Article marketing is one of the best ways to generate traffic to your website.

Here's how it works.

1. You write an article.
2. You submit it to article directories.
3. Web publishers (website owners & bloggers) grab your article from the article databases and use your article on their sites free of charge.

Inside your article, at the end, you include a resource box that contains a link to your website. When the article is published, that portion must tag along and be published, too.

Your link tags along with your article and you get FREE advertising.

Want an example?

I'll give you a few.

http://www.123webmarketing.com/articles/make-money-launch.html

This is the link to one of Jimmy D. Brown's articles.

You see at the end? It says…

Jimmy D. Brown is the author of "Small Reports Fortune" – if you can write 7-15 page small reports, you can earn a living online working just a few hours each week from your home. Look for his EXCLUSIVE formula "Creating A Six-Figure Income With Small Reports" at www.SmallReportsFortune.com.

That would be an example of an author bio.

Here's another:
http://www.ladypens.com/plr-articles-how-to-choose-a-good-service/

At the end, it says:
Would you like to learn more about how to use PLR articles in your business? Nicole Dean welcomes you to sign up for her free ecourse at www.EasyPrivateLabelArticles.com If you’re ready to start shopping, just stop by www.EasyPLR.com – where you’ll find high-quality PLR articles sold in very limited quantities.

So, everyone who re-publishes those article will include the author blurb and both authors will get lots of free traffic.

There are three main ways article marketing can generate traffic for you:

• People click your link from the article directory and end up on your website.
• Webmasters publish your article (with your link intact) on their own site)
• Your search engine position increases because you'll gain more backlinks.

That makes article marketing an excellent strategy.

Tip #1 – Do your keyword research

One of the most important things you can do to make sure your articles do well is keyword research. Since people use keywords to search for information in the search engines like Google, you'll want to target appropriate keywords if you wish to show up at the top of the results pages.

You can find relevant keywords in many different ways, but the easiest way is to use Google’s research tool.

You can find it at: http://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal

Simply type in a keyword for your website and Google will give you many keyword ideas.

Example: If you've got a website about pet recipes, you would enter terms like “cooking pet food”, “homemade pet food”, “natural pet food', “cook dog food”, etc.

Google also gives you the numbers that tell you how often people search for each term. That way you know the keywords you’re targeting are worth your efforts.

Another important piece of the puzzle is figuring out how much competition there is for each keyword. If you are targeting words that have too much competition it's going to be harder for you to reach the top of the search engine results pages. Don't worry about that happening, because it’s easy to figure out how much competition there is.

Simply go to Google and type in your keyword surrounded by quote marks. The results that pop up are the other sites that are specifically targeting that term.

Example: When I search for “Pet recipes” I see there are 66,600 webpages that are already listed for that term.

Now that you have these keywords you can use them to give you a basis for your articles. It’s easiest to choose one keyword per article and focus the topic around that keyword. Remember to put the same term in your title as well.

Tip #2 -Write your articles for the reader –>

There are many people who think that in order to rank highly in search engines, they need to stuff their keyword in their article an excessive amount of times. This is definitely not the best way to attract readers or get traffic to your website.

The search engines are also getting smarter and they know when you’re trying to game them.

It is much better to weave your keywords in more naturally. This will serve both the search engines and your readers. There is no set keyword density that works well, but many experts suggest you stick to around 2 to 5%. That means for every hundred words you would include the keyword about 2 to 5 times.

Remember — the search engines can tell if you’re trying to stuff your keyword in your article. Their main goal is to provide a good user experience for people who use their search engine, and your main goal is to get people to your website.

It makes sense, then, that you would strive to provide good content that the search engines will like and that people find useful when they visit your website.

Tip #3 – Submit to the right article directories

There are many article directories, but not all of them are worth your time. Since you're trying to get traffic to your website, you want to find the very best ones. It can be hard to choose since the search engine’s “love” for these directories seems to change all the time. Still, there are a few that you can always count on.

These include:

• EzineArticles.com
• GoArticles.com
• ArticleDashboard.com
• Buzzle.com

If you open an account at these different directories and start a regular submission schedule, you’ll find that you start getting visitors to your website.

Since these are people who are looking for exactly what you’re offering, your conversions should be great as well.

Tip #4 – Focus on your author’s resource box

One of the most important article marketing tips you can follow is to focus on your author’s resource box. This is your "take" for your site, whereas the actual article body is your "give" to the directory.

Your author's resource box should contain a compelling reason for people to continue on to your website. You may talk a little about yourself, but it really has to be more about the reader and what he/she wants.

For example, if your website is offering a solution for people suffering from acne, you want to give them a reason to visit. Clearly, you need to let them know that you have the answer they are looking for in order to get them to visit your website.

A huge part of crafting a great resource box is including one or more links to your website. Different directories have different rules about this, but the standard is to allow you to include two links. You want to surround these links in what is called "anchor text." This is simply a way for you to name the link to let the search engines know exactly what your site is about.

Here is an example of anchor text:

If you want the search engines to know your site is about acne treatments you would type:

<a href="http://acnesite.com">best acne treatments</a>

This would help boost your rankings for the keyword "best acne treatments."

Tip #5 – Submit many articles

There are webmasters who think that they can boost their search engine rankings and get tons of article directory visitors to their site just by submitting an article or two. If only this were true. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case at all. You need to sustain an active level of submission to stay at the top of the search engines.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend your life writing articles. As long as you’re consistent in your efforts and don’t stop at just a few articles you’ll likely see great results. Still, those who submit many articles over a long amount of time usually see higher levels of traffic.

You’ll find that the number of articles you need to submit really depends on the niche you‘re in. There are some niches out there where just one or two articles a month will do. There are other niches where it’s ultra-competitive, so you’ll need to submit more articles, more often.

The recommendation by EasyArticleMarketing.com is to try to submit one article per week, every week. If that's too much, then shoot for 2 articles per month, every month. The key is to be consistent.

Tip #6 – Re-purpose your content

Since your main goal is to get more traffic, you’ll want to use your content in as many different ways as possible. It’s no use to just write an article one time, submit it to one directory, and expect to get traffic. It’s a much better use of your time to use your content in more than one way. After all — you still own the article.

In fact, many people are finding that it actually increases their rankings greatly if they use the same article at more than one article directory. There is some debate about this, so you might find that you want to rewrite it a little bit before submitting it to another directory. Still, this saves you a lot of time.

Three article submission services that have grown to get a lot of respect over the years are:

Isnare: Submits to many publishers for a very reasonable price. You can learn more about this submission service at http://easyplr.com/isnare

Article Marketer Service: Offers a free trial. Definitely worth trying just for that reason. http://easyplr.com/AM

Unique Article Submitter: This is great if you are concerned about duplicate content. http://easyplr.com/unique

Beware signing up with other services until you check them out. These three are respected and updated constantly.

You should also take the content that you submitted to the directories and put it on your own website. This updates your site and shows the search engines that you are constantly adding new content. Adding new content often helps you get "spidered" (visited by the search engines) more frequently. The more frequently you are spidered, the faster you can rank for new content and the faster you can make money.

It’s true — content really does make the web go round. The more content you have on your websites, the more chances you have to get traffic. People are on the web to find information so be sure to offer them lots of quality articles on your websites.

Tip #7 – Don’t give it all away

A common mistake that many people make when they are using article marketing as a form of traffic generation is giving away too much information in the article body. That doesn’t mean that you don’t want to offer quality writing to your readers, but your main goal is to get them to visit your site.

That's why you'll want to write your articles to entice the reader. A good way to make this easy is to follow the A.I.D.A format of writing articles. This stands for attention, interest, desire, action.

A. This means you want to capture their attention first with a compelling headline and a great opening.
I. Then, you want to maintain their interest by showing them how important what you’re about to say is.
D. Next, you’ll want to increase their desire for visiting your website. You can do this by handing out a solution or piece of information, but indicate that you have addressed the rest of the information on your site.
A. This is a great way to get people to click on your author’s resource box — the action you want — and to get more people to visit your website.

It’s not at all uncommon to get a click-through rate of around 40% if you use the AIDA method.

Tip #8 – Brand yourself as an expert

One of the best perks about writing a lot of articles is that people start to recognize you as an expert. This is an excellent thing for you, because it means you’ll get a lot more traffic to your site. In fact, if people are impressed enough by what you have to say and what they find at your website you’ll discover that more and more people start to link to you and recommend you to others. When this happens, it becomes like a snowball effect of traffic.

The fact of the matter is, you are an expert because you’ve written so many articles and you know so much about the topic. That’s another reason why it’s so important to take advantage of the author’s resource box, because it really helps to brand your website and your name.

That way people start to recognize you as the authority.

Tip #9 – Research the competition

You know what you are doing to generate traffic, but it can be even more helpful to know what your competitors are doing. This is especially true if you know of a website that is ranking especially high in the search engines. You can map what they’ve done based on their articles, and tweak their strategies to perfection for your own uses.

For example, if you go to ezinearticles.com and search for the most viewed articles in your niche, you can usually determine what other websites are doing to rank so highly.

• You might take a look at the keywords they’ve used in the title.
• Notice the way they've crafted their article.
• Examine the resource box.
• You can also look at their profile and see just how many articles they have submitted.
• Check out the website they are linking to as well.

That way you can find out their search engine rankings in Google to get a feel for what these rankings are doing for them.

Tip #10 – Pay attention to your profile

This is something that many article marketers forget about. If you don’t set up your profile, people are going to be less likely to trust you. The more people trust you, the more likely they are to go to your website. Setting up a profile might seem trivial, but it actually has a lot to do with the kind of traffic you may receive.

This doesn't mean you have to give away a lot of information about yourself. But it does help prove yourself as an expert. Remember — people visit the article directories frequently. If they start to like your writing they may subscribe to your articles (an option available at many directories). Your chances of them doing this greatly increases once you’ve added information and a picture to your profile.

Quite frequently if a person finds ONE article they like that you've written, they'll seek out others. However, if they go to your profile to do so, and there's no picture, they may lose trust that you're a real person with a real business.

Here's an example of a great author profile:
http://www.ladypens.com/author/arika-lewis/

No, this doesn’t really help your search engine rankings (unless the directory allows a website link within the profile) but it does help with article directory visitor trust.