Once you submit to all of those directories, remember the link in the author bio section, each of those directories is now a one-way inbound link. Now none of those links is related to widgets, so they are not relative links, but they do still count for link popularity, just not as much as relative links do. But the second reason that article directories exist is to provide free content to website owners. These website owners can take your article and use it as content for their website as long as they leave the links in the author bio section active and intact.

Article Marketing Doesn’t Work. That is exactly what some old-time experienced SEO people are still saying. Yet, one of the clients I wrote articles for went from a link popularity of 1 to a link popularity of 457 in 8 days. I received an email today from a client I wrote an article for on “Free Credit Repair” 3 days ago. He did a search in Google today for “Free Credit Repair” and the article was in the top 100. Tough category, but it was written 3 days ago and appears in Google for his search term with links to his website.

I can continue to provide dozens of examples where article marketing works and works fast. Once those articles are picked up by other websites besides the article directories, the real benefit comes. Those websites that pick up and use the widget articles as content for their websites would not use the article if it were not related to their own topic, which means related to widgets in this case. That means relative one-way inbound links for your website.

If you have no use for quick link popularity and relative one-way inbound links to your website, then article marketing is not for you.

The first thing to remember is that Rome was not built in a day. What I mean is if you have a new website, about for example hair loss, you may want to reach the top ten in Google for your keywords within say six months. You hear that one way to do this is by building up good number of backward links to this hair site. You think that the more the merrier and start pounding out one article after the other and are very proud of yourself after the first month because you were able to write fifty articles all pointing to your new hair website.

I believe this approach to be totally wrong. The hair loss websites which are in the top ten of Google have probably been around for quite a number of years and will without doubt have a number of quality backward links. If your site sticks around for a long time and you continue to build up its backward links it will go higher and higher in the search engines over time.

The one thing you do not want to do is to raise any red flags with the search engines. A new site which has eight hundred backward links after one month could raise this red flag. The search engines will now probably not trust this site and could easily put it in some sort of sandbox until it decides whether it is kosha or not.

In my opinion it is important to build up the number of backward links to a new website fairly slowly. When writing articles, I would personally only write one article with a link to a new website per week. Of course if you have ten websites, you are able to write ten articles if you only decide to have one link on each article etc.

I also think that it is very worthwhile to only submit the same article to around five or six of the different article directories. I would submit the article in total to around twenty-two article directories but would have around four variations of it etc. The differences in each article are not massive but are big enough to make it more original. There is a big thing being debated at the moment in webmaster circles about the potential damage that can be caused by duplicate content. From what I have read, everybody seems to have a different opinion on this subject. My opinion is that it is better to be safe than sorry, therefore why take the risk? It would be good however if the major search engines could clarify their position on the subject, but lets face it, that is never going to happen.

In conclusion, my advice is to enjoy writing articles, have patience, build up the number of backward links slowly and to submit different variations of the same article to the directories.

The very first step is to pick a keyword. It’s beyond the scope of what we are talking about to go into the process of keyword research, but make sure that you pick a keyword that does not have a gazillion competitors all vying for top listing in the search engines. The next step is to create an article that includes the keywords you’re targeting within the title as well as numerous times within the article itself. Don’t overdo this, and make sure that you create an article that would be appealing to human reader.

Next, submit this article to a high-ranking article directory such as EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com. After your article is submitted and accepted by the article directory, you will receive a direct link to the article you have just submitted. So far so good? You may have to read all of this a few times for it to fully make sense. The next step will be to create backlinks that point to the link you were given by the article directory after you submitted your article. Backlinks are essentially regular web links, except that they come from websites that are held in high regard by the search engines. It is very important that the anchor text of these backlinks contain the keyword you are targeting.

Following this process will enable you to create article content that has a very high likelihood of reaching the very top of the search engine results page for the keyword that you happen to be targeting. If you don’t notice that you are at the very top, keep working on building those backlinks. That’s the big “secret” to helping persuade the search engines to feature your article near the top of the results page.

The last thing you want to do is engineer an article to come across as being the pushy, sleazy salesperson that we all want to run away from. That means you need to strike a vastly different tone within your article then what you might assume. In other words, you can’t simply come out and say that your product will change the reader’s life and that they need to click on the link at the bottom of the article and that if they don’t do so they’re idiots and that this is a limited time offer that will expire at midnight. That kind of breathless wording can leave a reader feeling extremely annoyed and repulsed. It will not really persuade them to do anything that you want them to do. There is certainly a time and a place for more aggressive salesmanship, but it is certainly not within the contents of your article.

Your best approach is to identify the problem that your website or product can help solve. Focus on the nature of the problem itself, and talk about some of the solutions that currently exist that are not optimal. Do not make any kind of overt sales pitch within the contents of the article itself. The goal is to simply open the reader’s mind a little bit and to make them more likely to click on the link that is located in the resource box of your article which will then take them to your product sales page or to your website.

Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be a problem that your product or website helps solve. You could also help enhance the enjoyment a person experiences while engaging in a hobby or some other activity. In other words, instead of talking about the problem, you can talk about how much more fun a particular activity or hobby would be if certain information were known or if certain products could be  purchased easily. You probably get the idea. This is how you can effectively promote your product or website without scaring away potential product customers or visitors to your website.

The first step is to do a little bit of research and determine what people are already looking for. The idea here is to create article content that you can position to be of interest to people who are searching for information about a particular topic. You need to keep in mind that your website should be somewhat related to the topic you are selecting. In other words, conduct your research in such a way so that you are only selecting topics that are relevant to the topic of your website.

Create compelling article titles that cause the reader to feel curious or somewhat confused about the topic. Any time a person is curious, they will typically click through to check out what the article is all about. Once they are reading your article, it is important that you provide them with useful but incomplete information. The idea here is to not come across like a pushy salesman but instead to simply be a provider of information that is worded in such a way that it will subconsciously persuade the reader to click on the link that you have included in the resource box portion of the article.

At the very end of your article you need to include something called a resource box which we alluded to a moment ago. This will contain a couple of sentences that are designed to compel the reader to click on the link and visit your website. Once again, the goal is not to be pushy. Instead, offer the reader additional information about the topic. If you have created enough interest and ambiguity throughout the article itself, and are now promising the reader the exact answers they’re looking for, you’ll get a very high response rate insofar as people clicking on the link.

In a nutshell, that’s the formula for writing articles that will generate traffic to your website. Go ahead and get started writing today!

Let’s first begin with a basic understanding of what we are trying to accomplish as article marketers. Generally speaking, we are attempting to generate traffic to our website. Once somebody is on our website, they can do a variety of different things which we can dramatically influence based on the way we design and organize our website. But that’s not our concern right now. The initial focus is to get them to your website. What you do with them once they are they are is something to be discussed another time.

We will assume that you understand the importance of creating article content that is useful but incomplete, and the importance of subconsciously persuading your reader to click on the link that you have placed in the resource box at the end of the article. With that in mind, ask yourself a question. What is stopping you from getting more people to visit your website based on the articles you are already creating? When you think about it, it probably has to do with the fact that there are a limited number of people who are discovering your article content when you have it placed on your own website. How can you get more people to potentially see your article?

Article directories were created many years ago to serve as content repositories for articles from a wide range of topic categories. Over time, search engines began to give these article directories increased importance and relevance in search listings. As a result, an article that is posted to an article directory can be prominently featured in search engine results pages when somebody does a search for a particular topic that you may have written about. Keep in mind, we are not talking about a uniquely created article that is being exclusively submitted to the article directory — we are talking about the same article content that you are already posting to your website.

You can essentially get more traffic to your website by submitting your article content to popular article directories. It’s quick, it’s easy, and you have nothing to lose and potentially a lot of traffic to gain!