Internet article marketing refers to the practice of companies posting keyword-focused articles on relevant article directories to promote their products and services. Article marketing can really benefit businesses if the directories they choose have a good reputation and strong search engine rankings, as then they will get a lot of readers. Each article will contain links to the company’s website so in theory if there are plenty of readers, this translates to increased traffic to their website.

One of the principal benefits of using article marketing to promote your website is that it is generally completely free, unlike advertising methods such as pay-per-click. This means that even if you are a start-up company or simply have a very limited marketing budget, if you use article marketing in the right way you can still begin to build awareness of your website.

Article marketing is also an effective SEO technique, and this is a key part of any company’s online strategy. Some sites will let you put html links in the body of the article, and linking your keywords to your website will bring in more traffic. Even if the site doesn’t allow you to include links in the body of the article, they will generally let you include them in your resource box at the bottom of the page, which is a summary of your company information. Any form of SEO marketing is quite a skill, however, so you may want to hire a firm of internet marketing consultants to advise you on this so you get the very most from it.

Do bear in mind that choosing the right keywords for your article marketing involves a certain amount of keyword research. Many companies are not aware of this and simply choose their keywords without finding out which will be most effective. The trick is to factor in both the popularity of the word you’re considering and its competitiveness, and finding a balance between the two. You don’t want to use phrases that nobody will search for, but neither do you want to use ones that every other company in your field is using.

Using internet marketing consultants is also useful in terms of finding the best article sites to suit your business; it’s not always immediately obvious which these are and you don’t want to be wasting your valuable time. Remember, if you are writing the articles yourselves rather than outsourcing, that the good sites want worthwhile material so it needs to be useful and relevant to your sector. Also, don’t attempt to duplicate material from other sites as search engines will pick up on this.

Article marketing really does work although it can take time to create a noticeable amount of new visitors to your website as you build up the number of article sites you use. But it’s just one part of your marketing strategy so make sure your website is also striking, original, simple and easy to navigate or you won’t be able to convert your new visitors into paying customers.

Author's Bio: 

Chris Jenkinson is a UK based internet marketing consultant working with business owners to increase their internet presence.