Article marketing is still in my opinion one of the best ways to get one way back links (which are the most valuable links) to your site to improve it's rankings. There are literally thousands of article directories which you can submit your articles to which allow you to place a short description of yourself and your business plus a back link to your site.

Benefits of Submitting Articles to Article Directories

Article directories also receive a lot of traffic and if you create quality articles with a catchy head line and effective resource box at the end of your article you can also generate a lot of direct traffic from the article directories.

Another benefit of article marketing is that other people are always looking for new content for their own sites, ebooks or to send to their mailing lists and will often take articles from article directories. This is of course perfectly fine the only policy being that the resource box must stay in tact along with any link(s) which can also generate a lot of direct traffic.

Article marketing also gives you the opportunity to brand yourself as an expert in your field, if you write quality articles which people find useful then they are likely to build trust with you and become more receptive to what it is you have to offer.

Article Marketing Strategy

Before you get started you really need to start with a strategy to maximise the full potential of article marketing.

First of all don't write poor quality articles thinking that the only purpose of the article is to get a back link, if you put in the time and effort to create good quality articles which have value then you will get a lot more back as a result.

Make sure you do your keyword research before submitting your articles. All articles you submit should be optimized around long tail keywords, if you are not sure what long tail keywords are see this article  http://www.onlineworkfromhomejobs.net/training/46-pips-20-joomla-video-tutorials/268-how-to-find-long-tail-keywords

The reason picking long tail keywords is important is because it gives your articles a better chance of ranking in the search engines which increases your chance of receiving direct traffic from the article directories. Some article directories such as EzineArticles.com rank extremely well in Google.

Here is a diagram of how to go about your article marketing campaign, remember that the more content you create the more traffic you can generate whether that content be on your site or on external sites linking to yours.

This diagram may look complicated at first glance but it is actually rather simple. First of all as you can see the process starts with keyword research and finding long tail keywords. You then create an article for each of your long tail keywords and upload the articles to your site. You can upload the article to your blog if you have one or add a new page.

The next step is to rewrite your article to submit to article directories, I would highly recommend at least rewriting the article once however the more versions you can create the better. Because EzineArticles content ranks so well in the search engines it is definitely worthwhile taking the time to submit a unique article to them, the remaining directories you can use the same article.

Article Marketing Tips

The reason why article marketing is so effective at improving your search engine rankings is because they allow you to add what is called a "resource box" at the foot of your article. You can place anything you like in the resource box including usually 2 or 3 links to your own site. You should try and make the resource box as enticing as possible in order to get a good click through rate. One way to do this is to only provide part of the information (a teaser) in your article then link to your site where you provide more detailed information.

IMPORTANT: You must use the keywords you want to improve your rankings for as your anchor text do not use your domain name. For example any links in your resource box should look like this <a href="http://www.domain.com">keyword goes here</a>

Add one link to your home page using your main keyword <a href="http://www.domain.com">Main Keyword</a> then add one link to the original article on your site  <a href="http://www.domain.com/long-tail-keyword.html">Long Tail Keyword</a>

Internal links are important and it is believed you should have at least 1 internal link to every 3 links pointing to your home page. A lot of people when building back links only link to their home page and always use the same keyword, this is unnatural and will hurt your rankings so make sure you mix up your keywords you use in your anchor text pointing to your home page and make sure you link to your internal pages as well.

Here is a list of article directories http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html

Get Your Articles Indexed

If you articles aren't indexed in Google then your back links don't count and there are a few things you can do to ensure that they are. The main reason pages don't get indexed is because they don't have enough PR therefore you need to get some links to your articles to help boost their PR, the higher the PR of those articles the more valuable the links are which are pointing to your site too.

DO NOT link to your articles from your site because your links then change from one way to reciprocal which aren't as effective. The best way to get links is to social bookmark your articles at as many different social bookmarking sites as possible.

A lot of the article directories will give you a profile which has a list of all of your articles therefore building the PR of your profile page is a good way to get your articles indexed. Link to your profile pages from external blogs and pages like Squidoo to boost PR.

Some article directories provide you with an RSS feed of your articles which can also be added to sites like Squidoo. You can also submit your feed to blog and RSS feed directories which again will help get those articles indexed.

RSS Submit is a tool which automatically submits all of your RSS feeds to about 120 directories.

Recycle Your Content

The next step is to go along to Squidoo and create a lens using a mixture of content you have just written and rewritten content from other blogs, articles, news sites basically any content you can find related to your keyword. A really useful tool for this is Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts. To use the tool you just enter a keyword which you want to find out more info on and Google will email you any new content that they have recently indexed with that keyword. This is an extremely useful tool for getting up to date info which you can post to your blogs or create articles and press releases on.

The list of sites displayed in the diagram above are hosted blog and web sites and are a great way to get one way back links to your main site. The reason these sites are so effective is because most are PR5 - PR8 which means Google highly values these sites therefore any links coming from them are going to hold a lot of weight. However some of these sites are extremely strict on spam so whatever you do don't use them as an advertising service for your site because your account will be deleted in the blink of an eye. Create good content which teaches, informs or tells a story and keep the back links to your site a minimum. If you look around at how others are using the site you will get an idea of whats acceptable and what isn't.

Press releases are similar to articles however they need to be written in 3rd person and be a news story of some kind. They don't need to be very long and can generate a lot of back links and traffic. There is a good list of press release sites on the the Warrior Forum http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=259438

Bookmark Everything

The last step of course is to social bookmark everything. This strategy works very well with social bookmarking because you are bookmarking content from several different sites therefore you don't have to worry about getting your accounts banned. It's still highly recommended to bookmark other sites rather than just your own which are highly valuable to your niche. You are more likely to build a network of friends if you bookmark good content, lot's of friends means more links and more traffic. Having multiple accounts at each site is also not a bad idea to avoid your account looking spammy. Remember that social bookmarking sites are not for self promotion which is why you need to bookmark sites other than your own.

www.posttoaster.com has a large list of social bookmarking sites and semi-automates the submission process.

Automation and Outsourcing

Distributing Content

I am a big fan of automating or outsourcing everything I possibly can and as you probably have already discovered creating and distributing content can be a time consuming process. 

Two services I recommend for distributing your articles are

Unique Article Wizard (UAW) - Not only submits to article directories but also to any sites which have the UAW plug-in installed. UAW has a system which submits a different version of your article as well as allows you to have multiple resource boxes which increases the chances of your articles being indexed as well increases the value of your back links. Another nice feature of UAW is that is it automatically adds your UAW affiliate link at the foot of your articles. 

Article Marketer (AM) - Like UAW, AM also not only submits to article directories but any sites which have the AM plug-in installed. Article marketer has a limited free service which submits to 29 sites, the paid service submits to almost 6,000 sites. A number of those sites will be niche sites or directories and others may not be accepting new articles however even if 10% of those sites do accept your article that's 600 potential back links.

SEO Elite - Another tool from Brad Callen creator of Keyword Elite which has a built in article submitter which submits your articles to all of the top article directories automatically. Checks to see if your reciprocal linking partners are still lniking back to you and analyze your competition. Extremely useful at tracking your rankings in the search engines. It is important to see that your efforts are paying off and as you will more than likely be targetting a lot of keywords SEO Elite makes it quick and easy to monitor their progress. It also has a feature which automatically sends an email out to other sites in your niche requesting a reciprocal link exchange.

Press Equalizer - Submits your press release to many of the top sites which are then scraped by news sites which could result in hundreds of one way back links from authority sites.

Content Creation

Instant Article Wizard Pro - A great programme for creating content quickly. It pulls content from sites related to whatever keyword you enter then all you have to do is rewrite it in your own words.

Outsourcing content creation is another option and there are some really good services available. Pricing for articles can range from anywhere between $5 - $30 per article and obviously the more you pay the better the quality. I use a service which charges $10 an article and $5 for a rewrite and I am very happy with the quality of the articles. I recommend paying a few extra dollars per article as the better the articles the more effective your article marketing campaign will be.

You can find freelance writers (also known as "ghostwriters") and writing services at www.guru.com and www.elance.com

Keyword Research

Keyword Elite -  A desktop keyword tool which builds keyword lists, analyzes the bid amounts on Google Adword's so you can target the high paying keywords for maximum Adsense revenue, automatically builds pages for each keyword you enter which can be uploaded to your site, analyzes the top ranking web sites for a keyword to see how competitive it is, monitor Adwords campaigns to see which ones are working then simply copy them and much more.

NicheBot - NichBot pulls data from Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Google and is very fast at building our lists. There is also a lot of material teaching you how to use the service to get the best results and the owner Jim Morris is very passionate about keyword research and SEO and is always looking at ways to improve NicheBot. I can gurantee he will have the new Google Keyword search data incorporated into his service as soon as humanly possible.