by Mark Thompson

Unless you happen to be someone who has only recently started doing business online then you will Know about article marketing. Through article marketing people like you and me are able to get involved in niche markets and target those visitors who are interested in the product you are promoting and turn them into being motivated to purchase from you.

Article marketing without any shadow of a doubt is a very powerful tool for using to promote a website. Certainly, if done properly it is an extremely effective method of getting targeted traffic to your site and building backlinks. By using informative articles that are short to promote your site may seem a waste of time, but the actual return on the time you investment can be astounding. But just how does article marketing work?

To start with, for little or no cost, you can write articles and submit them to various article directories and other websites. In turn, these directories and websites publish your articles on their sites. The cumulative affect of this is that your site’s search engine rankings will naturally rise due to all the backlinks you’ve gained from other sites using your content.

Article marketing is very viral and just one article if it has been written well and contains the appropriate keywords for targeting specific visitors can generate plenty of links. All of the links then come back to your site or to another page you have designated as being the landing one.

Through your article marketing you as a new website owner or author can develop a reputation in your niche market of being an authority on it. A person who comes across one your articles in an article directory and remains interested so that they click on the link provided and visit your site, provides you now with the opportunity to build a more lasting relationship with that person. The next step then is to cultivate that relationship further by offering them more relevant content which will address certain questions or problems that they may have.

On occasion you may hear that article marketing is not as effective as it use to be. Also by submitting an article to a number of different article directories is only actually helping to create duplicate content, and which is putting your site at risk of the major search engines choosing to de-index it.

However let us put aside the arguments in relation to duplicate just for now. Article marketing is still every bit as effective as other traffic or promotional tools being touted today. Different strategies for promoting business are coming and going all the time, however with article marketing it strength lies in the fact that the World Wide Web relies on it. There is a constant need for fresh and relevant content to be available for people to read and use.

Each and every day millions of potential customers are going online searching for information. By giving these potential customers the information they want you are placing yourself in a position from which you can profit. By writing many articles you will soon attact a steady stream of traffic to your websites. It’s then just down to your site whether you convert that traffic into sales.

Article marketing today remains the one free or almost free way of being able to promote your website or product. It is the best way of being able to bring targeted traffic to you, as long as you are willing to work at it and produce consistent good quality articles over the long term.

Writing informative articles that use well researched keywords no matter what niche you are involved in cannot only get your more exposure, but increase your rankings in search engines. However, submitting the same article to numerous article directories or specialist websites will dilute just how effective your article marketing efforts are.

The real key to article marketing success is to submit unique versions of your articles to the different directories and websites. Daunting as this may sound the results are truly extraordinary and well worth the effort. Gone are the risks of duplicate content and slippage of ranking. While the definition of what constitutes duplicate content continues to be the subject of hot debate, many experienced webmasters are comfortable with ranges above 30%.

Yet the greater the difference between each article written, then the better this is for your online business. However, you need to keep in mind that the spiders used by top search engines not only review entire web pages but also will look at other elements on a page and take these into consideration. So even a small 30% change between one article and the next can being more than sufficient to avoid yours being ignored.

Submitting unique versions of your articles is the smartest way to undertake article marketing. Not only are you gaining targeted traffic, but the boost in ranking tends to last longer from backlinks you build through marketing unique articles.

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