When it comes to Web marketing, one of the best strategies is article marketing. Basically, article marketing is a way for business owners to get free advertising space. In traditional media, the business provides useful articles to a newspaper or other publication free of charge. The payment for the article comes in the form of free advertising. This is a win-win situation. The newspaper usually must pay someone to write the newspaper, so it welcomes free articles. At the same time, the business gets free publicity.

On the Internet, it’s essentially the same principle. The business provides the article without cost to the website; in exchange, the business can include a link to its own website in the article. Usually, the Internet site publishing the articles is an article directory. The owner of the directory makes money by selling advertising on the site. People come to the directory looking for articles with the information they’re seeking, so they are also exposed to the advertising on the site. The directory site gains popularity with the search engines as it posts more and more articles and gets increased traffic to the site.

This is where search engine optimization enters the picture. Articles are deliberately designed for keyword niches. They are then sent to content websites that cater to particular markets. The article writer thus can target an interested group of readers with relevant content. It’s a low-cost way to meet marketing objectives. Some article writers have written hundreds, even thousands of articles. On some of the directory sites, the writer of the article has the option of advertising on the page where the article appears. In some cases, he can also control what advertising will appear on that page and may even benefit from some of the revenue that comes with it.

Search engine optimization plays a powerful role in article marketing in that it gets involved with the ranking of web pages by keyword or phrase. You want your page ranked as high as possible because it determines how many site visitors you will draw. For many companies, when their websites draw more traffic, they realize more sales.

As with most popular Web marketing strategies, exploitation has reared its ugly head. Many of the articles are so obviously aimed at including as many keywords as possible that the message is not worth trying to read. There has been backlash against the keyword-stuffed articles that are more annoying than enlightening.

When used correctly, article marketing is a cornerstone of web marketing.

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