by Ruth Belena

Created on: May 31, 2009

Article marketing can be of great benefit to any business with a limited marketing budget, and to any site or blog that needs to get more free traffic.

Whether you write your own articles, or if you pay a writer to produce series of articles for the purpose, you can use article marketing to generate sales, increase affiliate income and boost advertising revenue. Article marketing can be used simply to take traffic to web pages that show text adverts and banners visitors will want to click on and buy from.

Benefits of Using Article Directories

If you or a member of your staff can write regular informative articles, on topics relevant to your business, you can submit those articles to free article directories and ezine article sites. Each article you submit will be published with your byline or a resource box, and will display a link of your choice.

These article sites are completely free to join and to use. You may be given the option to subscribe to a premium service that gives your articles priority listing and other benefits.

For article marketing purposes, each article must be of interest to people who may want to buy your products or use your business services, but articles should never be written in a way that directly promotes your business or products.

Article marketing requires you to write informative pieces that provide useful information, including any benefits of using a product or service you can supply. Marketing articles should invite readers to click the link at the end and find out more.

Article Marketing also needs effective use of relevant keywords and appropriate keyword density. This ensures each article has good SEO, so all your marketing articles can be found in search results, by people actively seeking your type of product or service.

Articles on free directory sites are often freely available for use on other sites, blogs, ezines, newsletters, or for other purposes. Anyone reproducing an article from a free article site must include the resource box, or byline, showing the link. The link you choose to appear can lead to your business site, to a personal blog, or to a single web page, where visitors can genuinely learn more about your service or find products to purchase.

Make More Money From Article Marketing

In addition to the extra traffic and sales generated by your articles, some article sites allow you to place your own Google Adsense code on pages where your article appears. This means you make money when people click the ads that appear with your article, in addition to ads on your own site or blog.

Marketing Your Brand Name

Your brand name may be the name of your business, your own name, or a pen name. The same brand name should be used at each article site, so the resource box clear identifies you, or your company.

The name you use should reassure readers that further information is worth seeking from what you have written. Care should be taken when selecting a brand name that looks like a real person or a legitimate business, rather than a get-rich-quick merchant.

The more articles published and republished online in your name, the more value your name has in search engines. Your articles and your web pages will show up in more search results.

There are a great many benefits to be gained from article marketing. It is easily one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a business and increase online income.

Learn more about this author, Ruth Belena.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.