I read questions about article marketing at HD and think my experience in article marketing maybe useful for certain members here. So here's my sharing on the subject.

What's Article Marketing?

In brief - write articles related to your website, submit them to websites who are willing to publish them, and drop link at the bottom of the articles (or whenever is appropriate) to drive traffics to your website.

When talking about article marketing, I include those who publish content at other's blogs (guest posting) as well as other web portals like Squidoo/Hubpages.

Why Article Marketing?

There are a lot to be gained with the strategy. When done right, article marketing will benefits you in term of web traffics, SEO, as well as your reputation in related industry. Most importantly, article marketing can be done with no money at all - all you need is the hard work in writing and submitting articles.

How to run a successful Article Marketing campaign?

Obviously, I'm not going to spoon feed you everything here (that would drive me out of business!) but here're some tips to get you started.

• When you are wrting for article directories, it's a quantity game - write as much as you can.
• When you are wrting guest post for related blog, then it's a quality game - write valuable content and submit it to well-known blogs.
• Google's kinda frown up article marketing recently due to duplicating content issue, so submitting the same articles to 25 directories will not work anymore. Instead, go with the reputable ones - EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com have my votes.
• Try to drop your links in a way that it will drive the readers to your website - the keypoint is not to give out all the info in just one article; instead, give a good intro and lead the readers to your website for further information.
• When it comes to quantity games, hiring low cost ghost writers is always the best way to go.
• Always, always, write eye-catching article title and headers - if you're new to this, go learn copy writing skills from CopyBlogger.
• Squidoo, Hubpages, and Gather are another sort of 'directories' where you can publish your free content and win web traffics. Squidoo lenses gain Google PR quickly thus they are most recommended for those who're searching for link juice.
• Article Announcer is the only software I ever tried but I think article marketing is best done manually. So I would not suggest newbies to invest their money in any software or tools.

When should I do Article Marketing?

All the time. Article marketing should be in your on-going web marketing plan.

Bottom lines

I had been using the strategy for years and still run a series of websites that solely depends on article marketing. Articles that provide real values to readers will bring tons of FREE TARGETED traffics to your website and that in turn, convert into profits. The strategy is very profitable (when done right) and I'm surprise why most web marketers have not leverage the power of it.

The guides above are written solely based on my experience and preferences. It's totally alright if you are not agree with me and I would be grateful if you can share your thoughts on the subject.

Thanks very much for the info. I just signed up at EzineArticles, but plan to visit all the sites you referenced.

Hey Steve, no problem at all. Glad that you find the post helpful. Just a quick updates on EzineArticles - links within an article at EA is now 'nofollow'. This means it will provide no SEO values for Google; links on the resources box however remained 'follow'.

Great post. I am happy you said something about article marketing because I am just starting to do it. A+ !!

Thanks for the useful internet marketing info! I would like to add something to your post. What about the role played by the keyword density? If the article you write do not have the appropriate keyword density for the targeted keywords it would most probably be a hidden article. Lost among millions of articles. Google is a search engine that loves keyword density. So be sure to have a minimum keyword density of 1.5% in your articles.

Thanks for the post.
Very informative.

monsterjerry:

This is some good information that you have provided. In the upcoming months we were going to begin to do some article marketing to gain the great SEO benefits that come from it.

I'll make sure to save a link for this article and reference it when we begint he marketing.

Thanks for sharing.

I know EzineArticles is pretty well known to just about everyone, what about some other places. Are there any just as good as EzineArticles is (the range of stuff I find there is insane).

Great post... Is ezinearticle is the top article directory.