Article writing is one of the best marketing strategies to obtain free, natural search listings within Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Thousands of online marketers are using it as a free way to attract traffic to their affiliate programs or to get links pointing back to their websites.
 

Article writing works something like this: you write an article about a topic you want to get listed under, submit it to article websites, use their article distribution and repository services, and then wait for search engines to pick up your article. Article websites allow you to place an 'author bio' below the article body, where you can leave a link or two pointing back to your websites or merchants' sites.
 

By submitting articles to article websites you are adopting their search engine rankings, which means you can get listed on the first page of the natural search results in a matter of
days. This is something that could take months if you tried to optimize a web page for search engines. If you write an article and submit it to a 'popular' website like GoArticles or
EzineArticles, your article will inherit the popularity of that entire site. This will give your article a head start and greatly increase the chance of its getting listed within the top search engines.
 

Before writing an article, you should choose a topic with potential to receive traffic, determine how much competition is out there and which keywords to optimize to get maximum results.

There are several resources you can use to gauge your competition and locate niches you can explore.
 

Forums: Check out forums and see what questions people are asking. Give people what they want by writing articles with tips and information they are looking for.
 

Nichebot: Type a keyword into nichebot.com, and you will find out how high your competition is. You can get a good idea whether or not a keyword phrase is too competitive to write an article about.
 

Google: Once you have chosen your niche, start using search engines to get a feel for the information that is being returned for your search phrases. A good way to judge the competition of a keyword phrase is to take a look at the top listed sites and check their page rank. If the sites on the first page of natural listings have a lower page rank than the article site you are going to submit to, your article will have a good chance of getting listed on the first page.
 

There are several things that you need to take into consideration when writing an article, including which keyword phrase you want to get listed under, who your audience is, and
how to generate ideas that everyone wants to read about. Remember to put your audience first: what are the benefits they can get from your articles, and what's in it for them. Here are
a few ideas for an article:
 

1. Write a product review: Every time you see a new product or eBook, you can write a book review if you think it will benefit your target audience. What I usually did is summarizing the points that most impressed me.
 

2. Write a business news article: You can subscribe to one of the Internet News services or Press Release services and use the information you receive to write articles on the latest
developments in your field. I recommend the following websites: http://www.webpronews.com/ http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/
 

3. Write a 'step-by-step' article: People have short attention spans. They want quick and easily-absorbed content, not long articles. 'How to' or 'step-by-step' articles are always in
great demand.
 

Speaking from my experience, my articles posted on the following article submission directories get listed on the first page of Google search results very quickly. EzineArticles.com is without doubt the number one website where you should have your article posted, but your article will be reviewed by a human editor before it is added to its directory. Also, No embedded affiliate links are allowed by EzineArticles.
 

The ultimate benefit of submitting articles is that you'll get free traffic to your website and start making money through the affiliate programs you're promoting in your author bio. You can submit your articles to one directory website at a time, but the drawback of doing it manually is that it'll take lots of time and effort. Personally, I automate my article submissions instead of submitting them by hand, because I am not a person who always wants to make sure the links in my author bio are live. ArticleMarketer.com is the service I am using to have my articles distributed across the Internet. You can also find professional software packages that will do the submission for you. ArticleSubmittPro and Article Announcer are the highly recommended tools for streamlining the article submission
process.