Article Marketing

There are many ways for a small business to increase traffic to its website. One of the often overlooked or little known methods is through article marketing. This method is well known in the internet marketing niche, but not so much by traditional businesses. This is a great service to offer your clients and can go a long way in providing a boost in website traffic.

Article marketing is the process of writing a piece of content (known as the article) and submitting it for distribution with high traffic article directories.

Most of the article directories are free to submit and generally only require that the content is well written and not overly promotional. At the end of each article, the author is allowed to include a resource box which is a quick blurb about the author and a link back to their website. This is the key to generating the traffic back to your client's website.

By submitting the article to a directory you are giving permission to others to use the article on their website. So, when someone else uses the article, the resource box (and link) will appear on their site. This gives your client exposure on other websites and can generate targeted traffic back to their homepage.

The key to this method is providing great and informative content and writing a good resource box. Once a reader gets to the end of the article, they will see the resource box which is your opportunity to get them to click through to the website. Keep the resource box relevant to the content and give the reader a call to action. If your article offered some plumbing tips then a good call to action would be, "Visit the Atlanta Plumber for more great tips." Make sure that the keyword "Atlanta Plumber" is hyperlinked backed to the website. This gives the potential customer a reason to click on the link and visit the homepage.

Another great thing about article marketing is that you can get the client to provide the content for you. It doesn't get any easier than that! A lot businesses already have plenty of content that you can turn into an article. All you have to do is ask. It doesn't take a lot of articles to generate a lot of traffic. One well written article every month will be more than enough to provide tons of potential customers for the business owner.