especially with the explosion of a couple major
article sites and publishing of some serious tools and resources that will better help marketers to use article marketing in their repertoire. For myself, I use article marketing exclusively to drive traffic to my website and to generate business.
Because of its sudden popularity, some misconceptions
exist about the reasons why someone would engage in
article marketing. (To be sure, article marketing has
always been popular and in use, but only of late has
it really hit the mainstream.)
For example, you have read that the most important
reason you should incorporate article marketing into
your marketing arsenal is because, in article
marketing, you have the potential to generate
hundreds, if not thousands, of backlinks to your site.
As you know, solid backlinks are what drive many of
the search engine spiders. That is, if your website
links appears contextually (i.e., not in a "link
farm") on someone else's site, you are often rewarded
for that in terms of search positioning.
Thus, the more articles you submit to article sites,
and the more your articles are reprinted from an
articles site onto another site, the more backlinks
you get. Certain article submission software programs
even allow a provision for you to alter your "resource
box" so search engines don't consider your articles to
be link spamming.
But this is not the real reason you should be
marketing with articles. There is a far more
important reason: To establish yourself as an expert.
Everyone's business service a niche, even internet
marketers (that, in itself, is the niche). While the
backlinks are great for your site, what's more
important is that a reader of your article, whether
they found the article through a search, at an
articles site, or in someone else's ezine (who
reprinted your article), reads your opinion and your understanding of your business topic/niche.
Think about it: In the "real world," when you need a
service, who do you want to buy from? The service
provider who looks like an expert and has been around
for a long time, or the one working out of his garage
with used and dirty equipment? If you need a how-to
book on building a deck, do you buy one by an author
just out of high school with no credibility, or do you
buy one by an author who has his own deck-building TV
show and has published three other books on the
subject? In both cases, you probably buy from the
expert.
This is the real reason you should be marketing with
articles. Backlinks are great, but it is more
important that you establish yourself as an expert, as
the go-to person in your area of business.