Newbie Know How: Article Marketing

Article marketing is an important part of Internet marketing. When done correctly it can help a business owner establish, among other things, expertise in their field, and high search engine rankings.

Wikipedia defines article marketing as "a type of advertising through which a business writes short articles related to its respective industry." But as an online business owner, what do you do with those articles once you have written them?

You can publish them on your website, send them to your mailing lists, and submit them to article directories for others to publish on their sites as well. Each article contains a resource box or author biography (bio) at the end that tells about the writer and usually links to a website so the reader can find more information on the article topic.

When you post your articles to article directories online, you are giving others permission to reprint them as they are, including the resource box, on their site. This will give you more incoming links to your site, therefore helping to raise your site's page rank with the search engines.

If you plan to grow your website traffic numbers, article marketing is one of the tasks you should absolutely implement in your business. You can write the articles yourself or have them written for you by ghostwriters. A ghostwriter is someone who writes for you, but you claim the written material as your own. The ghostwriter has no claim to the article what-so-ever.

But, what do you write about? Here are just a few suggestions for article topics.

How-To Articles
People come to the Internet for information and many times it's to find out how to do something. Find something that fits into your business and tell others how to do it in the form of an article.

Statistical Articles
People love having data to back up information. Find statistics that support what you have to share.

Product and/or Service Reviews
Most people will not buy a product based on just what the product says on the box or web site. Write reviews about products and services you've used remembering to give the good and bad points about the product.