Links are important to you because of two main reasons:

* Google's PageRank: Google is probably the top search engine currently, and because of that, having a good ranking affects your traffic significantly. One main part of Google's algorithms to determine the ranking of a site is by the amount of incoming links the site is receiving.

* They are how people find your site: Readers who click on the links will find your site, so naturally you will want as many incoming links as possible.

But how do you get those big and mighty sites to provide a link to someone like you? It is impossible right?

Wrong!

You just need to go about it differently. This is where article marketing comes in. The most valuable thing that you can offer the Internet community is your knowledge. And by offering useful snippets of it in the form of articles, you make yourself instantly very well-received.

Create articles that are purely informative and to-the-point. Remember that making it a long sales letter will not work. You will have to remove all links to order pages, affiliate sites, whatever. Do not even mention your company or your product/service in the main article body (but the author's bio or resource box is perfectly fine).

Then, submit your articles to various sites of your choice. These can be directories, newsletters, or highly focused sites that are relevant to your articles' content. Some sites do allow HTML links in your author's bio or resource box, and that is probably the best. Those sites are usually of a really good PR - imagine getting free incoming links from a >PR6 site!

Remember to do this on a regular schedule. Due to the large number of other people submitting articles, you must make an effort to stand out from the crowd. It is best if you can create and submit an article every month, so that people will get to recognise and know you.

Once you develop a certain following, it becomes much easier to market your product or service!

Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution, advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today's competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make money online.