Developing an effective article marketing strategy is a great way for you, as an affiliate marketer or other online business owner, to drive search engine traffic to your web sites or affiliate merchants, all at little or no cost.
In this article, I’ll introduce you to the concept of article marketing and explain how a good article marketing strategy can be used to help you build a more powerful online business and increase your sales.
What is Article Marketing?
Article marketing is a strategy that has been around for decades. Even before the development of the internet, article marketing was used as a way for business owners to obtain free space in printed media like newspapers and magazines.
Historically, a business would submit written content to a local newspaper free of charge and, in exchange, the newspaper would include a description of the author’s business and contact information at the end of the article.
This kind of arrangement allowed the newspaper to come up with good content at no cost and provided the business owner with free publicity. For instance, a landscaping company might market its business by providing an article entitled “The 7 Most Effective Lawn Care Strategies” or an air conditioning repair service might provide an article entitled “5 Ways to Save on Your Summer Cooling Bill”.
Readers who enjoyed the article and wanted to learn more could contact the author of the article thus, generating new leads for the author’s business.
Online Article Marketing
With the rise of the internet, article marketing has spread to the online world and provides affiliate marketers and other online entrepreneurs with the ability to gain free media coverage and publicity for their businesses.
Rather than providing content to a newspaper, the online business owner submits articles electronically to online directories such as Go Articles (GoArticles.com) or Articles Base (ArticlesBase.com). The articles are posted free of charge and the article directory earns revenue from advertising.
Unlike off-line article marketing, a good online article marketing strategy has an added dimension – the targeting of specific “niche” keywords which serves to bring in targeted traffic.
For example, let’s say that an affiliate marketer named Bob promotes an ebook on dog grooming at his site “BobsDogGroomingTips.com”. To generate sales, he wants to capture search engine traffic from people who are looking for information on dog grooming. So Bob does some keyword research and discovers that “Dog Grooming Tips” would be a great keyword phrase for him to target. So, he writes an article called “Top 5 Dog Grooming Tips of the Stars” and submits it to Ezine Articles.
When Mary, a huge dog lover, does a Google search for “dog grooming tips”, she comes across Bob’s article at Ezine Articles. She reads the article and finds it entertaining and informative. At the end of the article, she notices Bob’s bio and a link back to his website “BobsDogGroomingTips.com” She clicks on the link, is taken to Bob’s site and sees that Bob is promoting a great ebook on dog grooming tips. She buys the book and Bob gets his affiliate commission!
Why Article Marketing is Powerful
If Bob had simply written his article and posted it on his own site, he probably would have received very little, if any, traffic to the article. That’s because it usually takes a long time (months or even years) to achieve a high ranking in the search engines for particular keywords, particularly if the competition is fierce. Unfortunately, BobsDogGroomingTips.com simply isn’t a popular enough site to generate high search engine rankings for its content.
By contrast, Ezine Articles is a very popular site which ranks highly in the search engines. By posting at Ezine Articles, Bob’s article inherits some of Ezine Articles’ high search engine ranking and Bob’s article shows up within a few days near the top of the search engine results. This strategy allows Bob to generate natural search engine traffic in a very short period of time.
Of course, more traffic = more sales and more revenue, the ultimate goal of every online business. This is why the use of an effective article marketing strategy can increase your sales and revenue dramatically.
Over the next few articles, we’ll discuss how to develop great article topics and content relevant to your particular online business and how to get your articles submitted for publication.
Sean Kells is a web entrepreneur and founder of ReviewAroo Internet Marketing College, a free online learning system for people who want to build their own internet businesses. To discover more, visit him at:==> ReviewAroo.com
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