Internet article marketing is a marketing activity, whereby you promote products and services by writing articles, and sharing them on article submission Web sites. When you submit articles on the Web at article submission sites, they are indexed by the search engines and found by people searching for what you are writing about. This brings clicks to your Web site, and also positions you as a leader. It also helps your own Web site’s popularity by providing a back link to your Web site. Here are a few tips on how to get started with internet article marketing.

1. Choose a topic and focus on a keyword.

   You might be asking yourself, “What on earth will I write about?” Don’t worry; nearly everybody starts out by asking that question! But really, you or somebody at your company has a whole wealth of information, just waiting to be shared with those who need it and search for it out on the Web. Think about what your customers or prospects would truly want to know or learn about. If you own a catering business, you could write about ten ways to plan the perfect gathering. If you have a heating and air conditioning business, you could write about how to drastically reduce your heating bill in the winter. You know what your customers would find useful, so write about that! Don’t try to write a novel; people lose interest quickly on the Web! So choose a fairly narrow topic: perhaps a keyword you know is popular and that you already focus on for a page on your Web site. (Note: “keyword” in this case can mean a set of 2-3 words, such as “accounting software”, etc.)

2. Make it about 500 words.

   You definitely want the search engines to index and ‘like’ your articles. And these days, search engines (and particularly Google), don’t want to see a puny, short blurb, but instead an article with some real meat to it. Making the article 500 words, and surely no less than 400 words, gives your article a better chance at ranking with the search engines. (Tip: many article submission sites do actually have a minimum word count for this reason, and won’t allow shorter articles than their minimum.)

3. No sales pitches.

   While it might be tempting to write articles all about why your product is so great, just don’t go there! People would much rather read about something useful than a sales pitch. So instead of writing about yourself (or your company’s product features), choose a topic that could actually be helpful to your reader.

4. Try ezinearticles.com

   There is a wide variety of article submission sites on the internet, and you can submit your articles to most of them for free. I suggest starting out by signing up for an account with ezinearticles.com, and submitting a few articles at their Web site. Their tools make it easy to submit your articles, and ensure your keyword density and word count are optimum for the search engines. Plus you can easily access great statistics once your articles are live, and you also get a monthly report showing views, click through rates, and more for your articles.

Internet article marketing can bring traffic to your site and can also help in the search engine optimization for your Web site. Use these tips and start cranking out that first article today!