Over the past year or so there has been a huge increase in the numbers of people attempting to use article marketing to promote their businesses. It is an unfortunate fact that many article marketers have only a vague idea of what the method is all about and have fallen for some of the less reputable methods associated with it.

Over the past year or so there has been a huge increase in the numbers of people attempting to use article marketing to promote their businesses. It is an unfortunate fact that many article marketers have only a vague idea of what the method is all about and have fallen for some of the less reputable methods associated with it.

Article marketing isn't necessarily something new; it's been a method for as long as people have been using mass communication. Back in the earlier days a company would often submit an informative article that is related to the product or service that they were in and the publication got free material and the business got to put a resource box that linked the article to the company.

It truly was a win-win situation. The publication kept their readers happy because they would have a very well written piece of content the business was happy because they received free advertising.

The internet and the exponential growth in the number of web sites has created a huge online demand for original content for web site owners to use to add value to their sites. It is probably true to say that the demand for content is virtually insatiable - and therein rests a major problem.

Because of this need for fresh and current content there are people who have tried to come up with their own fix. For example, there are sites that are article directories where there are articles written on just about every subject available for any website to take and place on their site. The only stipulation is that you keep the resource box at the end of the article intact if you place the article on your website.

So long as you do this, you are not violating any terms of service. Another solution people have come up with to try and help website owners to get fresh content is a creation called an article spinner. An article spinner is a piece of software that will take an article and most use a thesaurus and replace words with synonyms and change the order of the paragraphs and sentences. While this type of software is freely and widely available there is an inherent risk in using it.

Search engines are becoming much more sophisticated in the way that they recognise what they are seeing. Most search engines are looking for value for their customers and will often disregard anything that they see as being duplicated. This can lead to pages being de-indexed or not being indexed at all.

The owners of article directories try to appease the search engines as much as they possibly can. A large part of their income is derived from site visitors clicking on the ads on the article pages. Should the article directories get into the bad graces of the search engines it could result in them losing significant income because their rankings for top keywords would plummet and they would not only lose visitors but also income.

There isn't an easy, instant way to use article marketing. The very best way is to work at it and create truly valuable unique articles that will enhance your reputation so that, eventually, you too will create that 'expert' status and be sought out by web site owners looking for valuable content.