Perhaps you have heard of article marketing strategies before, but you're unsure what they entail or whether they're really worth your time. In short, writing articles is the best thing you can do for your company, whether you're a small business owner or a corporate CEO. Targeted article marketing demonstrates your company's knowledge and creates credibility, which finally leads to consumer confidence and spending. At the end of the day, your business will thrive once people have learned about your company through the articles they've read online.

"Content is King." This has become the maxim for website marketing in the new millennium. So far as we can tell, the best way to a search engine's heart is through writing articles that have been optimized with keywords. There are many facets to pulling off a successful article advertising campaign, of course. You'll need to track down writers, key phrases, article directories and some affiliates to team up with. It's no surprise, then, that many business professionals choose an established web marketing company to help them connect the dots.

First, we'll talk about how the writing of articles can help your business. Ultimately, you want published articles to bring potential buyers to your site. The only way visitors can find your site (unless they're specifically searching your name) is by typing a term into the search engine and checking the links on the first page of results. Statistics show if you're not in the top results, you can forget about people ever finding you. A group of people called Search Engine Optimization experts spend their days analyzing what sort of terms people are typing into the search engines. They can even run diagnostic tests on your page that tell them where people are coming from to reach your site, what search terms delivered traffic, what search terms delivered sales, how long people stayed on your site, what pages sent people fleeing and where people went next. This research can greatly help your overall internet marketing campaigns.

Before you hire a professional copywriter who specializes in writing articles, you'll need to meet with an SEO expert and determine what keywords are most valuable for your industry. In the past, just one or two general words related to your business or service would suffice. Today, longer phrases are preferable, as are location-sensitive terms. In the olden days, you might have run a search and landed on a page that was fraught with spelling errors, full of nonsensical keyword repetitions or a page that just contained link after link. Today, the search algorithms are much more complex and an article marketing expert will tell you that it takes well-written copy with a certain keyword density to really attract search engine attention.

Your website can be the best in the world, but what good is it if no one can see it? By writing articles to publish on your homepage, you will show search engines that you mean business. You're not just another useless site out there; you have much to offer consumers. As the search engines crawl your page, they'll look for numerous internal pages, freshly updated content, blocks of 500 words or more, keywords that are in high demand and the appropriate density of keywords. Well-written promotional articles can accomplish all of these things. If your rankings improve, then you will undeniably see more traffic coming to your site. Ideally, this increased awareness will bring more buyers and sales.

As far as marketing dollars go, you can get a lot of bang for your buck with online article marketing. Some people start by writing articles themselves, while others hire established copywriters to do the trick. The benefit of working with a professional is that you'll be sure people will be impressed by your writing caliber and will read through the entire article. You'll do a better job establishing credibility, calling the reader to buy and urging the reader to visit your page. The going-rate of a professional copywriter can range from $10/hour - $100/hour. Some writers may charge by the project or by the article. You may also choose to bundle your services with a writer/search engine optimization expert combo. Whatever you decide, give it about six months and you will see dramatic results.