It’s not surprising that nearly everyone who wants to increase visitors to his/her website is heavily involved in article marketing.

There are two essential facets, and two essential facets only, to a successful website …content and lots of visitors. And, while traffic can come from many sources, the best traffic comes from organic listings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Although there is no getting around it… it takes substantial time and effort to develop and optimize a website which ranks well in the big three search engines, the traffic your site gets from the search engines is free. If you advertise, it may cost you $10 or more to produce a visitor to your site. And, research has clearly demonstrated that people who reach you because they found your site in a Google or Yahoo query are far likelier to be ready to buy than those who reach you as a result of advertising. Four times as likely, in some marketing studies.

If you think about it, it is not at all surprising . The person who reaches your website after clicking on a link of some kind or getting an email message may have some curiosity about what is on your site, but the person who made the effort to use a search engine to find your site is a far more likely customer for whatever you have to offer.

That is why smart website owners devote significant time and energy striving to achieve high search engine rankings. And, because obtaining links is essential to achieving such rankings, they are all engaged in a link building effort of some kind. In most cases, article marketing is a part of their campaigns because few other activities can be counted on to generate as many links in as short a time. In fact, a popular article can produce dozens of links almost immediately and hundreds of links within a few weeks.

For the most part, website owners write about topics closely related to their websites. Overall, that’s a sound strategy.

But, the largest error website owners make, and they do it all the time, is to limit themselves to writing and submitting articles only about topics closely related to their website content.

By writing on a limited range of topics, they also limit the websites and article directories which will be inclined to publish their writings. And, by doing that, they limit the number of links their writing efforts produce. As an example, I own a number of education sites, so my articles are most often related to college admission, scholarships, online education, and similar topics. I’ve gotten thousands of links with these articles, but there are thousands of article directories and websites that have no interest in those subjects. Therefore, by writing 50-100 articles a year (like this one) on other topics, I am able to reach a whole new audience, and obtain a far higher number of links.

Not very long ago, I wrote an article on winning strategies for casual sports bettors. I have written about search engine optimization, teaching teens safe driving habits, helicopter parents, and dozens of other areas. My most frequently published article was on great backyard hamburger grilling recipes. The single most important tip I can offer other authors is to produce and distribute periodic articles on at least ten or fifteen subjects in addition to the subject(s) of their websites. The rewards, in terms of links, are tremendous.

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