Article Marketing, when used correctly, can be a great tool for increasing your search engine rankings. Like anything, though, you have to use it correctly.

How does article marketing work?

Article marketing is very simple – you write an article on a topic related to your website. You then submit this article to article distribution site(s) along with a link to your website, and websites publish your article along with the link back to your website. That's the basic idea, anyway. Here is a step by step guide to increasing your search engine rankings using article marketing.

Step One: Write An Article

The first step is to write an article on a topic related to your website. The article you write should be completely educational and have no promotional content in it at all. Do not mention your company, your website, or your products in the article. If you can write an article on a keyword you want your website to rank for, all the better.

Step Two: Create A Resource Box

The resource box is where you get to link to your site. You should usually include 1-3 links in the resource box. You might, for example, link to your homepage, your sitemap, and a sub-page. You'll need to create an HTML resource box and a plain text resource box. In the HTML version, be sure that you use your keywords in the anchor text for your links.

Step Three: Submit Your Article

This is where the rubber meets the road. If you want your article published, you need to submit it to free article sites. EzineArticles.com is the largest, most important site. Other good sites to submit to are articledashboard.com, articlegarden.com, articlecity.com and goarticles.com There are hundreds of sites that accept free article submissions – you can find them by searching on Google.