Back to the Basics - First of all, let's talk about the basics. Article marketing is a form of advertising in which a Webmaster will write an article related to his or her web site and submit it to article directories such as EzineArticles.com with a little information about the author and a link to the Webmaster's web site at the end of the article. This gets the Webmaster's name out there and helps build a reputation of a subject matter expert in his or her field. The link in the article acts as a vote of confidence for the Authors web site as it shows up as a back-link to the SE's. Both of these benefits are great but the real success is achieved because of the following:

Interest - Too many Webmaster's are stuck on the idea that article marketing is all about the links. The fact is, the links help but do not guarantee success. True success comes when the readers of your article are so interested in what you have to say that they follow through and click on your link. Do the following to gain the interest of your viewers:

1. Create an interesting relevant title that will initially draw them in. This is extremely important for both the initial interest of the viewer and the SE spiders. The title of any given page plays a large role in how the spiders display pages in the SERPS. 2. Create numbered lists, bullets and images when possible. Most viewers are very impatient and do not want to read a huge block of text. Breaking up the text and adding numbered lists and bullets will hold their interest. This will also create a better chance of them clicking through to your signature block. 3. When creating your signature block do not make the mistake that so many do. Many authors do not know any better and place a link to their site with no other info inside their signature block. Tell the viewer a little about yourself and the service you provide. End it by extending a kind invitation to your site and provide a free gift if possible.

Frequency - With that being said, the number of articles in which you write will play a large role in the success of your article marketing campaign. Write as many articles as you possibly can and submit them to the top article directories.

Duplicate Content - Many people are false in assuming that distributing articles to a wide range of article directories is looked at as duplicate content to major SE's such as Google. The fact is, Google has actually announced EXACTLY what their SE looks at as duplicate content and exactly what they do about it. In Google's eyes, duplicate content is more than one page on a single site that is exactly the same. When they find pages like this there is no penalty. What happens is, they randomly choose one of the pages to index and the others are not recognized in the SERPS. So, if your article(s) is on 10 or 20 different article sites, it will not be treated as duplicate content since each site has a different template etc. So, mass distribution is not duplicate content in the eyes of the biggest, and most important search engine and that is a fact.

What Google has not made one hundred percent clear is this. Although one article being on multiple websites is not duplicate content, do they give it less weight in the SERPS? This is something that is discussed frequently in Internet marketing and Webmaster forums. In my opinion, submitting the same article to hundreds of different sites is not a good idea. I believe that submitting an article several of the top article sites is good enough and in turn will give your articles a better standing in the SERPS.