Does Article Marketing Really Work?

The past Friday was the Toronto Mom Masterminds MMweetup and it was so wonderful to meet people, in real life, to talk shop with and ask questions of our peers.  Not only were there people from the Greater Toronto Area, but from Cambridge, Windsor and a whole crew from Michigan.  The conversation was lively, and we all had so much in common.

One question was “Does article marketing really work?” and immediately I thought that question would make an excellent blog post (yes, I have a problem, I realize that LOL).  We always hear about article marketing (or bum marketing as some call it, it is so easy a bum on the street could do it) and how effective it is, but man, it sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

When I hear the word “article”, I always think of a really long piece of amazingly crafted writing appearing in O Magazine.  I think that it could take me my whole life to craft an article worthy of publication like that, and that is simply not on my To Do list.  And I like writing!  I can’t imagine how terrifying that would be for moms who don’t enjoy writing.

How Much Do I Have to Write?

Good new moms, article marketing is does not require you to write a Pulitzer winning article. All you have to write is 300-500 words on the topic you know best (something related to your business market).  At this point in this blog post, my word count is around 240, all I need to write is an extra 60 words and I have an article!  Yes, even if you hate writing, you can write a few short paragraphs.

So what do you do with your finished article?  You submit it to an article directory, Ezine Articles is the biggest, and there are plenty of other ones.  The article directory will look at your article (usually a real, live person will do this) to make sure it is original and appropriate for their website.  Once they approve it (which can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of weeks, depending on the directory), the article goes live. 

Link Juice

So why do you want an article on an article directory like Ezine Articles?  Well, at the end of each article, you have an Author Resource box where you can write a bit about yourself and put a link or two (usually with your main keyword as anchor text).  Just having that article with the link on a high PR (page rank) article directory is enough to for Google to think your site is important in your market.  If that is not enough of a good reason to do article marketing, there’s more …

People can use articles from directories on their sites for free, as long as they publish the entire article and Author Resource box.  So other websites will publish your article and link back to your site.  The more links you have coming in to your site, the better, so article marketing is a very good strategy for creating links.

Traffic

Links are fabulous, but there is another reason to submit your articles – traffic!  Oh how we love traffic.  As I mentioned above, article directories usually have a high Page Rank, and they will usually appear quite high in search engine results.  So if you write an article on “10 Steps to Learning Piano” on your own blog, you might not rank that highly for it, but if you submit it to an article directory, your article may be in the top 10 results in Google.  Anyone who clicks on that article will see your Author Resource box at the bottom and has the potential to click your link to visit your site.

Another source of traffic is the people who put your article on their website, in their email broadcast or in their newsletter.  If you write a compelling Author Resource box, you can get even more traffic from their site or list.  All without doing any extra work!

Show the World You are an Expert

An additional reason to submit your articles to their directories is that you will start to appear (rightly so) as an expert in your market.  If you just write one article a week for a year, you will have 52 articles on your market, if you write two a week, you will have 104.  Reporters and bloggers scroll through the directories to see who the experts are and use their findings for interviews or profiles.  That is the real “gravy” of article marketing.

So, Does it Work?

If you have been wondering if article marketing works (then you haven’t been reading very closely!), the ladies at the Mom Masterminds MMWeetup all agree, it is essential to your online business success.  It is such an easy step to overlook or forget about (I am guilty of this), so if you haven’t written an article in a while, commit to writing one a week.  If you are new to it, write your first article this week.

If you would like more of a step by step system that walks you through the ins and outs, I highly recommend you check out Kelly and Nicole Dean’s Easy Article Marketing.  It is a great program that will have you writing articles in no time and reaping the rewards with incoming links and traffic. It will even teach you how to hire a ghost writer if you don’t have the time or skill to write your own articles.

Do you do article marketing?  What have been your successes?