Tarang Bhargava

Whether you run a website or a blog, traffic generation will be one of your primary goals. How do you go about increasing traffic to your site? If you search online, you will find countless gurus that have the magical solution and promise to bring 10,000 hits to your site. I say "hog wash".

It's clear that these gurus are not interested in you and only want to sell their ebook or software using as much hype as they can. Traffic building is done by preparing a marketing plan and putting it into action.

If you want instant mass traffic, then look into pay-per-click advertising. If you want to create a residual (and sometimes viral) network of backlinks that will generate free traffic for as long as you want, then you should seriously consider: Article Marketing.

Why is article marketing a great solution? Because it works and it's free traffic

Every article that you create can be submitted to many different article directories. Each submission results in a backlink to your site which will bring in free traffic immediately. This means that, not only will you benefit in other ways from submitting your article, but you will receive incoming traffic quickly. I personally use automated submission to submit my articles to hundreds of sites to maximize on this effect. Remember that not all automatic submitters are created equally and some are much better than others. To find out which ones are better, click on the link in the bio box below.

Another benefit of doing article marketing is better search engine positioning. Google uses a form of internet democracy to determine how relevant your site is. Each link that points to you site counts as one vote towards your site. The votes are not equal though and are based on the origin of the link. A link coming from a higher PR website will be worth more than one coming from a lower one. Also consider that a unique backlink is worth more than a reciprocal link. For a list of the best sites to submit to, check out the resource box below.

Article marketing also has a viral aspect to it. When you submit your article to directories, they become available to other publishers. If a publisher chooses to use your article, they must keep all backlinks intact. This results in many more backlinks, all from a single article. If a major publisher picks your article to run, then your in luck and your site will benefit from a huge increase in traffic that will trickle down.

Best of all, once you submit your article to a directory, it is there forever. You don't need to repost it like you would a classified ad, you just publish it and forget it.

You don't even need to be a great writer to use article marketing successfully to generate free traffic. If you can write at a 9th grade level, you can use article marketing effectively. If you really don't want to write, you can hire someone else to do it for you and it's not very expensive.

Article marketing can even be used for offline business and will help build your business' brand and credibility. It actually works very well for offline businesses since so few business owners use this type of marketing.

Learn more about effective use of article marketing, discover the right tools to use and find out which sites give the best ROI by visiting us today: Article Marketing Tips 101: Free Traffic