Article marketing is a website promotion tactic designated to get free traffic to your website. This method works by writing and submitting original articles related to your niche to article directories. Webmasters and ezine publishers can then download these articles and use the content for free as long as they keep your resource information at the bottom of the article intact including live hyperlinks. Well written articles that uses keywords that are often searched on can attract a great deal of free web traffic to your website.

As well as gaining traffic from click-throughs and free searches, article marketing can help to boost your site's page rank because it provides relevant one-way back links to your website which is a factor search engines use to calculate popularity.

Article marketing success starts with the article itself. The article needs to be well written, easy to read and to concentrate on the area of interest you wish to promote. If you write an article on a topic that is not related to your website business, you may get curiousity seekers but they will not be targeted. On the other hand if your article is related to your website in any way, people who click on your link are probably searching for more information. Consequently, these readers are much more likely to be interested in the products or services you are promoting.

The first step to article marketing success is to choose an attention grabbing title that includes your keyword. People searching on your keywords are far more likely to find your article than otherwise. The title of your article needs to attract a person that wants to read the article itself.

The article content is probably the most important aspect of article marketing. The content needs to be relevant, informative and helpful. It also needs to be engaging. Your purpose is to hold the reader's attention for the whole article and impress them enough that they will want to click on your link in the resource box.

The article should also be written with internet marketing SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Keywords and terms with a similar meaning (to appeal to latent semantic indexing) should be dotted throughout the article. Use your keyword in the first one hundred words of the article, in the last one hundred words and a few times in the body of the article. Keyword density should be kept in the 1-2% range if possible.

You also need to peak your readers' interest so that they are more likely to click on your link in the resource box. An excellent way to increase click-throughs to your website is to divide your article into two parts. Submit the first part to the article directories of your choice and keep part 2 on your own website. On your own site you can insert links in the article which can take the reader to other information on the site.

To be successful in article marketing over the long term you need to submit original, interesting articles regularly to high traffic articles directories such as Top Rank articles. If you are consistent and diligent and follow the guidelines in this article, you will find that article marketing is a highly effective strategy for website promotion.