Marketing Your Business Online by Writing and Publishing Articles : The Best Way to Get Business Exposure and Targeted Website Traffic.

Perhaps one of the few FREE and effective promotion left on the Internet today is creating and publishing articles and content to online publications, ezines and websites.

Writing on topics related to your business allows you to:

1) Establish yourself as an expert
2) Spread the word about your business
3) Presell your product or service
4) Gain new referrals and prospects
5) Increase the link popularity of your website

Establishing yourself as an expert

Establishing yourself as an expert is not really difficult to do. All you need to do is express your point of view and experience on any topic related to your field. This is the key component that will set your article apart from all others who also us this method of online promotion.

You don't need to claim or boast to be an expert in your articles. Simply writing good, informative content that engages the reader will be enough. Writing about your experience, specific "how-to" instructions, your opinion on current matters, etc will go a long way to silently promote yourself and your business.

Spread the word about your business

When writing articles, every author is entitled to having his or her own "resource box". The resource box is where you put important business information and a link back to your website. Look at our Home Business Articles section and see how this is done by different authors.

Getting new referrals and prospects

A resources box alone is not enough to get prospects. To do this effectively, you need to offer something of value to readers and a "call to action" that drives them to your site. For example, if you're in the business of Weight Loss or Weight Management, you could write an article about the social benefits of losing weight. In your resource box, you can include a free 30-day trial of your weight loss product, which is available on your website. This will give the reader the motivation (free weight loss trial) to take action (visit your site).

Increase The Link Popularity of Your Website

As you keep submitting articles, you will notice a rise in the amount of hits and visitors your website gets. This is because each article you submit can have at least one link back to your website. Search engines love to find websites that others link too, and they generally rank these sites as important.

Most of the promotion for this site is done by carefully writing, targeting and submitting articles to other websites, ezines and newsletters. As a result of the links available on those article, this website has experienced a growth in both interested website visitors, as well as overall higher ranking in search engines.

Our traffic graph:

Conclusion

Writing and publishing articles related to your area of expertise or your industry is an excellent way to build long term brand value, establish your business in the online world and to build awareness of your product or service.

Done the right way, it is also an excellent (and free) tool to get higher ranking in search engines and streams of targeted website traffic.