Article submission, and article marketing as it is also known, is quickly establishing itself as one of the most well established means by which to market your online business and develop a strong brand and trusted online presence through which customers and search engines alike can trust. Being able to leverage article marketing to your advantage is becoming increasingly difficult with so many service providers in the marketplace, and few that deliver quality service time after time.

Choosing an article submission company requires an initial understanding of the service, as well as an understanding of how the service should be performed in under to yield effective results. Without this initial understanding, companies leave their self open to either paying a rate which is too high, or alternatively selecting the cheapest quote and not being aware that their provider is cutting corners and automating processes to the detriment on their article marketing efforts.

Automatic Submissions versus Manual Submissions

Many article submission companies have decided to utilize software in an attempt to compete with other providers, differentiate on price and capitalize to increase their margins. Such behavior is not only considered SPAM by quality article directories, it could result in being removed from Google, Yahoo and MSN, and in many cases your domain registrar or hosting company may ask that you remove your site from their service because of the promotional techniques that you are employing. As such, one means by which to verify the validity of submissions is to ask your company if they provide screenshots along with each submission they complete. Should they be unable to do this, or ask for a significant increase in cost as a result, then it is best to work with another provider.

Location

Many article companies come from the USA and Asian markets, however in reality most of the USA companies outsource their work to Asian companies and mark up the price. With wages being around 5 times stronger in the USA than India for example, it is simply too hard for US companies to compete on price when Asian companies provide just as good, if not better, levels of service. For those reasons it is best to consider working with an Asian company directly and cutting out the middle man, such as a USA SEO Company, that may wish to take their cut of the transaction.

SEO Experience

It is better to work with an article submission company that has a firm understanding of search engine optimization. Through working with a company which has a solid, rounded experience of SEO; you can be sure that you will gain valuable information and advise to complement your service. They will be able to offer input as to the best anchor text to use in links, they will maintain a list of article directories that will pass the most value to your site, and they will develop and tweak their service to ensure it has optimum results for your website.