Is Article Marketing Effective?

It's no great secret that the way to gain ranking positions in the search engines is by getting back links. Up to recently this used to consist of contacting other webmasters and asking them to link to your site in return for linking to theirs. Unfortunately this form of reciprocal linking is no longer as useful as it once was. One way links are now the key. There is no better way to get lots of one way links than by creating and distributing articles.

Regular new content is important for any website. By writing and distributing articles you can provide site owners with new content and at the same time get a back link or two for your site. In this article I'll attempt to answer some of the most common questions asked by people considering article marketing as a way to promote their sites.

What topics should I write about?

It is important that when you start out you write about what you know. You should also ensure that the content is relevant to the site you'll be promoting in the resource box.

How do webmasters find my articles?

Once you have finished writing your article you add a resource box to it which contains links to your site. You then submit the article to article listing directories where they are placed in categories. Site owners can then copy them from the directories and use them. They must however keep your links intact

Don't Webmasters just remove the links?

Yes this does happen but not as often as you think. It is very easy to track these webmasters down. Use a tool like Google alerts which checks the Internet for relevant key phrases. It is very useful if you add a unique key phrase to your articles that you can enter into the search tool. You can also search for your name to ensure that all the links are live.

How long should the articles be?

Usually anywhere between 350 words and 500 words is ideal. If you find yourself writing longer article split them up into 2 or 3 separate articles

How many sites should I submit to?

Views are divided on this some people say submit them to as many sites as possible while others think you should only submit unique articles to each site. If you don't have a tool that will help you to create unique articles then I would suggest making each submission to an article site with a PageRank of 4 or above unique.

How many articles should I be writing?

The more you can write and distribute the better. It all depends on how comfortable you are with writing. This is my second article today while my wife has written 10. Set yourself a target to start with. For example try to write 1 article before your first coffee.