the posting. All things being equal, the more back-links, and specifically the more quality back-links a website has, the better it will rank in the search engines.
Of course there are other factors, but using article marketing to increase the numbers of back-links is an important SEO tactic used by many Internet marketers.
The second reason for article marketing is that it simply brings in more traffic to your website. Many of the articles submitted to the top directories are syndicated out by other webmasters. That means that the article can and will be used by other webmasters as content for their own sites. This means the back-link is placed on their website as well.
Over time, with consistent article marketing, it is possible to gain thousands of page views from only a few hundred articles. In fact I just read of an occurrence of someone who had 300 articles posted on one of the top article directories and they had over one-million page views within the past three years. This is all completely free traffic, as article marketing does not require any cost. Submissions to virtually all the large and important article directories are free.
Submissions to the top article directories are all free. They only expect quality content written within their guidelines. When beginning article marketing be sure and read the terms of service of the article directory in order to conform to their rules. If done consistently article marketing can be a valuable component of any online marketing campaign.
