It is a good idea to set up a spread sheet to record the effectiveness of your article marketing. Try to submit to sites that are considered to be authority sites by the search engines and/or have a high Page Rank, as this will improve the chance of your article ranking high. A good indicator would be to do a search for a particular directory to see how many pages they have listed along with their page rank that can be determined by installing the Goggle tool bar. The scale is from zero to ten with ten being the highest rank. If you can get links from high ranked sites this will benefit the ranking of your own site in the long term when writing your article your prime goal should be to inform and educate your readers. If you can identify a common problem and provide a solution, your article will be read many times. If you can repeat this process several times you are on the way to being regarded as an expert on the subject, which is obviously a desirable goal. When writing an article for distribution you need to be aware of your target audience. If you know someone who is interested in the subject try and write as if you were explaining it to them face to face. A good approach is to adopt a conversational style of writing as if you were trying to explain something to a friend.
You may decide to purchase the rights to articles that allow you to claim authorship. It may be that others are using the same content or variations on it, but all said and done your resource box is added to the foot of the article. There are a large number of directories that will allow you to submit your article, even if it isn't 100% original. This is fine for quick exposure but it is always better to write your own unique content if possible.
Intriguing content is essential when using article marketing as a means of internet promotion. The resource box which you add to the bottom of every article is hugely important in terms of advertising your product or service. This is where you insert all your contact information and provides a brief overview, all in the space of a few lines.
It is better to produce one quality article than one hundred junk articles in terms of traffic generated. Most human-edited article directories will easily detect spams my articles with little original content. On the other hand a well thought-out, insightful article is highly likely to get approval. When it comes to generating traffic from article marketing quality rather than quantity is the prime consideration.
Readers are constantly searching for solutions to problems they face or needs they want met. They are also becoming more and savvier when it comes to internet marketing and can be reluctant to part with their hard earned cash. What people want is information so they can try to make an informed decision before making a purchase. Article marketing when done correctly should satisfy that need. Article marketing should target an audience and provide them with the information they require. If you can provide them with the relevant information, they will click through to your web site and hopefully complete the sale.
An often overlooked benefit of article marketing is the growing popularity of RSS feeds. If you can get your article syndicated on an RSS feed, with the correct keyword optimization, your articles will appear in the search engines. Because search engines look for fresh content and because RSS feeds are dynamic in their ability to frequently update, and with a suitable nudge from pinging services, the search engines will spider this type of content more frequently than Static web pages. This means that your articles should not take as long to get listed.
If you want to get a quick return on your article writing efforts you may consider offering your services to webmasters for an agreed fee. If you have knowledge of a particular niche subject search out forums and discussion groups relating to it and offer the members your services to produce content for a fee. You may consider approaching Elance customers with a view to competing for article projects. You will need to create a body of quality work that you can show potential clients to increase your chance of being accepted.