Article marketing is a extremely popular online marketing strategy. Like any large medium, the internet is hungry for content. However, unlike other media outlets such as TV, radio and newspapers, which generally only use content from professional writers, on the internet, anyone can publish. Article marketing is a way of taking advantage of that freedom and using the medium as a way to bring visitors to your website or blog. So, how does it work?

You write an article. A typical article for web consumption will be between 250 and 750 words long. It will be carefully focused round a specific area of expertise; the writer’s niche. It will use keywords relevant to the writer’s audience and often will often contain a numbered or bullet point list for clarity and ease of reading. You publish that article on the web, using one of hundreds of article directories. Most are free to use, but some more specialized ones charge a small fee. One of the biggest free directories is EzineArticles.com which carries the work of nearly 70,000 writers.

Most article directories are organized into multiple categories and the article writer decides which category to publish their article under. You are also encouraged to attach a group of relevant keywords to your article, as well as including personal or business details and a link to your site, in a ‘resource box’, which is a brief paragraph about you or your work. This resource information will appear at the bottom of each article that is accepted for submission. Many well known directories employ a team of staff to approve each article before it becomes available on the web.

So how does an article drive traffic? The directories, being very content rich, have high rankings in the search engines. If your article is approved, it may then have the opportunity to be spotted and an interested reader may click on your link and be directed to your website.

However, the real purpose of the article directories is to provide a place for e-zine publishers to find free and relevant content. Every day, editors of a huge range of subject specific e-zines, visit the article directories and download new articles relevant to their audience. This saves them time writing articles for their websites. The only stipulation, in most cases, is that they publish the article in full, without editing, and always include the author’s resource box and retain the links intact.

Website articles can easily be found in many different places on the web, each containing a valuable back link back to the original website. This not only leads highly targeted visitors , but also helps to improve search rankings. In essence, the traffic can help you make more money. If you really want to ramp up your article marketing results, one suggested site is the Unique Article Wizard. Unique Article Wizard has the ability to conveniently mass submit articles to hundreds of websites. Also review Article Marketing Success Tips for assistance with generating money making articles for your website.