Marketing Your Business With Articles

Article Marketing, what is this ?
If you can write, you can make money. Did you already read that ? I did. It's like the "Content Is King" formula. The words you write are essential. What you say determines your conversion rate. Adding content to your website makes it growing. And search engines love big websites, with fresh content updated regularly.

So, is article marketing writing for a website ? Hmmm, yes, and no.

Yes, you will write for a website : to promote it. No, because your articles will not be on your website or the one you promote. You will submit your articles to article directories. Of course when you write articles for your website to make it bigger and indexed by search engines, you basically do the same work : writing.

But the reason why this is not really the same is because of search engines, again. You know how important it is for your website to get indexed. If content is king, traffic is gold (or silver ? I don't remember). Search engines love fresh content, but unique content. Search engines hate duplicate content and may not index your page if your article is already on hundreds of page.

That said, the articles you submit to articles directories should be different from the ones on your website. Yes, that means more work. And another question comes to your mind, should I submit my articles to all article directories. Again, if the articles is on hundreds article directories, this is duplicate content. From what I learnt, this is better you stick to several ones. I read that 10 or 15 are enough.

Here is a list of articles directories you should submit to :

http://www.EzineArticles.com
http://www.Digg.com
http://www.GoArticles.com
http://www.ContentDesk.com
http://www.ArticleCity.com
http://www.ArticleDashboard.com
http://www.Idea Marketers.com
http://www.ArticleAlley.com

Check this page for more :
http://www.articlepr.com/Article_Submission_Sites.shtml

Now, how do you promote your website ?
Well at the end of your article is what is called a "resource box". This is where you "sell" yourself. After giving useful informations to your readers, you can tell about you and your business. You are allowed to put a link to your website or to the affiliate program you promoted on your article.

The link. Why is that important ? Search engines, again. The more links you get to your website, the higher it will be ranked in search engines results pages (SERP). If you submit an article about a software and link to the software page of your website, this is relevant : the article content matches your webpage content. Search engines like this.

So be smart : articles directories are big websites, with lots of content, updated regularly. They rank high in search engines results pages. When people look for information, they can find your article. I read somewhere that it's better having 100 articles from 1 article directory (100 links to your website) than only 1 article from 100 article directories (100 links too).

To avoid duplicate content penalty, you can try to change your article words when submitting to different directories.

Tom Leroy is an internet marketer. He writes articles on various topics and created several websites. You can check his Work From Home website to learn more tips about making money online.