What is article marketing and where to start with?

To put it plainly, article marketing consists of a website owner or web promoter writing short (300-1000 words each) articles on the subject of their website or product, adding a link to their website and a call to action, and then submitting the article to several online article submission directories. It works so well because these article submission directories allow your articles to be redistributed around the web thus creating several one-way back links to your website. Several of these links will often appear on web pages with Google PR (PageRank) of 0-5 which is extremely helpful. It is accepted fact that Google and the others search engines sites more highly in search results largely based on the number of other "quality" sites that link to that site. The more articles you submit, the more links you'll get.

Now, many people advertise article marketing as a) one of the best ways of driving traffic to your website, and b) a good way for professionals to establish themselves online as experts in their field through the useful information distributed in their articles. And while both of these are true, I believe these are only secondary reasons for article marketing. It's all about the links for me baby! You'll get far more traffic with some smart keyword targeting and a high organic search ranking than you ever will with links from articles you've submitted. And the wealth of back links you'll get from your articles will help improve your organic search rankings.

Best Places to Submit Articles

Below I have compiled a list of the places where I submit all of my articles:

Ezine Articles- Probably the most popular article submission site around. You get 10 free article submissions from Ezine Articles, and then, if your articles meet their criteria, you'll get a platinum account that gives you unlimited free submissions. So make your first 10 articles count!

Article Codex - This one is one of my favorites because there's the potential for you to make some cash off of your articles. How? If you are signed up for Google Adsense, Article Codex will use your Adsense ID and display 50% of the ads generated by your articles using your ID number.

Articles Base - I like this one for its ease of acceptance. Articles Base generally accepts all articles without much hassle or fuss.Go Articles - Nothing fancy here just another easy submission portal with good reach.

Article Marketer- This one sends your articles out to article publishers. You can't see who these publishers are, and you can only submit to about half of their list for free. However, for a fee, you get access to the full list and unlimited publisher submissions.

I also submit articles to Article City and Article Dashboard. But remember, this list is constantly changing for me because new directories come into play and some old ones die out. Find some good ones that work for you, and make sure you keep your eye out for some new ones and know when to cut one loose and you'll have success in article marketing.