Welcome to the article marketing intro tutorial. In this video we’re going to cover one of the easiest ways to get laser targeted links built to your site which is article marketing.

In this video we’ll cover:

• What article marketing is
• Why article marketing is beneficial
• We’ll cover some article writing basics and we’ll cover how to go about submitting these articles to article sites.

Now first off, let’s answer the question, what is article marketing? Article marketing is the process of writing and submitting 500 to 750 word articles to article submission sites. Now, by including links to your site at the bottom of each article, this becomes a very effective link building activity. Now, just to give you a brief history, a lot of people say, “okay so, why do these article directories exist?”

Well, when they originally came about they were for people to exchange content for their e-zines and different types of newsletters and the agreement was people would post up these articles and they would put links at the bottom of them to their sites. And then anyone could use these for their e-zines or their online newsletters as long as they left the credibility and the links at the bottom to the author’s website. Now, that’s still a use of these but, more and more they have become a standalone technology to where article sites pop up more and more for the sole purpose of people submitting articles to them.

Now, let’s talk about the article marketing process. Now, first off, you write a 500 to 750 word article. Now, you can do less than that but, more and more people are abusing this as it is with all Internet marketing, more and more people are abusing this technology and usually they only write 300 to 400 word articles. So, anytime you can put yourself above and beyond those people who might be abusing this technology, we recommend doing so. So, in this case you try to write a 500 to 750 word article.

Once you’ve done that you then distribute the articles to submission sites and then as you’re submitting those articles you place one or two links from each article to your site.
Now, going in line with the link building efforts, let’s talk about the other reasons why article marketing is beneficial. All right, like we talked about, you get targeted anchored links to your site. You’re going to have control over exactly what that link says and the more inbound links with the keyword phrase in it that Google sees, the easier you’re going to rank for those keyword phrases.

Additionally, these links are coming from content sites which Google loves to see. Now, in addition to both of these there’s also the fact that a lot of people go to these article sites to learn and to gather information. So, oftentimes you’ll see direct traffic coming from these more popular article sites as well.

So, let’s talk about some article writing basics. So, a lot of times when you start talking about article marketing a lot of people feel overwhelmed and they say, “Oh, I can’t do that, I don’t know if I can do that.” So, let’s talk about some basics just to show how easy this really is. So, first off, what you want to do is you want to choose a keyword phrase to target so this could be your main keyword phrase, if you’re going along with the other examples that we’ve used, it could be “kids play tent” or “learn Spanish software” or whatever your keyword phrase is but, you choose that keyword phrase that you want to target.

Then you choose a topic that goes in line with that keyword phrase. Oftentimes I like to address questions and concerns that people in that industry might have. A great way to sort of find topics is go to sites like Yahoo Answers and see what questions people are asking. Also you can go into forums that have to do with your industry and see what common threads and things people are talking about and answer questions in relation to that.

Now, what I like to do is start with an outline. If you just sit and stare at a blank piece of paper and think that you need to write a 500 word essay or article you’re going to get writers block nine times out of ten. I know I do. So, what I like to do is start with an outline. It might seem like you’re in middle school again or high school again but, start with the main points you want to hit on, those could be just from the notes you made as you were researching, and then start building on that, and then once you have the outline, work towards that 500 to 750 words.

Now, the nice thing with articles is this doesn’t have to be the technical writing that you were expected to do in your writing classes in high school or college. This can be in a conversational tone which makes it a lot easier to go through and write. Now, another recommendation that I have that I like to do because it can be in a conversational tone, oftentimes I’ll go to YouTube and try to find videos that address the same questions or concerns that I’m trying to address in my article and I’ll listen to what they have to say about that topic and then I use that in the article that I’m writing, all right?

Now, to submit to article submission sites, here’s the basics of what you need to know. You’ll first need to set up an account with these article submission sites. So, GoArticles.com or EzineArticles.com, these are all article submission sites. So, you’ll need to set up an actual account with these. Now, oftentimes you’ll need to put an e-mail in their so, I recommend setting up a separate e-mail for these because oftentimes they’ll send you a lot of junk mail. So, you can go to Hotmail or Gmail and set up another account just for this. Now, some sites require a pen name.

You can use your own name or you can use a made up name, it doesn’t really matter but, they will require that you do have a pen name. And then as you’re going through the process of submitting your article, you want to be sure to choose a catchy title that has your keyword phrase in it. Because keep in mind, you not only want it to be optimized for the search engines with your keyword phrases but, you also wanted to get read, and that’s where that catchy title comes in. And then the last step is actually going through and submitting your article. Now, once you’ve entered your actual article into the site and before you submit it, you’ll actually be able to put a blurb about the author.

So, that’s where your two anchor text links come in, you’ll put those of the author area. So, you’ll put something like, Bob Smith, or whatever your pen name is, and then you put a little blurb and then you put your keyword phrases into that little blurb that you’re writing about the author. So, as you make up that author description, make sure that you’re gearing towards your keyword phrases and then you’ll actually be able to put in the code. We’ll have some videos that show you exactly how to do this. But that will be the next step, once you enter in your article you will be able to put in an author bio, and that’s where the links will come in.

Now, let’s talk about where you can go about submitting these articles. There are tons of different sites out there. The most popular up there in the corner is EzineAarticles.com. There is also Article City, Article Alley, Amazines, Article Trader, Article Dashboard, Go-articles; there are plenty of article submission sites. You’re not going to run out of article-submission-sites, that’s for sure. And the nice thing is the bulk of these sites have a high page rank and a lot of people are actually going to – I’ve actually seen sales come through in my analytics from EzineArticles.com. Somebody was there reading my article, they got educated to the point to where they were actually ready to make a purchase and they came through and made a purchase. So, go ahead and feel free to experiment in with writing some of these articles.

Like I was saying, it can feel a little overwhelming so, start with an outline, start going through and doing some research and find some questions and concerns that people have, weather on YouTube or Yahoo Answers or within forums, and then start addressing those. And once you get into it you’ll see it actually is a lot easier than you would originally think and the links that you get from submitting to these article submission sites are well worth it.