Article marketing can be a great addition to the marketing techniques that you are already using and have found to be profitable. With little cost to you, you can gain more traffic and sales by employing this proven method of self promotion.

Below, you'll find 7 ways that writing articles can profit you. Find out for yourself if you would like to give article marketing a try.

1. You can increase your Page Rank.

Getting more quality links to your site will help you to increase your Page Rank. Even though there are other factors involved, when you raise your page rank you can expect to rank higher in Google and see more traffic as a result.

2. You can get traffic from the sites that publish your articles.

The top article directories, to submit your articles to, get lots of traffic to them. You and the other writers that contribute to them can benefit from the new and repeat traffic that they get on a daily basis.

The same holds true for popular blogs and ezines that publish your articles. You can get more traffic to your site by getting your articles published in them.

3. You can grow your email list.

In your resource box, you could share two or three reasons to join your newsletter and link to your sign up page with some anchor text.

You could do the same with an email course that you've written. Or, you could use your resource box to promote an ebook that you give away in exchange for people joining your list.

4. Your articles could rank highly in search results.

Web pages with your articles posted on them can quickly rank in the top ten in Google and other search engines for the keywords that you have chosen to put in your title.

After you finish your article submissions, you could get more traffic to your site right away.

Note that when pages with your articles on them are spidered, your site will be too. You can get your site listed without having to do any search engine submissions. You can just let your articles do the work for you.

5. You can get your site ranked higher for keywords that you choose.

You can easily optimize your article for the search engines by using anchor text in your resource box. For example, if your website is about box turtles, some anchor text you might use in your link to your site is "box turtle care" or "feeding box turtles".

If you link to a specific page on your site using anchor text, you may be able to see a dramatic increase in how that page ranks for the keywords that you choose to put in your link.

The more relevant sites that publish your articles the better, so submit your site to as many quality article directories and announcement lists as you can.

6. You can presell your product.

Writing articles enables you to share strong benefits of using your product. Your readers can find out what your business can do for them.

For example, if you sell autoresponders, your articles could show how and why people should use your product.

If you sell herbs, your articles could show different ways to use the herbs that you sell and some of the possible benefits of taking them.

7. You can increase your credibility.

Whoever reads your articles can see first hand what you bring to the table. If your articles provide useful information in a well thought out way, more people will be interested in buying your product because they'll see that you know what you're talking about.

The key here is to write articles that will do justice to your knowledge on your chosen subjects. Spelling errors, faulty grammar and typos will hurt your cause. Writing articles that you can be proud of will pay off much better for you in the long run.