Article Submission: Increase Traffic, Backlinks and Affiliate Sales With Article Marketing

Article Marketing can boost traffic to your site while increasing backlinks and boosting affiliate sales. What is article marketing? Article Marketing is the act of using articles to promote your website or products. You write articles, or have them written for you, then send the articles off to article directories and ezines that accept articles. And best of all, article marketing is low cost or in some cases, absolutely free.
Why Submit Articles to an Article Directory or Ezine?

Where else can you receive hundreds of backlinks and traffic to your site for an hour or less of work that cost you little, if anything? Submitting articles to directories and ezines, that’s where. Article submission can drive targeted traffic to your affiliate landing pages and Adsense sites.

I just checked on an article I wrote for my small business almost 2 years ago. That one article alone has generated 248 backlinks to my site. It’s still being used in ezines and websites to this day. That article was 532 words and took me about 20 minutes to write.

Not all articles you write will be that successful, many articles that I’ve written bring in between 5 and 50 backlinks. I’d say my average number of backlinks from the average article is between 10 and 15.

You never know how successful your articles are until you submit them.

Article Marketing: Getting Started

To get started with submitting articles to ezines and article directories, all one needs is to sign up for an account with an ezine or article directory and begin writing articles. Once you’ve done this for a while, you’ll soon discover article marketing tips that others have yet to discover. Mainly that article marketing is all about volume.

In my experience, the most successful articles are from 350 words to 700 words in length. Some article directories and ezines will not accept articles under 300 words. Readers tend to lose interest in longer articles, no matter how well written they are. Remember, most internet surfers are skim readers. The just skim over your material picking up bits and pieces of information until they see something that makes them stop and take notice.

No special software is needed, I use Notepad to write my affiliate marketing articles that I will be submitting to an article directory or ezine.

Why not MS Word?

You can use MS Word, but it can cause more problems than what it’s worth. The problem with MS Word is that MS Word’s quote marks (“) and apostrophe’s (‘) are special characters and can cause havoc with an article directory submission software. Many will reject the article or your article will not be formatted properly.

Some people first write their article in MS Word, then cut and paste it to Notepad. This doesn’t always work for me, I’m not sure why. Using Notepad from the beginning just saves me a lot of problems down the road. Remember, time is money!

Don’t worry if you’re not good at writng articles. There are services out there where you can hire someone to write your articles for you. Although these are not cheap, normally the quality is very good. A few of these services are RentACoder, eLance and RentAWriter.

Webmaster Forums such as Digital Point and Webmaster-Talk are also good places to find article writers. In many instances you can work out a package deal with a writer and get a volume discount. Expect to pay anywhere from $10 to $20 for a well written, informative article. You can find articles cheaper, but in my experience they’re not the quality that will drive traffic to your site and people will link too.

Article Submission: Now That I Have My Article Written, What Do I Do?

Once you have your article written and ready for submission, there are several ways to distribute it.

You can hand submit your article to each article directory or article submission ezine or you can use an article submission service. Some article submission services are free while others will charge for this service.

It’s very important that you follow each article directory or article submission ezine’s article submission guideline. Article submission guidelines change from one directory or ezine to another. Don’t waste the few minutes it takes setting up an account with a directory our ezine only to have your articles rejected because you didn’t follow the article submission guideline.

Hand Submitting Articles To A Directory or Article Submission Service

Before you can submit your article to the huge list of article directories and article submission ezines, you must first open an account with them. This is quite easy but due to the large number of such places, can take several hours.

Article Submissin Tip: Unless you enjoy receiving mounds and mounds of emails in your personal email inbox, I’d suggest you get a free email account with Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail. Some submission services in Yahoo Groups will want you to verify your email and once you do, watch out. Even if you choose to opt out of receiving emails from the Groups, trust me, you’ll end up getting a lot of unwanted emails! It’s also important that you read some of these digest to insure that your articles are getting posted. It’s a good idea to check up on the places you submit articles.

Once you have an account set up, it’s as simple as filling in the required fields, cutting and pasting your article into the article field, filling out your resource box and hitting ‘Publish’.

To get you started, here is a list that I used in the past.

Ezine Articles.com – http://www.ezinearticles.com
GoArticles – http://www.goarticles.com
Site Reference – http://www.site-reference.com/submit.php
Article Warehouse – http://www.articlewarehouse.com/
Web Pro News – http://www.webpronews.com/submit
Article Dashboard – http://www.articledashboard.com
Ezine Zone – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ezinezone/
Small Biz Articles – http://www.smallbizarticles.com/
Articles Base Directory – http://www.articlesbase.com
SimplySearch4It – http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/articlesub.php
Articles.Web – http://www.articles.web.com
Directory Gold Article Directory – http://articles.directorygold.com/signup.php
Info Wizards Free Articles – http://content.infowizards.com
Article Friendly – http://www.articlefriendly.com
Free Articles for Reprinting – http://www.articles-hub.com
Submit Your New Article – http://www.submityournewarticle.com
Article Rich.com – http://www.articlerich.com
Constant-Content – http://www.constant-content.com/
Article Cafe – http://www.articlecafe.net
The Add Articles Directory – http://www.add-articles.com
Free Reprint Articles – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-reprint-articles/
1Article World – http://www.1articleworld.com
ABC Article Directory – http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/
eArticlesOnline.com – http://www.earticlesonline.com
Article Snatch – http://www.articlesnatch.com
Just Articles – http://www.JustArticles.com/
Article-Buzz – http://www.article-buzz.com/
I Need Content – http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/I_Need_Content/

The list above represents only a handful of places you can submit your articles to. I would say there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of places to submit your articles. Submitting just 1 article to the sites above will take you a couple hours. For those of you like me who don’t have a lot of time, article submission software may be what you’re looking for.
Article Submission Software and Services: The Quick and Easy Way To Submit Your Articles To Hundreds of Article Submission Directories and Ezines

Back when I had a of time on my hands and little funds, I would spend several hours a day submitting articles. Fortunately someone came out with software that would automate this process, submitting articles to hundreds of sites in just a few minutes time. Then someone figured it would be a good idea to start a service to submit articles for Webmasters and other people. The rest is history.

There are a number of article submission software and services on the market today.

The Article Submission Service that I use exclusively is Article Marketing Automation. Article Marketing Automation, or AMA as its called, will take your article and submit it to hundreds of article directories and ezines.

Their service has many other benefits including tracking your keywords in Google SERPRS so you know where your keywords ranks.

They do this in about a day or so. All I have to do is just send them the article and the do the rest. In less than a week my article will be sending me traffic and backlinks. Money well spent in my book!

AMA has a lot to offer SEO experts or Marketers who need a lot of legitimate backlinks pointing back to their websites and blogs.
Advanced Article Marketing Tips

Here are a few tips to help you be successful in using AMA to bring traffic and backlinks to your site.

* Write focused articles on one subject. Don’t go off on several paths or go on a rant.
* Keep your articles to less than 1000 words. You want readers to visit your site for more information. Tease them with a short article to get them to click over to your site.
* Read the article submission guidelines. Avoid getting your articles banned or rejected because you didn’t take a minute to read the article submission guidelines.
* Your article should be a pre-sell of what they can expect when they click to your site. If your site is about water skiing, don’t post articles about puppies!
* Remember, brand yourself with your articles. Proper article marketing can make you an expert in your niche. And we all know that experts get all the traffic!
* Proof read, proof read, proof read! I’m bad about not doing this. One tip I can give you is to let the article set for a few hours or a day and come back to it. Also, get others you trust to read and proof the article.
* Tell a story and give examples. Everyone loves an example or a story. Use one in your article. It will make it more personal and credible.
* Use your Active voice! Believe it or not, people want to be told what to do. Use an active voice and direct them to what you want them to do. Click here, go here, do this, change that….don’t tell your reader what the “could do”, tell them what to do!

The Resource Box Will Make You or Break You!

While AMA doesn’t use resource boxed (your links go directly into the content, which is best), many other article marketing submission sites do use resource boxes. Here are some tips for getting the most out of those sites.

I see some of the sorriest excuses for resources boxes. A resource box is where you’ll tell the reader all about yourself and web site and why you’re unique. Don’t cut yourself short!

Here’s what you should include in the resource box of your article.

* Your name.
* Your webiste URL
* Your USP – USP stands for Unique Selling Point. This is a few sentences about yourself or your site and why you’re unique. This is important.
* Your C2A – C2A is Call To Action. This is where you’ll tell the reader what to do. “Click here for more information”, or “Visit my website now for a free offer”

Generally most article submission sites or ezines will let you have at least one link in your resource box, some will let you have as many as three. It’s very important that you use anchor text for the specific keywords you’d like to rank for. Make sure this anchor text is relevant!

What NOT to put in a Resource Box

* Spam – You’ll be banned so fast your head will spin
* Affiliate links – Same as above at the most, at the least your article will be rejected. Most article submission sites do not allow affiliate links in the article or resource box. That’s why it’s important to write an article that will send them to your site.
* Links to every site you own. See “Spam” above
* Beating on your chest. Hey, it’s about the readers. They don’t care about how many awards your or your website have won. They want to know what they will be getting by visiting your site. Don’t bother listing all your accomplishments, nothing personal, but we don’t care.

Okay, there you have it. Everything I can think of that I know about Article Marketing, Article Submission to Directories and Ezines. Article Marketing has worked very well for me with every website I’ve owned. Done correctly, it can do wonders for you also!