Article Marketing: Increase Traffic

If you have a business website then a large part of your business is trying to get traffic to that website. There are many different methods to funnel visitors to your website with pay per click advertising and search engine optimization being two of the most popular.

While these are both viable methods for gaining website visitors one method has the benefits of free SEO combined with the speed of pay per click. This method is known as article marketing.

Article marketing, simply put, is the act of writing an informative article on a topic related to your business and posting that article to an article directory. Included with your article will be a short bio that tells a bit about yourself and your company along with a link to your website.

These article directories then publish your article and it goes live. The inclusion of your article in an article directory gains exposure for your business in two very beneficial ways:

1. The article becomes indexed in the search engines. Provided you do some keyword research beforehand and target the right phrases you’re article will show up in the organic search results for that keyword phrase. The result is free and sustained organic traffic to your business.

2. Webmasters republish your article and spread the word. Many website owners need fresh content for their websites. Often they turn to article directories for this free content. If your article is related to their website’s topic they’ll republish your article and drive even more traffic to your website for free.

When you use article marketing the traffic can start showing up to your website as soon as the same day it goes live. This traffic is often very targeted as they were either searching for the phrase you targeted in your article or they found it on a related website.

Another added benefit of using article marketing as a form of advertising is the high PR backlinks you obtain from the article directories you submit to. These high caliber backlinks help boost your own website’s ranking in the search engines, bringing you more free organic traffic. Below is a list of various article directories along with their PR rankings

WebReference (PR8) http://www.webreference.com
About.com (PR8) http://sbinformation.about.com
Sales & Marketing world (PR8) http://www.ecomallbiz.com
Web Pro News (PR7) http://www.webpronews.com
Bpubs (PR7) http://www.bpubs.com
Web Articles (PR7) http://www.webarticles.com
iSnare (PR 6) http://www.isnare.com
Business Know How (PR6) http://www.businessknowhow.com
EzineArticles (PR6) http://www.ezinearticles.com
Buzzle (PR6) http://www.buzzle.com
Article Dashboard (PR6) http://www.articledashboard.com

If you’re looking for a free and effective way to increase the traffic to your online business I strongly suggest you give article marketing a try. Next time we’ll discuss tips for writing an effective article marketing article. Until then how about we share our favorite free ways of getting traffic to our websites? Feel free to leave a favorite method or ask questions about article marketing in the comments section.

Submitted by CindyM.