"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.

However, article marketing can be for anyone with an area of expertise who can write well, not just internet marketers. For nearly any topic, there's a website devoted to it, readers who are looking for new information, and webmasters who would love to publish exciting new content. Free articles are an easy way for a webmaster to spice up their sites.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, also merits consideration in article marketing. A publisher must be know commonly used search terms and understand the mechanisms by which search algorithms work. These tools will ensure that only those articles will be placed which match site visitors with the information they require.

However, SEO is not limited to always publishing content that is more searchable. The coding, structure and presentation of the website may be designed, during the site development stage, to enable search engines to properly index the site. Additionally, the webmaster may introduce unique content to the site that is not only attractive to the site visitors, but is also easily indexed by search engines.

Having your own article published online is a smooth path toward your expertise becoming recognized. A good piece remains on-topic, is clear and user-friendly, and assists the reader somehow. Many websites will not display your writing if it conspicuously promotes your product or service, so plugging should definitely not be the primary focus. The most profitable compositions best satisfy the unique needs of the webpage's visitors.