The idea behind it is that you write an informative article on your topic/niche, and put it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Then at the bottom of the article (or sometimes within it), you will have the option to add your little bit of self promotion and link to your website via the resource box.

Article marketing is a real opportunity for you to establish yourself as an authority within your field, although judging by a lot of what gets placed onto most article directories, this is not always the case!

There has been much comment in the past as to the value of article marketing with some citing that “you may as well put the articles on your own site” or “it’s going to be seen as duplicate content if you distribute it to lots of websites”. Although both of these are valid points, there are a number of benefits to article marketing that I would like to mention, including:-

Presenting Yourself As An Expert

Let’s face it, when looking for information we want to read something that is concise, interesting, and is well researched. By writing well crafted articles, you establish yourself as someone who is a trusted expert and source of quality information.

Helping To Build Links

By placing articles on some of the better directories such as Ezinearticles and Buzzle,  you will find that your articles not only rank well (if optimized correctly) but also inherit page rank, which in turn “bleeds” page rank back to your site through your link.

While many believe that distributing articles to more than one website constitutes duplicate content and therefore will not pass any real SEO value, it must not be forgotten that its not JUST about SEO. Distributing your article to hundreds of websites gives your website greater visibility and hopefully, more visits and natural links.

Obtaining Click Throughs

Another obvious benefit is click throughs. By placing information within the resource box at the bottom of your article, you are offering the reader the ability to investigate your services or products further, after all, if I have just read a great article I will be really interested in reading more content from this author or website.

Establishing Trust

Trust is vital, not only in SEO, but in business. By writing good content you are showing the world that you are an expert within your field and what you say is worth listening too. The fact also that a lot of top article directories will only approve quality articles, also adds to your trust brownie points.

So there you have it. A number of reasons why article marketing is still a valuable method for SEO and why you should be using it to establish yourself as a trusted resource.

Wow, the mind boggles at the power that Google has in its quest to make the worlds information available to all.

So if you have any sensitive scanned docs in pdf format somewhere on your site that you would rather Google didn’t show the world, beware, as they are just a crawl away from being available to all.