"Article marketing" is a phrase used to describe publishing your own written articles on separate websites, including blogs and electronic magazines. There is most often no compensation, except that beneath your article, in a "resource box," brief information about yourself and links to your own website may be included.

Article marketing is useful for establishing a website as an authority, to generate leads and to increase the visitors to your side and to increase its search engine rank. The popularity can be proven by the fact that many softwares and websites are available to distribute articles to a large number of websites.

Some websites accept your articles for free but have a small charge, usually less than $10, to re-distribute your article to a hundred other distribution lists, which will in turn distribute the article even further. This can very quickly increase the search results in any search engine, and is an extremely cost effective way to improve your search rankings.

Article marketing is, nevertheless, not exclusively for internet marketers. Various websites are always searching for new content to enrich their pages, and are receptive to articles on many different issues. You will always be able to find webmasters prepared to welcome free submissions, and people interested in finding out more about whatever subject you are most knowledgeable in.

When marketing an article, another important thing to consider is search engine optimization or SEO. Publishers must have an understanding of the algorithms that search engines use and should have a fairly good grasp of commonly used search terms and keywords related to the article being marketed. Doing this will match site visitors to truly relevent offers and content.

Web content may not always be more searchable, keep SEO in mind. In the web development stage, coding and structure of a web site can enable a search engine to more properly index a site. Webmasters may decide to include some unique content on the site which will be more easily indexed by search engines, and all more attractive to actual human visitors.

Writing an article and getting it published on a website is an easy way to establish oneself as an expert. The best articles stay focused. They are easy-to-understand and help the visitors in some way or other. An article should not be used for plugging your product or service, at least not obviously. Otherwise many websites may not put it up. In short, the most successful article is one that satisfies some need of the visitor.