Article Marketing: the Small Business Owner's Secret Weapon

Whether you have a brick and mortar business with a website or a virtual business that is 100% online, you know that getting traffic to your website is essential to your business' success.

But if you're not an SEO junkie or a technologically advanced person, if you're just a "regular" small business person with an average amount of internet savvy, how in the world do you bridge the gap between where you are right now and a thriving, bustling website?

The thought of learning how to "drive traffic to a website" or "ranking higher in Google" is daunting for most folks, but please rest assured that you don't need to be an internet mastermind to have a successful website.

Business owners with a moderate understanding of how the internet works can market their websites effectively with the help of the simple and entirely approachable online marketing tool called Article Marketing.

What is Article Marketing?

Article Marketing is when you write educational articles on your area of expertise, and then submit those articles to article directories.

When your article is published on an article directory, it can be seen by a limitless number of people who may decide to reprint your article on their own website.

The idea with article marketing is to get your article reprinted on as many websites as possible, because each article that you send out into the big wide world of the internet is like a virtual sales person who is mingling about the net trying to draw people back to your website.

How do articles draw people back to your website?

Along with each article that you submit, you will include an author resource box, which is a short author bio that also includes a link back to your website. That link back to your website is paramount - after seeing and reading your article on a website, the visitor clicks this link and is sent to your website.

When someone clicks the link in your resource box and then reaches your website, you are building "targeted traffic".

Targeted traffic simply means that the people who are visiting your website are actually interested in your services or products. These are not random visitors--they are people who were motivated enough to read your article, who found value in it, and who read your resource box and felt compelled to click the link and see what other value you offered at your website.

When you're trying to get visitors to your website, you are going for targeted traffic, and article marketing is a widely known favorite marketing tool for effectively building targeted traffic over the long term.

We just talked about how your website can receive targeted traffic when readers click the link in your resource box, but there is another way that your website can receive targeted traffic--through Google.

Imagine a potential customer going to Google and searching for information on your area of expertise.

They type their query into Google, and a list of results pops up, listing websites that Google deems will have the greatest chance of satisfying the searcher.

What if someone did a search for your area of business and your website popped up as the top result in the list?

You would have a much greater chance of that searcher clicking through to your website and becoming a new customer!

When your articles are reprinted all over the internet with the precious link in your resource box going back to your website, it sends Google a message that your website is important, and you have a greater chance of ranking higher in the search results.

Additionally, when you do article marketing your articles themselves may start turning up in the search results in Google. Once a person has clicked through to one of your helpful articles, they can click the link in your resource leading them back to your website.

We've just talked about 3 ways that article marketing can help drive targeted traffic to your website:

1) When someone reads one of your articles and then clicks the link to your website in your resource box.

2) When your website ranks higher in the search engines (like Google)

3) When a person does a Google search and your articles appear in the search results

By doing article marketing, it's like you're sending out sales representatives who keep popping up in the places where your potential customers are likely to be hanging out.

Article marketing is a trusted and effective method for marketing a website, and to top if off, it's easy! You don't have to be an internet mastermind--just start writing and submitting articles, and you're well on your way!