By now you've probably heard about article marketing. If not, then read my article, "Stop Working For Google And Start Making Google Work For You." There you will find a succinct introduction to the topic.

Article marketing is, by far, the best way to get free traffic to your website. But there are tricks to making it work even better. Here are the top 5 secrets to making yourself an Article Marketing Superstar:

1. Grab Your Readers Attention with Catchy Headlines

As good advertisers and journalists know, the best way to get your article read is to create a catchy headline. An easy way to do this is to put yourself in the reader’s shoes. If the headline motivates you to read on, then it is probably worthy.

2. Repeat Your... Repeat Your... Repeat Your Keywords

Ignore what your English teacher told you. Good article marketing repeats important keywords frequently. The more you repeat your keywords, the more search engines will target your site for those specific keywords. (Just look at how many times I used the word "keywords" in this paragraph - 5 times in 5 sentences.)

3. Content Quantity is King

Write multiple articles and post them frequently. Some say writing multiple articles per day is helpful. Other say to space it out and post a few articles per week. Regardless, the more articles you post, the more links you get. The more links you get, the higher your page gets ranked and the more traffic you get.

4. Article Submission Site Quality is Key

Post your articles to article submission sites that are ranked high in Google. Google ranks sites using something called PageRank (PR for short). PR ranges from 1 to 10 with 1 being less important than 10. Try to post your articles to high PR sites. By doing this, your page's PR will be higher because of the high quality links to your site. You can install the "Google toolbar" in your browser to check PRs.

5. Make Sure Your Links Don't Stink

Make sure that the links in your article's resource box are active. Each article submission site has its own protocol for making your links active and some sites don't even make your links active. Most sites require that you include the full URL to your site including the "http://" part. I would recommend always including the http:// in your URLs, but read the site's instructions carefully and check your article after it has been posted.

It goes without saying that regardless of the techniques that you use, one of the best secrets of article marketing is to write informative articles. You may not be a very good writer, but that doesn't matter. The most important thing is that you give readers information. The more information the better. Pack your articles full of interesting tidbits and data. If you just post fluff, your articles may not even get approved.

So I hope these techniques help, and I'll see you at the top when you become an ARTICLE MARKETING SUPERSTAR.