Beginner SEO Tip: Article Marketing
Article marketing is simply the process of getting people to visit your website by writing articles and publishing them on the article directories. The reason that this works is that each article directory allows you to include a resource box that includes a link back to your site. Many of these article directories get a lot of visitors which can send a lot of traffic to your site. Even more importantly they can provide a link to your site which will help it to rank well in the search engines. The article directories will also allow other sites to publish your article provided they include the resource box, this means even more links to your site.
There is some debate about just how article marketing should be done, some people recommend that you write good quality articles so that people will think you're an expert on the topic and click on your link. Other advocate writing poor quality articles so that people will click on your link just to get out of there. There is a similar dispute about the length of the article, some argue that if you write a long article people won't bother to read and will simply click on the link looking for a different site. Others suggest a short article so that people will get to your link sooner and click it looking for more information. The truth is that there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach and you may have to experiment to find what works for you.
However you decide to write the articles the absolute most important part is to have a good resource box. You need to give people a reason to click on your link. This is a mistake that far too many article marketers make, they simply write some like "for more information visit my site". This is a terrible resource box and is unlikely to get many clicks. The resource box is the spot where you get to make your sales pitch, you need to make it compelling. The best approach is to arouse people's curiosity with some sort of enigmatic statement.
A lot of people fail at article marketing for one simple reason, they don't write enough articles. You are not going to be a successful article marketer by writing one or two articles, you need to write dozens if not hundreds of them. Most people aren't willing to put in that much effort which is why they don't succeed at getting visitors to their site. Sooner or later most people tire of writing articles and outsource it so they can focus on other things. It is fairly easy to find somebody who will write articles for you at a very reasonable price, most people find this to be a much better option than writing hundreds of articles themselves.