Basically, article marketing is nothing more than advertising. When referring to your online business, article marketing would require that you write short articles as a means to promote your website or blog. You would than make them available for distribution and publication by submitting them to article directories or ezines.

Each article that you write will clearly have an author bio box available at the bottom which will clearly identify you as the person who wrote the article. This will give the reader the option to follow your website link and further investigate what you are promoting. The major objective of your articles is to provide valuable information or tips that your readers are searching for.

Once your article is finished you can than post it on the many free article directories located throughout the web. Article directories are nothing more than websites that categorically house and list articles for people wanting to publish their writings. Almost all article directories are free to post your articles as long as you write your articles according to their individual guidelines.

The article directories are free mainly because the site uses advertising to generate revenue. The more readers that notice your articles, the more chances of generating revenue from advertisements. In the end, both the article directory owner and you will benefit from the traffic generated from your articles.

However, you have to remember a few simple tactics that will make your articles stand out from the rest. The first thing is that your articles need to be unique. This is something that you’ve probably heard before, but it is still imperative that you understand the meaning of it or your articles will be useless.

Simply put, your articles must be one of a kind written by you or another writer that you have hired to write for you. I know that this sounds a little too easy to understand, but you wouldn’t believe how many people just buy plr material and submit them as is to article directories. If your idea is to follow this route you might as well just throw your money away.

The next step that you must incorporate with your articles is to make sure that they are on topic with your theme and that you provide relevant and useful information. With more and more people using article marketing as a means of traffic generation, quality is something that will set your articles apart. Don’t get hung up on the fact that you might not be a professional writer, as most people that write articles are not professionals themselves.

The next important step to remember is to have your keywords researched before you even write your articles. Believe it or not, writing an article without your keywords will probably never get noticed by anyone. The key to article marketing and traffic generation is utilizing keywords or keyword phrases sprinkled throughout your article that relate to your niche or website subject.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone searching for a particular product or service that they need. Try to think about the search terms that they might use in finding that product. That is the real secret to traffic generation and how you can make article marketing a powerful weapon with your online business.

Just remember, article marketing is only one of many ways that you can promote your website or product. Also, a traffic generation strategy with article marketing will be successful if you use keywords or keyword phrases, unique content, and useful information.