Promoting Your Business with Internet Article Marketing

Posted by Gary Russell - SEO Specialist on 15 June 2009 | 0 Comments

In the early days of the World Wide Web, there was a tremendous focus on flashy graphics and effects. As the web has matured and web users are no longer as captivated as they once were by glitzy design, the focus has switched from how sites look to the content they contain. The modern internet is more tool than playground, with users expecting quick and easy access to information. This has lead to a remarkably efficient method of promoting your business – article marketing.

The demand for web site content is so high that very few web site owners can supply all of the content that they need. To supplement the content they can create, they turn to other sources of content. One popular, and often free, method to get high quality content is to utilize article directories. Article directories are repositories where authors make their content available to the public. We site owners are free to post the content to their website. The only caveat is that the websites must maintain the author section in order to credit the content creator.

It is this author section that allows a business owner to utilize article marketing. By publishing articles relating directly to the business or service that the company offers, a business owner can establish him or herself as an expert in the field. In this way, article marketing can be used to build name and brand recognition and, as any business owner knows, this is one of the primary keys to building a successful business.

While developing name recognition and expert credentials is one of the benefits of article marketing, it is not the only one. In fact, the number one reason that businesses create and distribute content articles is to generate one way back links. One way back links are just what the name implies – links to a site that does not feature a link back to the linking site. The author info section of the article can contain a hyper link to the business web site. Search engines (Google in particular) rank sites more highly if they have a number of one way links pointing to them. The reason that the one way link is so important is because many web masters trade links with other companies in order to increase link levels. Modern search engine algorithms take this into account and typically do not raise a site ranking for two way links.

A word of caution for those who would choose to use article marketing: quite a number of businesses now use this technique and there is a tendency to skimp on the quality of the writing in order to increase the number of articles out there. This is a horrible mistake. The only successful articles are those that get posted on other sites. Articles that are not of high quality will never be used and therefore never generate back links.

Article marketing is a very cost effective (free, if they are self written) way to increase search engine ranking and build a reputation of expertise. As with other forms of internet marketing, content articles can take on a life of their own, propagating through the internet without intervention of any kind.