The term article marketing means writing articles and allowing other websites, blogs, or ezines to publish them, generally at no charge. The publishers allow you to include a short biodata and to link back to your own site. Links usually wil be located in the “resource box” associated with your article.
Article marketing is useful for establishing a website as an authority, to generate leads and to increase the visitors to your side and to increase its search engine rank. The popularity can be proven by the fact that many softwares and websites are available to distribute articles to a large number of websites.
Some websites will accept your article for free, then charge you a small amount (generally under $10) for redistribution to about 100 other distribution lists. Those distribution lists will further disseminate your article to other sites. This widespread distribution can rapidly increase your visibility within a search engine, and is an extremely cost-effective method for improving your search ranking.
However, article marketing can be for anyone with an area of expertise who can write well, not just internet marketers. For nearly any topic, there’s a website devoted to it, readers who are looking for new information, and webmasters who would love to publish exciting new content. Free articles are an easy way for a webmaster to spice up their sites.
When marketing an article, another important thing to consider is search engine optimization or SEO. Publishers must have an understanding of the algorithms that search engines use and should have a fairly good grasp of commonly used search terms and keywords related to the article being marketed. Doing this will match site visitors to truly relevent offers and content.
Keeping SEO in mind however does not always mean publishing content which is more searchable. Sometimes it may be done during the web development stage, so that the coding and structure of the website and it’s presentation enables search engines to properly index the site. Or the webmaster may decide to include unique content on his site which are easily indexed by search engines, and at the same time are attractive to human visitors.
Having your own article published online is a smooth path toward your expertise becoming recognized. A good piece remains on-topic, is clear and user-friendly, and assists the reader somehow. Many websites will not display your writing if it conspicuously promotes your product or service, so plugging should definitely not be the primary focus. The most profitable compositions best satisfy the unique needs of the webpage’s visitors.
- Tom Cromlento
Highlights 
June 25th, 2009 