I have been marketing on the net now for the better part of 20 years and of all the methods I have used, articles are still the way to get traffic through backlinks. And for me, writing articles has become second nature. Because? Because I trust my past experience and pay attention to what the guru says. It is the majority of the opinion of these people that article marketing and comments from external sources are still two of the free methods that are most effective.

1. Disseminate articles through the network.

It used to be that you could write a great article and then spread that same content to as many article directories and blogs you could find. That is no longer the case. Google and the other search engine giants are now looking specifically for original content. By original content, I mean unique articles. Some use the method of spinning the items. Rotating is the process of replacing words in content that have the same meaning. This can be effective up to a point, but not in most cases.

Now, to have original content, but use the same basic article, you need to use the “in other words” approach. In other words, rewrite the article IN OTHER WORDS. And this isn’t really a difficult concept if you really think about it. you already have a format ugly in its original. For example; An article titled “What’s Coming in the Springs” could be retitled “What Blooms in April.” There is your beginning. The next step would be to rewrite each paragraph in another way with the same meaning. Like I said, it’s a simple process if you think about it.

Now that you’ve recreated your article as a unique and original piece of content, the next step is to start promoting it wherever you’ve published it. If you post one on EzineArticles, tweet with the EzineArticles.com URL. Do the same with your Google+ and Facebook account. On Facebook, maybe even boost the post. I’m sure EzineArticles would love the extra traffic and except for the boost from Facebook, if you decide to do that it won’t cost you a penny and your article will get the promotion you want.

Forums (message boards) can also be considered a place to create a mini article. Have you ever thought about that? There are a lot of forums that are hungry for more and more members and posts. Why not take advantage of that information and put some of your article ideas on these conversation starter boards? There’s something called a signature area on message boards where you can put a kind of billboard on every post you make. The advantages of this are (a) your content is being read by more and more people, (b) you have links to your website being placed in front of everyone reading and commenting on your thread. Talk about a win/win scenario.

Create your own blog. Put original content on it and, as often as allowed, submit it to major search engines for indexing. Get fully social on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, etc. Every time you update the content, re-tweet it just in case.

2. Ask for comments on your articles.

Search engines gobble this up and actually give content more credit with comments from as many sources as possible. Ask your friends on Facebook to go read your article and then leave a comment. Most blogs and some article directories allow this. See if there are any groups that exchange comments with you. Fiverr.com is a good source for feedback if you can’t get friends to help you.

If handled the right way, your articles can be a great source of traffic for your site.