Article marketing is another form of SEO technique that is a popular advertising technique based on small articles that consist of information or expert discussion on any particular subject matter. The article marketing technique is characterized with the presence of a resource box. The resource box includes references and contact information of the author’s business. These items are included in what are called bio box and byline.

This is one of the most basic forms of advertising since the inception of print media but with the presence of the vast resources available on the internet the article marketing has made this one of the preferred modes of marketing and propagating information. This is not a direct mode of marketing. The article marketing technique has been created not for direct marketing. These articles provide information needed and then subtly offer the links to a buyer’s website. The objective is to evoke interest in the person reading the articles so that he/she clicks the web link out of curiosity. The articles therefore need to be refreshing and creative.

For the purpose of publishing articles there are various article directories which attract a lot of traffic and are considered to be hubs of huge footfall. These directories have their own quality norms and each article submitted is reviewed before publishing. There is no allowance for blatant marketing; however these directories do allow the authors of the articles to offer the customers to visit their websites after the articles have ended.

A shortfall of article marketing is that most of the search engines eliminate duplicate content in their search. Therefore if one places the same article in different web directories, then the search engines render the efforts useless. To deal with this issue, one can reword the same articles and then post them on different article directories to attract more visitors from all of them.

The articles typically range from 200 to 1500 words, though these specifications might vary for a few article directories. The level of acceptance of keywords is between 3% and 4% of the word limit. These articles are different from sales pages. These articles add to the knowledge wealth because the customers prefer new information and therefore the writers independently research and provide practical inputs. The quality bar being set high by most of the article directories ensure that the authors spin something creative and lucrative.

These articles too, like all the other SEO measures, work best when the keywords are chosen carefully.