Without marketing efforts, your online business will flop. You have to let the people know you’re online and what you’re all about. One way to easily and inexpensively market your business is by either writing articles or hiring someone to write them for you.

The purpose of these articles is that they can be used to promote your website through the use of backlinks in the articles. Plus, it’s smart strategy for search engine optimization. These articles act as fingers pointing the way to your site and driving traffic there.

Every marketer knows that the more traffic a website receives, the higher the likelihood that sales will also increase. You can’t sell your products if the population isn’t made aware of what you have to offer to them.

If you were to simplify article marketing, it could be defined as advertising. That’s what article marketing does for you. Advertises your business – but it does it a lot cheaper than traditional methods ever could.

Once the articles are written and edited, the next step is to submit them to article directories. Always make sure you use fresh content, because the same article with a few words switched around won’t pass some directories with stringent article approval rules.

When submitting to more than one directory, what happens for the website you’re promoting is that a larger net is cast into the sea of traffic than there would be if you didn’t promote this way.

People searching the Internet find your article, read the content (make it relevant and engaging), and they feel they’ve learned some important information that will help them so they follow the link to learn even more.

Different article directories will have different rules concerning backlinks. Some won’t allow them in the middle of an article and only want them in your signature while other directories don’t care where you put them.

Submitting articles to directories should be an ongoing process rather than a “submit and forget it”. The more well-received articles you submit, the more your reputation as an expert will grow and the higher you’ll rank in search engines.

When you write the articles (or have them written) you want to use a specific strategy. For example, if you’re writing about how to make money selling eBooks, you can write articles on the popularity of eBooks, why people buy them and the steps they can take to write their own.

You want to be careful that you give them enough information to make the reader interested and want to click on the link to head over to your site. If you write the articles in an informative way that gives value, then you’ll drive traffic to your site – but if you write it as a hard-hitting sales letter, you’ll end up pushing people away.