by: Kevin S. Kantola

Writing and submitting articles to article banks is a well-known method for promoting one's website. Usually there is an author's box at the bottom of the article and a link back to the website. This link is valuable in two ways. First, it provides direct traffic from those reading the article to the website. Second, the link counts as a vote to the website when a search engine robot crawls the article. This will help your website rank higher in the search engine results pages.

Article banks (such as ArticleCity.com or GoArticles.com) help Webmasters who need content for their websites as well. Webmasters will come to these resources and pick up articles for placement on their sites, providing valuable content for their own visitors. The only requirement is that the Webmasters keep the author's box, including the active link, intact when copying the articles.

From a Webmaster's point of view, they need search no further than the article banks for relative content for their websites. But, for the writers promoting their own websites, there is no need to stop submitting articles at the article banks as other resources are available. First, online magazines may be researched and articles submitted to them directly. Second, articles may be submitted to different online groups such as Yahoo! Groups where all you need to do is sign up as a member and then you can email the article to all members in the group.

The third and perhaps newest method for submitting articles and promoting one's website can be found at some of the newer sites that are part article bank and part online magazine. Like an article bank, these new sites let writers submit articles for placement on the site and even let the writer create an online portfolio showcasing their work. Like a magazine, some of these sites will pay for content and encourage readers to come to their site to read all the great articles that they offer.

As an example of one of these newer websites, http://www.AssociatedContent.com encourages both readers and writers to come to its website. Revenue is generated by the ads that appear along side the articles. Unlike an article bank, the articles are not to be picked up by Webmasters for their own sites. The benefit to writers though is that this serves as another avenue to showcase their work. Writers get to create an online portfolio including an author's bio page, which will be indexed by the search engines along with their articles for added exposure. Writers at some of these newer classes of websites get to establish themselves as resident experts in their fields, very much like the guides in the About.com model.

So, for those who are looking to write articles and gain exposure for their own websites, the first stop is at the article banks. But, don't stop there. There are other avenues that can be explored for maximum exposure for your website.