One thing I always ask webmasters who use article submissions is what exactly they're trying to achieve. By and large, I hear one or more of the three benefits listed below in their replies:

A higher search engine rank for their most important keywords, a reputation as an authoritative source of information in their field or more traffic due to people clicking the links to their site in the articles.

As I see it, the SEO enhancing benefits to be had from article marketing is the strongest argument in favor of using articles.

SEO techniques are all designed to do the same thing: get more traffic to your site, especially from the people in your target market or audience. Article marketing is one of the more effective ways of getting your content to the people you want to reach.

Like anyone else, your target market searches for information online with Google and other search engines.

If your website is part of your business, you definitely want to be as high in the list of search results as you can for the search terms your likeliest readers or customers commonly use. If you can get your site at or near the top of these results, you will see much more targeted traffic - this is traffic from people who are interested in the subject matter of your site already and as such are the most desirable visitors.

Targeted traffic, in fact is what everyone is really looking for. By using the SEO techniques listed below, you can get your website moving upwards through the search engine rankings with Google, Yahoo and other major search engines.

1 - Research your keywords. These are the words and phrases that people use when looking for a site like yours.

After determining what these words are, you need to work them into your site's content. It is a good idea to do a little research on this even if you already think you know what to use. There are plenty of free and commercial keyword research tools you can use, including Google Keywords, Keyword Discovery, Overture and Word Tracker, to name just a few.

2 - Write articles about the same topics as your website. This will mean that the same keywords should find their way into your articles naturally. Before you submit your articles, however, you should look them over to see if you've used them in the title, content and resource box.

While using keywords is important, it is less so than making your articles readable. Write for human readers, not search engines. Don't pack your articles with keywords - this makes them difficult to read and can even cause them to be ignored by search engines. 1%-3% keyword density is plenty.

3 - Write and submit regularly. You should write and submit a couple of articles every month without fail. Keeping up with this is where a lot of webmasters fail in article marketing. This is one of those SEO techniques which takes time, but will only get real results if you stick with it.

Article marketing is a powerful method of improving page ranking which can also directly drive sales; but only if you are diligent and keep at it. The benefits of this SEO technique are cumulative, so while you won't notice a difference right away, it will happen and can be dramatic. Once you make writing and submitting articles a habit, you will soon see your site moving up in the search engine rankings.