If you are a blog owner, once you have produced your site the main thing your fledgling money spinner needs is traffic. Your blog may be sharing useful content, but there's no point unless you can get people to read it. One popular low cost way to get this flow of visitors is by using article marketing. What is the best way to promote your blog using articles? The following pointers will help you to succeed.

Preparing your articles:

It may seem obvious, but if you are to have any chance of benefiting from this kind of campaign, then your articles must be well crafted, error free, and interesting to read. The content must be unique and not copied from any other website or article. If you get this right then you have the basis of a good traffic source that could produce results for a long time.

Each article should contain at least one link pointing back to your blog or website. The traffic will come from two sources. One will be from people reading your article and directly clicking on your link. In addition to this the article will also provide your blog with a relevant one way link back to your site. This back-link will help to improve your sites search engine rankings, bringing direct traffic from searches too. Once you have your content then it only remains to get it out there, and producing results for your blog.

Choosing article directories:

Article directories are the obvious place you can submit your articles. With recent changes by Google to the way they produce their index, many are now requiring longer articles, and some need unique content produced just for them. You can't fight Google and these changes are in your interests as a website owner. Better and more unique content will give you the edge, and your articles will bring better results because of it.

All article directories are not created equal however, and you should make sure you choose one that will help you rather than hinder. Factors such as the quality of articles already posted, the page rank of the sites home page, it's traffic, and weather it already contains articles that rank well for your keyword, are all factors you should consider. If you search for your main keyword phrase and you find an article already ranks well for your chosen directory, it may be very difficult for your efforts to surpass this already established one. In this case it may be wise to choose a different place to post.

Guest posts on blogs and other websites:

Another place you can post articles is directly on other blogs or web sites in your general niche. I don't mean direct competitors, but if you have a site on organic baking then another food blog or website may be a great place to approach with your content. Choose sites or blogs that get a decent amount of traffic, and then approach the site owner. Offer to supply them with some unique content for free, on the condition that they allow you to place two live links back to your blog within it. Sites are always looking for good content and many will be only too pleased to accept your offer, giving you valuable links.

Many high traffic blogs accept guest posts, and some will have guidelines for your content. Read and familiarize yourself with these before you write or submit your post.

Scaling your efforts:

With article marketing you will need to produce quality as well as quantity. If you don't have the time or the ability to meet this demand, there are many article writing services that you can use to outsource your requirements. There are many more ways to get traffic to your blog, for information and other online marketing tips visit the preceding link.