Article Marketing - are you Submitting Articles to the Best Websites to Get More Traffic and Leads?

Article marketing is not all about getting links. It's about getting your articles published on the top, most trafficked, targeted websites, ezines and article directories that accept article submissions so you can experience more publicity, traffic and profits.

How can you make sure your articles are published on the biggest sites that get the most traffic?

That should be the number one concern of every article writer, whether they are a coach, author, consultant or information marketer.

It is easy to get articles published on sites, but shouldn't you concentrate on the biggest and best sites?

This might sound like common sense, but the truth is that not many people know which sites are big and which ones are small. So they spend their time submitting to any site they run across. Most people have no idea how many visitors a site gets, or whether the site is the biggest in the field with lots of traffic, or a recent start-up with little traffic.

If you don't know the difference, then you could be wasting a lot of time and energy!

Are You Using the "Secret Weapon" That the Most Successful Article Marketing Professionals Use to Choose Where They Submit Articles to?

It's called Alexa.

Many people have never heard of this site. And that's too bad, because it could save you and your co-workers a lot of time and effort in getting prospects.

So here's the scoop on Alexa.

Alexa ranks the traffic of each site on the Internet. It is owned by Amazon.com so you know it is a reputable site.

If you go to alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 you'll see a listing of the top sites. As of this writing, the sites that get the most traffic are:

1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. Windows Live
4. You Tube
5. Microsoft Network
6. My Space
7. Facebook
8. Wikipedia
9. Hi 5
10. Orkut

Alexa indexes more than 5 million web sites!

The real power of Alexa comes when you search for a site. You can do this by going to www.alexa.com You'll see a search bar. Type the URL of your company's web site. Or your competitor's site. Or a site that you think is really hot.

Alexa will show you the site's ranking. It could be 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or even 10,000,000. There are a lot of sites on the web!

How to Use Alexa to Get Your Articles Published on the Top, Most Trafficked Websites

If you type in the URLs of several sites you are considering submitting articles to, you will see their rankings. Let's say one site is ranked 250,000 and the other is ranked 435,000.

Now you know which site gets more traffic. So you'd be inclined to submit your article there first. If you had more time, you could submit your article to the second, third, fourth and fifth site that you searched for.

Now you know how to rank the sites that you submit to.

By the way, don't be put off if a site is ranked 500,000. It might be the highest-ranked site in your vertical market. The way to look at these numbers is the relation of one site to the next. Don't be blind and just think a site stinks if it is number 200,000. That might be a very good number!

How Alexa Can Help You With Additional Research for Your Article Marketing Efforts

You can search by country or language to find the top sites in a country or language you want prospects from.

Most importantly, you can search by subject!

For example, you can search on business, health, sports or dozens of other topics. When you select one topic, you'll see a list of sub topics that help you find specific audiences.

For example, if you type "business," you'll see subtopics for:

• Accounting
  
• Marketing
  
• Small business
  
• And dozens more!