Should I Use Article Marketing Or Not?

If you are working to become a successful online entrepreneur then you have probably already tried to increase traffic and generate sales through search engine positioning and pay per click advertising. Have you also tried article marketing?

Article marketing is the strategy of writing articles related to your business and publishing them on other websites and in the ezines of complementary companies with a link back to your site. This form of online promotion is a very effective way to build traffic and boost sales. Below you will find the main ways that article marketing can benefit you.

1. It is your best way to get known as an expert in your field.

Why should someone buy from you and not from one of the thousands of your competitors that are also online? The few lines that you write in your about us section of your website may not be enough to set you apart from the others. However, if your potential customer sees your name on well-written and informative articles appearing on several websites around the Internet, then she will regard you as an expert in your field. The more you publish, the greater your recognition will be and the more your reputation will be enhanced.

2. Informative articles build trust in your ability to provide a good product or service.

If you are selling online your most important asset is to be seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy. When one of your articles is selected by another publisher and placed on a website or included in an ezine, that publisher is in effect endorsing you. This kind of endorsement will impress the readers of those articles and they will feel more confident in doing business with you, especially if your article is published in an ezine or on a website which they already respect.

3. Your articles help to pre-sell your products and services.

It is the quality of website traffic that counts, not necessarily the quantity. The best kind of traffic you can get is from people who have read one of your articles, and have liked what they have read. These web visitors come into your website with an eagerness to know more and are much more likely to buy something from you then someone who comes onto your site cold or without any introduction to your ideas.

4. Article writing is a great way to generate content for your ezines and your own website.

Although you can look at article marketing as an outreach activity designed primarily for publication elsewhere, you can also use these articles in your own newsletters and on your own website. Keeping in touch with your customers and clients through a regular newsletter is an important part of doing business online. However, you need a steady flow of good material to really be successful. If your articles are good enough to be published on someone elses website, then by all means publish them first in your own newsletters and on your website.

5. Articles published on other sites help to build one-way links to your website.

Link building is one of the keys to making a website successful, but, as with traffic, it is the quality of the links that matter, rather than the shear number. Each time one of your articles is placed on another website, you will get a link back to your site. These are one-way links because you did not have to trade links to get them. Usually these links come from pages with fewer outbound links than the standard link pages where your link is usually placed when making a reciprocal arrangement. One-way links coming from pages with few outbound links help to build Page Rank more effectively than reciprocal links.

The promotion world is waking up to this article creation technique and in time the competition will be fierce. The time to get started is right now. One well crafted article can easily be worth thousands of dollars in promotional efforts. Do not let not being able to write great articles keep you from getting ahead but have articles written for you. You simply can not put a price on the possible results from article distribution. Just wait until you experience it for yourself.