Why is Article Marketing so important?

February 10, 2008

If you’ve ever wondered how those articles you are writing for clients are being used, then you need to learn about article marketing. The content you are creating is probably being used in one of two ways: as onsite content or as a form of marketing. Marketing a website through articles is one of the cheapest ways to get traffic. The only time it requires is the time it takes to write the articles and distribute them to article directories.

Since you know how to write an article, article marketing is one of the easiest “cross-over” internet marketing skills that you can use to build your own streams of income apart from ghostwriting. At Sell Your Writing Online, we emphasize building passive income through personal projects while maintaining a freelance writing business - and article marketing is a big part of the picture!

Article marketing gives a boost to your website for two specific reasons. I’m not an SEO guru, but to the best of my understanding the articles give you traffic by:

-sending people to your website through your link at the end of your article

and

- building a one-way “backlink” to your website

The second part really isn’t as important as some people believe it to be. The quality of your backlinks and the quality of your article are much more important. Submitting a good article to a handful of good article directories will be much better for your traffic than sending a subpar article to thousands.

I chuckle to myself when I see listings for services that submit your articles to thousands of directories. What the people who use these services are failing to see is that the more their article is out there on the web, the more it looks like spam.

Hundreds of instances of the same exact article are going to get labeled “duplicate content.” And search engines penalize duplicate content - so it’s best to keep your submissions narrowed and focused. Backlinks are good, but quality backlinks are better.

Since massive submission will get you nowhere in a hurry, the focus turns to the quality of the article and how well it “pre-sells” the link at the bottom. The more people are interested in what you’ve written about - the more they’ll click through and want to see what’s on the other side. More clicks create more traffic and more opportunity to make money from your website.

As a writer, you’ll be able to put the power of article marketing into action very quickly. You already know the hardest part…you know how to write a quality, pre-selling article. You just need to figure out what you’d like to promote, brainstorm a few article title ideas and then you’re off and running with your own passive income stream.

Posted in Marketing