Why is article marketing at the top of every search engine marketing company’s list of SEO techniques? Why would submitting an article online have a dramatic effect on your website traffic? Well, here is the lowdown.The reason article marketing is such a powerful technique relates to the size and online power of the article directories themselves. The really heavyweight directories have hundreds of thousands of published pages and hundreds of thousands of contributing authors. Take EzineArticles (ezinearticles.com) for example – this site has over 300,000 contributing authors!This makes Ezine Articles a perfect example of an authority site. This means they are given top search engine placement for material on their site. Let’s compare Ezine Articles with your own website: Ezine Articles, 360,000 pages of content – your website, 10 pages. See how this works?Publish an article on this site, and if it is keyword optimised and correctly structured you will automatically piggy-back on the size and ranking of this site. And this is only one of many huge article directories online.What if you published your article on 10 large article directories? Then you get 10 really big backlinks to your own website AND get top search engine recognition for your marketing piece. Backlinks are the connections you create by having your website published as a link on another website – the aim here is to have your website linked to as many large websites as possible, as this is how the search engines calculate your authority to contribute on a specific topic.What if you published five or even 10 articles a week to 10 top directories? Then you have 50-100 powerful backlinks pointing at your site every week. (The top producing author on Ezine Articles has published over 20,000 articles!) So how do I do it?There are a few very important skills needed when using article marketing as a technique to grow your business sales.The first skill is using good keywords. Keywords are phrases which people are typing into the search bar of the various search engines, and let’s be clear that Google accounts for over 70% of these searches. With targeted keyword research you are able to identify keywords which are being typed in often but for which there are relatively few competing pages. Also, by identifying good keywords you are able to target potential customers. By using what is known as long-tailed keywords you are able to really hone in on these customers. A short-tailed keyword would be something like "business magazine”. A long-tailed keyword would be "find top selling new zealand business magazine”.Now you obviously need to compose an article. It needs to be interesting and give information that is both relevant and valuable. It needs to be well constructed, and correct grammar is important. There are also many copywriting techniques which can be useful to engage the reader.Ask questionsTalk to the reader as if you are talking to one person in a relaxed, informal and friendly way. Do not try to prove how well you know the English language or whether you are up with all of the top corporate jargon. No reader will make it to the end of your article.Create a headline which makes the reader want to open the article and read it. Make it compelling, a must-read, something a reader dare not miss! Use your keyword in the title.Make the summary equally compelling – ask questions here which you will answer in the article.Again use your keyword here.Give value in the article – great information is the key here. Supply a solution to your reader’s problem or interest. Use the keyword twice more.Most of all, make certain that the resource box at the end of the article has a very strong call to action. It must compel the reader to click on the link. And of course, use the keyword here.Then, when you are satisfied you have covered all of these points, submit to as many of the biggest article sites as possible (type into search bar "article directories” for the biggest sites).You will see two things happening within days. Your own website will take higher positions in the search engine rankings and your articles will begin to feature on the keywords you have chosen. Both these will bring a large increase in traffic to your site.