Over the past few years Article Marketing has been turned upside down. Over the course of this post or posts I’m going to give you two article marketing strategies that work today in 2012, but first you need to learn more about the history of article marketing.

By knowing the history of article marketing you can predict the future and avoid making stupid mistakes. For me it all started back in 2009 when I started marketing online. I started a little blog and decided the best way to promote it was article marketing.

At the time article marketing was the hottest online marketing strategy, especially for search engine optimization. Article directories were ranking like crazy and were a sure fire way of driving traffic to your site as well as gaining powerful backlinks.

First, what the heck are article directories and how do you use them? As the name suggests, they are directories of articles. They allow users to signup and submit their own articles to the directory. Once submitted they’re generally reviewed and upon approval published on the directory domain.

Article directories are usually high Page Rank and carry a lot of authority in the eyes of Google. So obviously Google ranks any of their pages (i.e. articles) very well. Here’s a quick list of reasons why article directories are fantastic for link building:

1. Article Directories Rank Well On Their Own
2. Article Directories Are High Page Rank
3. Article Directories Drive Traffic

Those are the three core reasons why you should use article marketing. There are far more, but it’s easier to grasp the most important three. The first reason is because they rank very well by themselves.

This means that by submitting an article to a directory, it will probably rank in the search engines without any help. Why? Well because article directories are so authoritative. By using simple on-page optimization and keyword targeting, your articles will rank and send referral traffic to your website.

Backlinks that send you traffic are powerful. The second reason is because article directories are high Page Rank. This just means they’re authoritative. The higher the Page Rank of an article directory, the more authority it holds and the better links it will give you.

The third core reason is because they drive traffic. Very few backlinks actually send you direct traffic. They all will in the form of higher search engine rankings, but hardly any send direct traffic. It’s all because article directories rank well by themselves so people find them, read the articles and click through to your website.

To gain a link from an article directory, you need three things.

1. An Attractive Title
2. A Great Article
3. A Compelling Author Resource Box

In the old days, SEO’s would just spam article directories with thousands of spun articles. In 2012 you need to create high quality articles, optimize them for keywords and submit them to the top tier directories only.

Article marketing is ever so simple. You need to write a title, a great article and a compelling author resource box. If you want to follow a white hat strategy that will last, you need to manually write each and every word of your articles. Or outsource them which is the preferred option.

The author resource box is highly important. It’s where you’re allowed to write about yourself, your website and actually link to it using whatever anchor text you choose. Author resource boxes look anything like this:

With most article directories author resource boxes are positioned directly below your article. If you want to use article marketing to drive direct traffic and not just boost your rankings; your articles better be good.

As unless people read past your articles, they won’t see your author resource box. Generally directories allow you to incorporate two links to your website/s in each author resource box.

So obviously you need to write a compelling author resource box if you want anyone to click through to your website. Submitting to article directories is very straight forward. There’s nothing to it. You signup, login and navigate to the ‘submit article’ page.

On the ‘submit article’ page you generally enter an article title, description, summary, body and keywords. Sometimes article directories will ask for tags which are practically the same as keywords.

The key to good article marketing is keyword optimization and of course; good articles. Article directories rank very well and can send you direct traffic, so you need to optimize each and every article to rank for a keyword.

Unless you’re going to seriously promote your live articles, you should choose low competition keywords. While article directories are high Page Rank and do carry a lot of weight; they won’t rank for high competition keywords without reinforcement i.e. backlinks.

That’s just a little information about how and why article marketing works; now let’s look further at its history.

>>> Click Here For Part Two

• The History Of Article Marketing (You Are Here)
• The History Of Article Marketing Part Two
• Effective Article Marketing Strategies
• Effective Article Marketing Tips