Article marketing is one of the “essentials” that all internet marketers are supposed to do. Everywhere you turn, you’re being told to write quality articles and submit them to sites such as EzineArticles as well as post them on your own site.

Does article marketing work? And what’s the point of writing all these articles?

The quick answer is, yes, article marketing works.

But only if your article marketing is well targeted for the market you want to reach.

So you’ll need to research keywords to make sure that what you write about is being searched for often enough to make it worthwhile.

Once you’ve done that, it’s a matter of deciding where to submit your articles.

Without a doubt, the biggest article directory is EzineArticles. They have high standards and every single article is checked and then checked a second time before it gets added to their site.

Initially, until you build up some trust with them, it will take what seems like forever to get your articles approved by them. But once that’s done, you’ll be rewarded with clicks through from your resource box at the end of the article as well as the article getting listed fairly fast in Google.

As with almost everything, there are different viewpoints as to whether you should add the article to your site before adding it to Ezine Articles or afterwards or not at all. Test and see what works best for you.

My current strategy is as follows:

I get three versions of an article written. I use a service called Get Articles Done to do this. They’re efficient and it saves me dealing with individual article writers. The articles are UAW ones – these are written to a certain specification which makes it easy for them to be “spun” so that bits of each of the three versions are combined into fairly unique final articles. It sounds complicated but you can safely ignore the mechanics behind it.

One version is submitted to Ezine Articles.

A second version is submitted to GoArticles.

A third version is submitted either to one of my blogs or to Articles Base.

The three versions are then submitted to Unique Article Wizard, with a delay of a few days to allow Ezine Articles time to approve their version. UAW’s software spins the articles for you, so they can be copied and pasted into their interface.

The three versions are also submitted to Article Marketing Automation, again with a few days delay. This service requires articles to be “spun” – I’ve created a program to do that and you can download a copy of this article checker and spinner free of charge:

Download Article Spinner software

With these methods, my articles get distributed all over the web. Typically, Unique Article Wizard will send them out to several hundred article directories and blogs and Article Marketing Automation will add anything from 60 to 200 copies on various blogs.

Generally I’ve not found much in the way of direct traffic from these services but the articles are picked up by Google which means the backlinks get counted. Which in turn pushes my sites further up in the search results. So it’s very worthwhile to do this.

One snag with both UAW and AMA is that they’re both monthly services. If you’re at an early stage in your marketing career or if you don’t write many articles each month, the fees may put you off.

In which case Magic Article Submitter is for you. It has a one-time cost and it then automates the task of submitting spun articles to lots of different article directories.

My Article Spinner software will create a spun version of your articles (so long as they are written in UAW style) with all the correct codes for you, so all you need to do is copy and paste it into the Magic Article Submitter program.

The biggest thing to remember with article marketing is that you need to keep at it. Just like a journalist, it’s unlikely that one article will make your fortune. But lots of keyword targeted articles submitted over weeks, months and even years will build up over time and get you consistent traffic.

It’s often perceived as boring and bland but it’s still one of the most reliable methods available.

Click here to get started with article marketing.