Using articles to drive targeted traffic to a website is a tactic that online marketers have been using for years but as it is still a very effective way of grabbing the attention of targeted prospects, it is still well worth doing.

Nevertheless, the only downside to using articles to market your business is that they often take some time to become effective traffic magnets, which is why creating your first articles should be the first marketing strategy that you launch.

The first thing that you need to come up with for your first article is a subject matter and an ‘angle’. Fortunately, this is nowhere near as difficult as you might imagine it would be.

Visit the leading article directory EzineArticles and type in your main keyword phrase.

As you can see, there is no shortage of articles that focus on this particular market niche so I would read the top 10-15 articles to get ideas that I can use for my own articles. Whilst you cannot copy other people's work word-for-word, there is no patent or copyright on ideas, so create a list of ideas that you can use and then start writing.

You should aim to create an article of between 400 and 600 words, including a main keyword phrase in the title of that article as near as you can to the beginning. In addition, this keyword phrase should also appear in the first and last paragraphs (in the first and last sentence is even better) as well as a couple more times somewhere else in the body text.

In addition, you should try to include a couple of minor keyword phrases that are related to your main keyword term as well, because this is a tactic that is known to be particularly effective with Google.

This is because Google are believed to use latent semantic indexing (LSI) when they ‘spider’ (scan) content for meaning. This essentially means that your related minor keyword phrase will help to confirm Google's understanding of what your article is all about.

Imagine that you wrote an article about Microsoft.

If you did so, it would be logical to mention Bill Gates in that article, which is exactly what Google would expect and look for.

Hence, if there are no confirmatory minor keyword phrases in your article, it is possible for the search engine ‘spiders’ to misunderstand which words or phrases are your keywords, in which case, your article will be indexed completely incorrectly.

Writing an article of this length will probably take you between half an hour and an hour the first time you do it, but with practice, you will probably find that you can bash out articles in 20 minutes or less.

Once this article is finished, you have to create a few more supporting materials to upload to the main article directory sites with your work.

The first thing you need to create is a two or three sentence description of your article, which is what appears beneath your article title both on the article directory pages and on the Google search results page if your article manages to feature there.

In essence, your description dictates whether someone read your article or not, so you have to make it good. Think of it as an advert for your article and write is as such, making it every bit as persuasive and punchy as you would if it was an advert for which you were paying.

Next, you need to create a short list of appropriate keyword phrases that people might use if they were searching for information like that featured in your article before finally moving on to creating what is known as your ‘resource box’. This is a description of your business that is added at the end of every article published on directory sites and it is also the most important part of your article submission too.

Far too many marketers use their resource box to tell the reader all about them and their business but this is something you must avoid.

What you really want to do is to give the reader a specific reason why they should visit your site. They have read right through your article, so it's a reasonable assumption that they are at least somewhat interested in learning more about what you have to say.

You should therefore focus on what the reader will gain by visiting your site rather than telling them who you are or how successful your business is. For example, if they can obtain a free report or some other form of gift from your site, tell them so in the resource box and tell them how to get the gifts as well.

You also use your resource box to include hyperlinks to your site and whilst many directories allow you up to 3 links, you normally need include no more than two.

The first of these links should be anchor text link where you use your main keyword phrase as a hyperlink itself.

Replace the URL in the following link and use your own keyword term to create an appropriate anchor link: <a href="http://www.YourSite.com">Your Keywords</a>

The other link should be the full URL of the page that you want the visitor to go to after they have read your article, including the ‘http://www’ if appropriate. You do this because not every article directory allows you to use an anchor text link, so this at least gives the reader the opportunity of cutting and pasting the URL of your site.

Again, your resource box should read like an advert for whatever it is you're using to try to persuade the reader to become a site visitor. If you are not sure how to do this, run a standard Google search using a main keyword phrase and ‘copy’ the adverts that you see on the search page that seem most effective and persuasive.

Now, submit this article to EzineArticles first and then wait until they publish it. This will usually happen in 24-48 hours so in the meantime, use a free article spinner program like Article Spinner and Submitter to create dozens or even hundreds of alternative versions of the same article.

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