The purpose of an article is to spread general information about an industry or a concept. It can give an overview of the situation of the industry at present, or it can be an analysis of certain parts of that industry. It might be a relevant story about some happening within that sphere of business. Whatever the topic may be, these articles are extended to the readers for the purpose of keeping them informed on what is happening in the industry.

Why then does an article help your website to become the authority for your industry? Whenever you write an article online, you have a chance to make a name for yourself as an author. You will be able to write an author’s biography and describe what you do. In this biography you have the chance to reference your website and place links to landing pages on your site. When you make these links, be sure to use your keywords from your selected clusters as the anchor text. If you don’t, you aren’t building effective links.

These links help your site to rank in the search engines for your keyword phrases therefore establishing you as an authority in your industry because you will be on the top the the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

General Article Marketing Steps:

1. Write article
2. Write author bio
3. Submit article to each of the following directories

• EzineArticles
• Article Dashboard
• GoArticles
• Article City
• Buzzle
• SearchWarp
• ArticlesBase
• IdeaMarketers
• ArticleAlley
• Amazines

The Nitty-Gritty Details:

Writing Your Article

• Your article needs to be at least 400 words long.  Once you reach 400 words, finish the article as soon as possible.  You don’t necessarily get more benefit from your links if the article is longer so my opinion is not to waste your time going much past 400 words.
• Create a catchy title but be sure to include one or two keyword phrases that you will be using as links in the author bio.

Writing Your Author Bio

•  2-3 sentences that include 3 links with each link pointing to a different landing page on your site
• Use HTML coding to create these links.  An example of an author bio the way it needs to look when pasting it into the author bio form submission field is as follows:
• John Smith wants to help people learn about the different types of <a href="http://www.fezzari.com/categories/view/Road_Bikes">road bikes</a> and <a href="http://www.fezzari.com/categories/view/Mountain_Bikes">mountain bikes</a>.  Visit Fezzari today to learn more about or to purchase one of their <a href="http://www.fezzari.com">mountain bikes</a>.

Submitting to Article Directories

• Each article directory asks you to create an author account.  It is free to do so.
• Create a new email address that you will use just for these article accounts so as to avoid filling up your other emails with a lot of junk mail.
• Try to use the same username and password for all article directories so you don’t have to memorize more than one.
• Submit on a regular basis.  I recommend one article a week.  At the very least, one article a month.
• After you have some article links under your belt, start using an automated submission service.  The best one in the market by far is Unique Article Wizard.It costs $67 a month but it is worth it.

If you can take the time to continuously release articles on the web, you will soon find that you are building a strong ranking in the search engines and your traffic will increase. This tool is one of your keys to SEO success.