Article marketing has been around on the internet for many years but only over the past few has it become a valuable tool for the avid internet marketer, mainly due to the rapid growth of article based website submission services. If you are new to the concept of the article marketing, then do not fear, the idea is simple to understand and the process can be summarized as follows.

An author writes a number of articles, normally around four to six hundred words in length that are relevant to the desired niche subject. Once written, the article should be finished with a sentence or two outlining the authors expertise in the chosen field, and finally be completed with an outbound website link inviting the reader to click on it if they need any more information.

The article is now ready to be submitted to the authors chosen article directories. There are a number of factors to consider when deciding which directories to submit to, and these can be listed as-

1. The amount of traffic the directory receives. Alexa provide this information for free, websites with a traffic rank of below 200,000 are receiving a decent amount of visitors on a daily basis. The more visitors the directory brings, the more likely the article will be read, or better still copied and published on other websites, with the outbound link intact of course (this is a stipulation carried out by all article directories).

2. The PR or Page Rank of the article directory. The higher the page rank the stronger the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) attribute will be to the authors website and the more 'link juice' will be passed on.

3. Confirm that the article directory provides a 'do follow' outbound link to website. This is easy to check by viewing an existing article on the website under review, then clicking 'view page source' from the website browser. The next step is to search for the link text and look to see if 'no follow' is written between the link tags. If found the link will only count if a reader decides to click on it. No SEO attribute will be given to your website. Note however, that the older, more established, directories will not provide a 'do follow' link, however it is still advantageous to submit to them as potential visitors may decide to publish the article on their website with a 'do follow' link.

Taking the three points listed above into account, the article submission process itself is normally easy to carry out and free. Authors will need to complete a straight forward account application form, many of which are confirmed instantly with an email check.

As the articles get published the author benefits from 'do follow' one way inbound links that are considered to be powerful as often they are the only link on the page. A links strength is greatly diminished on pages with more than 25 outbound links, and the lower the number the better. The second, but my now means least benefit is that the article will drive quality, free, laser targeted traffic to your website from readers that click on the author link in search of more information.