Article writing continues to be one of the most effective search engine marketing techniques in existence. It has two major benefits: it is a good branding move because it makes you appear like an expert in your field; and it generates one-way links to your web site which often contain specific keywords in the link text. If you write articles regularly, you will do yourself a lot of good. But there’s good…and then there’s GOOD.

So how do you write a GOOD article?

We’re not really talking about good in the sense of writing that is compelling and interesting. I mean, if you can do that, then that is a huge bonus. We’re really talking more about writing that will improve your search engine rankings and close business.

First off, you should have a specific keyword in mind when writing the article for which you would like to improve your search engine rankings. If you don’t already have a specific keyword in mind, you might want to visit http://Nichebot.com or a similar service to look for keywords that get a lot (or at least some) traffic that are relevant to your business. It doesn’t do you nearly as much good to write an article focused on a keyword that nobody ever uses.

Once you have decided on a keyword, then you need to try and use the keyword in the title (if it makes sense), the article body, and most importantly, in the author’s box. The author’s box is where you can actually make a hyperlink out of a keyword. If you can insert a hyperlink in the body text, that’s even better, but that is often frowned upon.

As far as the content for the article, one easy way to create content is to pull it from your blog (you do blog, don’t you?). For example, I just authored an article based on two blog posts. Each blog post discussed a real life example of poor web site marketing at the local level. So I combined the blog posts, re-wrote some sections of it, and titled it “Two Examples of the Damage Done by Poor Local Web Site Marketing”.

Now I’m going give you a power tip, so pay attention. When conducting online research for an article, I use Google Notebook to collect snippets of information into a single page where I can view it all. Basically, I’m creating notes on the fly from different sites that I can use as the basis for my article. This technique could save you a lot of time.

When writing your article, use proper grammar and spelling. You can write the article in a conversational tone (which is good), but you don’t want to appear ignorant. Remember, there is a branding component at work here. You want to come off as a true professional in your industry.

Once the article is written, it needs to be distributed to article directories. You can do this manually, one at a time, or you can use a directory submission service. The manual way is best, but it takes oh so long to do. You will probably want to use some kind of automation to get your article out to as many places as you can.

If you see the power of article marketing but just don’t want to do it yourself, Work Media offers an article writing service. Call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.