Article marketing is a marketing practice that has been around for years and has withstood the test of time, developing in new and exciting ways to help become more beneficial and useful to businesses and individuals who want to generate hype and awareness of their products and services. It has developed with technology and has grown to become one of the most effective means of online marketing in recent years.

In essence, article marketing involves businesses writing articles about subjects related to their area of business and are of relevance to their target customers. For example, a social security law firm may write an article titled, "How to get Approved for Social Security Benefits". The business will then make some mention of their own firm in the article and how they can provide a benefit to the target customers.

Article marketing is a great way for a firm to build its reputation amongst its target market as the better written and informative the articles they publish are, the more credibility they gain and the more trusting consumers become of their brand and products. Badly written articles or articles filled with inaccurate information can severely weaken a businesses' image in the eyes of consumers so it is vital that firms put sufficient thought and effort into their articles.

In the past, businesses used to publish articles in magazines or articles. While this proved successful in generating attention for the business, it was a time consuming process as the hard copies of the articles had to be submitted to the various magazines, newspapers, etc. Publishing articles in this way also had the hindrance of not being published immediately and wouldn't become publicly for days or weeks after they have been submitted, as magazines and newspapers are only published periodically.

However, the invention of the internet has revolutionized article marketing and has made it more accessible and available to all sorts of businesses who may never have considered it before.

With the internet, articles can be written and published in less than an hour. Not only does the internet provide an unlimited supply of information which makes researching very accessible, but there are also hundreds, if not thousands, of article directories where businesses can submit their articles for the world to see.

Some of the most famous article directories are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com & articlebase.com, however as mentioned above there are thousands of other directories available for a firm to submit their articles to. One practice of article marketing to avoid submitting the same article to hundreds of article directories, as this will be viewed negatively by search sites such as Google who will see the articles as duplicate content. Duplicate content is seen as spam by the search engines and will negatively affect a websites page rank. This is especially important to be aware of if business is trying to build a strong website or web presence.

A major plus of doing online article marketing is that the majority of article directories allow users to place back-links to their website throughout their submitted articles. This is a very effective way of driving traffic to a site without having to pay for advertisements on websites. However, most article directories limit the number of back-links that can be placed in an article or they will only provide 'no- follow' back-links (links which the search engines do not take into account for PR calculation). Usually, article directories offer subscriptions that allow users to add more back-links, though most firms do not pursue this option.

Article marketing is a proven, cost effective method of generating traffic to a website and getting attention for a firm. If done correctly, article marketing can only be positive for a firm, at relatively no cost. So get writing and watch the traffic pour in!