Thursday 15 October 2009

Article Marketing - the Do's and Do Not's of Article Marketing

By Barry Walls

Within the past year a lot more people are seeing article marketing as a viable way to promote their business, services, or products. Many people still aren't clear on exactly how to properly utilize article marketing to its fullest potential, some unintentionally have used unscrupulous methods.

Article Marketing has been with us since printing has been used for mass communication. The most common type is when a particular type of company writes a valuable article about an aspect of their business which has popular appeal (keeping your pet healthy, for example) and allows a periodical to publish it for no cost as long as the details of their business are allowed to be displayed with it.

This gives the periodical interesting and attractive content which will help retain the readership and gives the company valuable free advertising. This mutual benefit has seen many 'resident' columns appear in various periodicals and helped companies and individuals establish expert status with the readership. This is probably the best kind of advertising that any company or individual can obtain.

The internet and the exponential growth in the number of web sites has created a huge online demand for original content for web site owners to use to add value to their sites. It is probably true to say that the demand for content is virtually insatiable - and therein rests a major problem.

The internet is not only full of an ever growing number of web sites it also has a growing number of people trying to sell instant cures for every web site ill. The question of content has always been with us but now you can look at sites called 'article sites' and make a selection from a list of articles that might be suitable for your site. You can use any article you want to as long as you keep the 'resource' box (this contains details of the author) intact.

The demand for content is so high that some have tried to provide these webmasters with solutions. One popular way in which webmasters can get their content needs filled is to go to sites which are referred to as article directories, these directories have articles written on just about every possible subject you can imagine and are free for the taking by anyone who wants to put them on their site. However, if you do put the article on your site you must include the resource box that is attached to the article, giving credit and a link back to the original author of the article. .

Search engines are becoming more intelligent every passing day and they are starting to pick up on content that is spun. Most search engines will penalize sites for using material that is not unique. If the search engines see the content as duplicate they may not index the site in the search engine results.

Article directories are trying to keep their reputation with the search engines and webmasters who want to use their content because they derive a nice income from ads that are clicked which are placed on the article content pages. If the article directories lose favor with the search engines or with the users they serve they will lose their revenue.

There is no giant button you can push that will solve all your article marketing needs. If you put out fresh and unique content in your field of expertise than you usually you can count on webmasters picking up your content and putting it on their site.

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