How to use Articles to Boost Traffic to Your Website or Blog

The importance of article marketing to your online business should never be underestimated. You can use articles to market your own product, sell an affiliate product, drive traffic to an Adsense page or even just attract a mass of interested people to your web pages.

Article marketing is probably one of the best traffic generation techniques available online right now, and there is no reason to assume that it will not continue to be for many years to come. Even Google understands what articles have to offer the searcher and this shows in the way they show more tolerance than normal to the duplication of article submissions to multiple directories. You can submit the same article to many directories without any immediate penalty.

However, there is a downside, and that is that as an increasing number of online marketers begin to appreciate the massive difference article writing can make to their success, than the more competition there is to get your articles published, not only on directories but also on other websites. Many webmasters use articles copied from directories as content for their own sites, especially those that are well written. When they do so they generally adhere to the rules and keep the author's resource intact, including the link to the author's website.

It is not only the writing that is relevant here, but how to market the articles, and how you use them. Did you know that one article can make more money for you in your affiliate marketing business than PPC adverts? It's true, and articles are free, unlike any PPC program. However, you have to understand how to use articles in that way. You should learn how to use article marketing on virtually every online advertising platform because that is what your competition is beginning to do.

Article marketing can be used to promote your products on MySpace, YouTube, Craigslist and Facebook to name but four of the many hundreds of WEB2 sites that you can use to make more money than you can dream of. You can use them on blogs and Squidoo lenses. They can be used offline just as effectively as online. And people do, and they are doing so at an increasing rate. Unless you are conversant in how to use article marketing yourself, it doesn't matter what online business you are in, you are missing the boat.

There is more to it than just writing a few articles - a lot more! However, it can be learned, and while there is a lot to learn, it is not difficult. Before you can even begin to master the skills of article marketing, you have to understand what these skills are and why they are essential to your success. You won't find them using a search engine search box: you have to learn from those that are prepared to pass on their secrets. Most people don't believe they have much to learn, and think all they have to do to succeed is to write a few articles. How wrong they are! Using article marketing effectively involves the use of techniques that have to be learned, just as the use of any other advertising technique has to be learned properly.

Article marketing is the advertising technique of today, and some people are paying thousands of dollars to find out its secrets. It needn't cost that, but if you don't start using the power of article marketing soon, then you will be too far behind to catch up on your competitors who even now are likely writing an article a day, each one driving hundreds of visitors to their website.

Keep in mind that one paid advert costs you every day it is live. One article works for you free every day of every year for years and years. Write one or more a day, and then use it the right way, and you will have more traffic than you thought possible from just 20 minutes work. Article marketing might be the buzz word of today, but it will last for many more years to come. Google likes it, and your customers like it. If you don't get involved, they will go elsewhere. If you do get involved, make sure you do it properly or you will fail.

I repeat. Do not underestimate the importance of article marketing to your online business. I learned that from a blind writer - but that is another story!