Internet hype says that article marketing is the best form of advertising for your business. Do you just go with the hype or do you research reasons? You're here so you're doing the intelligent thing and discovering why article marketing is so great.

Marketing campaign scams abound online. You never know which one to believe. Research is the only way to truly understand which marketing campaign will work best for you.

I've created a brief overview of six of the ways article marketing helps build business credibility and increase sales. Many more reasons exist but I chose to focus on these for today. These six reasons explain the overall importance of an article marketing campaign to your page rank, SERP, traffic and pre-sales techniques.

Educate and Inform Your Readers

Blindly purchasing products or services isn't something today's consumer does. Before they purchase anything, they ask friends, family and consult the Internet. Search engines play an enormous role in today's purchases.

People have used search engines for so long that Google has become a verb. How often do you hear people say, "I'll Google that later"? The same holds true with all other major search engines.

Article marketing gives you the opportunity to get your product knowledge in front of the eyes of people who need to see it. Your target audience is probably searching for you right now but they won't find you unless you market your business.

Correctly written articles need to be at least 400 words but no longer than 800 words. The idea is to inform and educate, not bore to death. Share your wealth of knowledge with your target audience.

Pre-sell Products and Services

People buy products from sales people who understand what they're selling. When someone asks a salesman a question and he has to ask his supervisor, trust is sketchy at best. The bottom line is, if you want to be successful in sales, learn and educate your audience.

Knowledge is wealth. Share your knowledge with your readers. Provide them with valuable information they may not find elsewhere. Article directories will do the rest.

Create Massive Relevant Backlinks

Your efforts never go to waste with article marketing. The article you publish this month will still be working hard next year. In fact, it will increase in strength as people voluntarily syndicate it for you.

A single article can create thousands of backlinks. Each time it gets published in a new directory or someone syndicates it as content for their own website, you receive another relevant link. Each link is relevant to your content because it was written to promote your website.

Market the White-Hat Way

Marketing and SEO are split into two categories. White-hat and black-hat marketing techniques differ in a variety of ways. White-hat marketing is approved by search engines, black-hat is not.

White-hat marketing earns its name as a good guy in marketing by being honest and to the point. People who use white-hat marketing techniques are considered trustworthy. Trust plays a key role in the success of any business.

Black-hat marketing earns its name as a bad guy in marketing by being misleading and going around the rules set forth by search engines to get their way. Keyword stuffing, hidden text and redirecting traffic are three of the primary ways black-hat marketers work.

Increase Your PR and SERP

Search engines love inbound links, or backlinks. Each link leading back to your website is indexed and ranked by relevancy. A relevant link carries much more weight than an irrelevant link.

Article marketing increases your relevant links. Search engines discover each link and use algorithms to rank them in order of relevancy. The more relevant links, the higher your PR and SERP go.

Lead Readers Back to Your Website

Your articles are not used as sales pitches. They're to inform and educate your audience. Each article ends with your author resource box.

Your author bio or author resource box contains a sales pitch of sorts. It invites the reader to visit your website to learn more or make a purchase. Each article leads the reader back to your website, increasing your traffic and sales.

Rebecca Taylor is a coach for the Affiliate Program at Article Marketer. She assists and coaches Article Marketer affiliates. Learn how to Get Quality Backlinks with Articles here!

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