What Is Article Marketing?

Article Marketing has always been a tool in the marketers toolkit, however with the Internet becoming a hotbed for marketing techniques, article marketing has become prevalent there as well.  Fundamentally, in both print and electronic media, article marketing generally represents a swap of free content for free advertising.

Article directories are the keystone of the online article marketing effort.  These are sites where a marketer can post an article and the directory owner will host it.  The directory owner will usually place advertising on the page, so he or she can generate revenue while the author will get links to his or her site. This means that they both benefit as the directory gains in popularity.

Marketers apply this technique largely to get the synergy of both having traffic flow from the article and gain search engine optimization.  Because they have a link to their own sites or products in the article, the pages they link to will rank better for the subject of the article.  Additionally they achieve credibility and authority on the subject if their work is good.  Unlike many other search engine optimization techniques, there is actually a good possiblity of traffic arriving from the article and it should generally be interested, qualified traffic to boot.

Article marketing's main benefit for the author is the low cost.  Large scale efforts can supply rewarding results without any capital outlay.  It is however a time intensive venture.  The prolific writer however can receive abundant links back to their website.  Even better, article directories offer the content for reprint in other locations.  This can lead to a growing benefit from one article.  Rarely however are the "syndicators" of this content of the same quality of the article directory.

The fact that article marketing is an effort intensive method instead of a cost intensive method leads to marketers creating junk content.  Many marketers mistakenly believe that the link is the only important component of their effort and not the quality of the article.  This is a self-defeating approach however, because at that point it is simply a link-building campaign and usually no better than many of the similarly unethical approaches to search engine optimization.

Ultimately article marketing can provide a great way to get started in the internet without a large risk of capital.  For those who are motivated and can write competently, it can be a great way to start their internet marketing career.