Every time a new “guru” says that article marketing doesn’t work anymore, I laugh. But I don’t laugh out loud. I laugh quietly because I like them thinking it doesn’t work. That means less competition for us and our clients.

The old “article marketing formula” (posting articles to as many article directories as possible and hoping for the best) doesn’t work as it once used to. But, there’s an amazing way to use articles to get exposure, links, search engine rankings and sales.

This is how it works.

1. Write OUTSTANDING content. Good is NOT good enough. If you feel you’re giving too much away for free, then you’re on the right track.
2. Post your articles to these directories:
   - EzineArticles
   - GoArticles
   - ArticlesBase
   - Work.com
   - Buzzle
   - iSnare
   - Helium
   - ArticleAlley
   - IdeaMarketers
   Yes, there are thousands of article directories, but the ones above have over 95% of the market share (in fact, if you just post to EzineArticles you’ll be fine).
3. Now, this is where article marketing gets really exciting. In case you didn’t know it (most people don’t), article directories aren’t just websites where you can post your articles; they are websites where OTHER WEBMASTERS PICK UP ARTICLES TO USE ON THEIR OWN SITES. What you’re gonna do is wait for people to pick up your articles and then offer them exclusive content for their sites.
4. Use Google Alerts to be notified when people publish your articles on their sites. Enter unique snippets of your articles and every time Google indexes a new page with that text string, they’ll let you know.
5. You can also use CopyScape to check what websites republish your content.
6. Contact the webmasters and offer them exclusive content (exclusive means that you’re not giving that content to anybody else). When they pick up articles from article directories, those articles are used by other people too. If they grabbed that content, they’ll be even more excited about exclusive content.
7. Make sure you analyze each website before offering them exclusive content. Go after quality websites only. I usually check the PageRank and Compete traffic, but I make my final decision based on what the website looks like (it’s pretty easy to identify quality websites).
8. When you offer them exclusive content, they’ll ask for an author byline. Make sure you write compelling copy and a call to action to visit your site. The call to action should be related to the content you give them. For example, if you write a dog training article, your byline could be “John Doe is a dog trainer and the author of Dog Training Book. Get more great dog training tips on John’s dog training blog”.
9. What I explained in item #8 will get you a lot of exposure if you go after high-traffic sites. But there’s another benefit from doing this: you can get high-quality links. This is why I love article marketing as a link building tactic:
   - You get links from high-quality sites
   - You get links from sites related to yours (topical relationship is crucial for SEO)
   - You get to choose the anchor text of the links (which is the hardest part of link building). In the example above, if you want to rank at the top of Google for “dog training blog”, make sure that the link to your site says “dog training blog” instead of “click here”.
10. Check your Analytics and see what websites send you traffic. Send those webmasters more content. And, keep looking for more websites publishing your articles.
11. You’ll be managing thousands of relationships with a lot of different people. Use BuzzStream (my favorite) or HighRise to keep track of all the conversations you have with the webmasters. You don’t want to piss people off by forgetting their names, what websites they manage and what of your articles they published. Only the best at managing these relationships get the full benefit of “Article Marketing on Steroids”.