ArticleMarketingHints

If you or your company are knowledgeable in your area of interest, it never hurts to make your expertise known to the public. One way is to put that information on your web site or blog. That will make it possible for some people to find you.

However, if you submit such information to article marketing directories in the form of accessible articles, it may be possible for you to be seen and read in tens, hundreds even thousands of venues.

Thus even if your knowledge is cutting edge but not necessarily unique, your presence in multiple venues will create a sense of authority for you that may not apply to others who choose not to use this approach.

This could result in a significant market advantage for you, even against more sophisticated competitors.

The innovation that makes article marketing such a powerful force on the internet today is the development of the Resource Box. The Resource Box is nothing more than a few lines at the end of the article that provide a brief biographical sketch of the author and allows the inclusion of usually two sometimes more links to specific web sites.

This allows the author the opportunity to use their article to troll for people interested in their topic and direct them to the authors favorite web site. This could be the author's own web site or a sales page for the author's book or product or even to a third party site where the author would recieve an affiliate commission.

The person attracted by the articles content is an ideal prospect by self selection, and if they are intrigued enough to click on the link for additional information, they can be considered a highly targeted prospect for what ever is being sold. Assuming of course that the product is relevant to the article.

Many people send reader to a squeeze page where they offer them something relevant for free. That way they can get the reader to sign up on their list. Once on the list, they can be offered a series of products over time.

This process of building interested target prospects is one of the most profitable uses for article marketing and can be adapted to almost any type of business.

All that is required as some interesting well written reports that will attract appropriately interested parties, a free report you can offer them to entice them to leave your email address, and a thought out series of follow-up messages.

To effect this type of marketing campaign you need to establish a relationship with an Auto Responder Service. I recommend Aweber

Article Marketing is a very useful tool for companies that wish to take advantage of organic search on the various search engines. Anyone can buy there way to the top of Google Ads or any of the other Pay Per Click Venues. But not everyone can or should afford that expense.

On a typical search engine search about ten web sites are listed on the first page in response to any inquiry put into the search engine. The one that manages to appear on the top of the list will probably get about 70% or all viewers to look at their web page. For Free.

About 25% of the searchers will click on one of more of the pay per click ads, and about 5% will pick one of the lower ranking ads to look at first for any number of reasons.

There are many factors that come into play in how the various search engines rank web sites in their rankings. These include on page and off page factors. Of the off page factors the dominant consideration is the number and quality of back links a site has pointing to it. There are a variety of ways to get back links. You could create you own by writing a Squidoo lens like the one you are reading. I for example am using this Lens to point to my blog on Article Marketing called www.ArticleMarketingHint.com

At the moment I am offering a free eBook called "Article Power" just for visiting my Article Marketing Hint blog. Grab your copy now.

www.ArticleMarketingHint.com

And while Squidoo is an excellent way to create one or more back links, Article Marketing has an exponential power that Squidoo lacks.

When an article you submit to an Article Directory gets accepted, it is posted on their site, and as a results the links in your resource box back link from their site to yours. Better yet when bloggers, and eZine editors find your article and publish it on their blogs or ezines you get additional back links from their sites.

Since a good article could get picked up by dozens even hundreds of different such venues the total number of back links can grow to a substantial number. Now as there are well over a thousand different article directories an countless blogs and ezines always looking for quality material they can use the potential for article marketing is enormous.

It is possible for even the most modest enterprise to rise to the top of the search engines and win the advantage of top billing for a lot of competitive search terms.
This is particularly true for many mom and pop businesses with local markets, if they learn how to compete effectively on selected keywords appropriate to their markets.

Once established, and article marketing campaign can not only get you to the top, but keep you there, as once listed in the article directories these article stay there indefinitely. Thus an article written today, may get published on some ones blog years from now.

The mechanics of article marketing are quite simple. Writing effective articles is a bit more challenging. But not so much so that you should not pursue it.

Even if you are deficient in your personal writing skills, there are inexpensive ways to hire out article writing. What you need to know as a business person is that article writing is a powerful tool that can give you a distinct competitive advantage.

It can help you brand yourself and your firm as an expert in your field. It can draw targeted prospects to you, and get them to raise their hands. That means you can focus your marketing efforts on interested prospects. That will save you a lot of marketing dollars that previously was spent on disinterested parties who were never prospects.

And finally, it can help you rise in the search engines to the point where you can benefit from FREE organic search. A top listing in the search engines is worth thousands to tens of thousands of dollars when compared to pay per click advertising. Since fewer and fewer people use the Yellow pages these days, the importance of a high search engine ranking is particularly important for such firms, and yet very few have any clue on how to get it.

Virtually every business would benefit by getting that top spot, and article marketing is a critical part of a SEO strategy to get your there.