But I get asked a lot if it works as a long term traffic strategy.

In other words, does the traffic dry up once you stop submitting new articles to the article directories?

Well, it depends. There are a number of factors involved that help determine how effective your article marketing efforts are over the long haul.

Things like:

• Keyword Selection – selecting the right keywords goes a long way toward determining whether your article will get found by searchers.
• On Page SEO – where you place your keyword phrase in your article, as well as how often it appears, will also affect your possible rankings in the search engines.
• Article Quality – the higher quality the article, the better chance another site will pick it up and use it on their site, or possibly in their newsletter.
• Article Topic – this will also play a huge role in whether other web sites pick up your article. If your article topic is timely or controversial there is a much better chance of it getting passed around the internet
• Links – Things such as the quality and topic of the article will also play into whether or not you get a lot of links from your article.

The more web sites that pick it up, the more links you get, which means a much better chance at receiving long term traffic from your article.

If some real authority sites in your niche pick up one of your articles, your main site could get a serious boost for its search engine rankings.

One article I submitted a while back, continues to get more direct page views on Ezine Articles each month than most of my articles do ever.

Here’s a screen shot of monthly views:

Now, I have plenty of articles that don’t have 3,000 views on Ezine Articles in total, let alone for one month.

And no, I haven’t figured out what sets that article apart from the others.

What I can say is if you do do as many things right as possible with each article, and continue your article marketing efforts, you’ll create articles that have traffic generation staying power, too.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my previous post ==>> No Way, Not the Death of Article Marketing, Too!