Traffic is the lifeblood of your small business website. Article submission marketing is a simple strategy you can put to use immediately to drive more traffic to your site. Best of all, it’s free!

In article submission marketing, you write short, informative articles regarding your area of expertise and submit them to one or more article directory websites. These directories will review your article and, if it passes their editorial criteria, will post your article on their website.

These article directory websites are frequented by webmasters, ezine editors and other content publishers who are always looking for new articles for their websites, blogs, ezines or newsletters. They’ll come across your article and if they like, they’ll publish it.

So, what’s in it for you?

After all, you’re not getting paid to write these articles.

Included with your article, you are allowed to post what is known as a Resource Box. This resource box is a two to three sentence promotional statement about you, your business and what you do. Best of all, it includes a live hyperlink to your website.

Anytime an ezine publisher or webmaster chooses to publish your article in her ezine or on her website, she does so with the stipulation that the resource box (and the live hyperlink) remain intact.

Four Ways to Benefit from Article Submission Marketing:

1. Articles help boost your credibility as an expert in your field.

Having articles published in an article directory (and then republished in various ezines and blogs) helps qualify you as an expert in your field in the eyes of the reader. When this person clicks on the hyperlink in your resource box to visit your website they arrive pre-sold on your qualifications.

2. Articles boost your website traffic in two unique ways.

First, millions of people visit these article directory websites every month. At any given time, these people may come across your article and visit your website. Even more potential visitors will come across your article and possibly visit your site when your article is republished.

Second, the search engine spiders will be watching all this activity. They will watch the growing numbers of inbound links (links pointing to your website) that will develop each time your article is republished.

Inbound links are a valuable vote of confidence in the quality of your site and will help boost your rankings in the search engines, which means… more traffic!

3. The traffic generated by article submission marketing will be targeted.

Traffic alone is meaningless - it’s targeted traffic that we want. We want visitors who are already interested in what you do, what you have to say and, ideally, what you have to sell.

Since the traffic generated by article submission marketing comes from people who have already chosen to read your article, we know in advance that they are interested in your area of expertise.

4. Article submission marketing is 7 to 10 times more effective than paid advertising.

Why? Well, when it comes to advertising, people are skeptical. According to the Advertising Media Internet Center (July 22, 2007), we are exposed to an average of 288 ads per day, counting TV, radio, print and Internet ads. If you include the number of brands we are exposed to, let’s say on a trip to the supermarket, that number skyrockets to over 2,000.

In order to survive this onslaught, people have become more skeptical - they just don’t believe what companies say about themselves anymore. On the other hand, people do believe what they read in articles. When they visit your website, they will already trust you as a qualified expert and arrive pre-sold.

Two Steps to Get Started in Article Submission Marketing

Step 1: Write an article that would be of general interest in your area of expertise.

Here are some helpful tips on how to prepare your article:

Don’t worry if you feel that you don’t know how to write.

Simply write the way you would talk.

Think about a common question you may be asked regarding what you do. Think about how you would respond to the question and write down your answer.

Of course, you then want to review what you’ve written and clean up any grammatical or spelling errors, but the best articles are not written like award-winning novels. They tend to be conversational in tone.

Keep your articles short.

The best articles tend to be in the 500 to 1,000 word range.

Give good, actionable advice.

Give your reader great, quality content. Address a specific problem and offer a step-by-step guide to solving the problem.

Use a catchy, keyword-focused title.

Here are a few title phrases that always work:

How to…

Seven Ways to…

Three Steps to…

A Beginner’s Guide to…

Top Ten Mistakes to Avoid in…

Try to keep your article centered on a particular keyword phrase of interest to your visitors and, if possible, place that keyword phrase close to the beginning of your title.

For example, in my research I found that the term “article submission marketing” is an actual keyword phrase used by people interested in this topic. Therefore, I made this keyword phrase the beginning of the title of this article. In addition, I have used the keyword phrase throughout the article to help make it more search engine friendly.

Don’t sell.

Focus on providing great information. This will help establish your credibility as an expert. This way, when readers visit your website, they will arrive pre-sold.

Step 2: Submit your articles.

This is the easy part… it only takes a few minutes to submit your articles to the various article directory websites.

Simply visit the article directory site, create your no cost membership account and follow the directions to submit your article.

There are probably hundreds of article directory websites, but here are my favorites:

*EzineArticles

*Article Dashboard

*Self Growth

There is usually a review period of a few days to a week from when you submit your article until it is published. As long as you follow the suggestions above, you should have no trouble passing the editorial requirements. Before you know it, you’ll be a published author!

Article submission marketing is a fun, easy and free way to drive more targeted traffic to your small business website, establish your expert status in your field and, ultimately, generate more sales.

Dr. Bill O’Shea is a marketing consultant specializing in helping independent professionals and small business owners create maximum growth and profit in their businesses. For more great resources on small business marketing, a free Marketing Plan Development Guide and a Special Report on “The Top Ten Advertising Mistakes Most Small Business Owners Make”, please visit Small-Business-Marketing-Success.com.