What Is A Link?

When you first start doing article marketing, you may have some vague idea that you're doing it to bring visitors to your website, but you're just not sure how that technically happens.

That is perfectly fine--it is not necessary that you understand the technical in's and out's of how article marketing works in order to make it work for you.

You can submit articles and still see excellent results without having the first idea about what a link is, but at some point your curiosity might make you wonder, "What is this talk about links? What are they?"

I get that question sometimes, so I'll explain as simply as I can what a link is and how it works.

A link is like a bridge from one web page to another. Just like a bridge connects two pieces of land to each other so that people can easily travel to and from each location, so a link connects two web pages to make it easy for people get from one page to the other.

Terms you will commonly hear are:

*Backlink-- a link going to your website.

*One-way link-- a link going from site A to site B, but not from site B to site A. This is the most powerful type of link.

*Reciprocal link-- a link going from site A to site B, and also from site B to site A.

From a search engine point of view, how "connected" (linked) your website is to other web pages of similar topics gives a strong indication of how popular or respected your site is. A link to your site is like a "vote" for it--search engines look at the "votes" that your site receives when determining where your site will rank in search engine results.

The higher your website appears in the results listings, the more traffic you will receive.

So, the end goal is to receive more traffic to your site.

The strategy is to elevate your search engine ranking for you keyword terms (common words or phrases people in your target market use when looking up information on your topic).

The means by which you elevate your search engine ranking is by building links to your website.

How Do You Build Links?

This is where article marketing comes in. You write articles on the topic of your website, and then you submit the article along with a resource box. The resource box is where you can tell a little about yourself and give a link to your website.

Every time you submit one of your articles to an article directory, you build a link (via the link in your resource box).

But that isn't all--article directories provide content for website owners. Articles used in article marketing are also called "free reprint articles", and when an article is published on an article directory, ideally website owners will find the article and then also republish the article on their own site. Each time your article is republished, you gain a powerful one-way backlink to your site.

Imagine how quickly the backlinks can build--if you submit one article to one article directory, you are actually getting more than one backlink (assuming other people decide to republish your article). One article can be a continuing source of backlinks.

With article marketing the idea is to submit articles every month for the lifetime of your website. Imagine submitting 8 articles every month, with each one of those articles building numerous backlinks and continuing to produce backlinks every time they are republished. If you are committed to marketing your website by submitting articles, you can make a dramatic impact on the traffic to your site over the long term.

It's not enough just to have a website. You need to market that website to get traffic to it. Links are essential when building traffic to your site and can be easily built with article marketing. Just write articles on your topic and submit them steadily each month (8 articles per site will do). Keep at it, and you will create a link building machine that will cause your site to continuously grow and receive more traffic.

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