Yes, one of the primary objectives with Article Marketing is to get quality, relevant inbound links to your domains. Secondary is getting your articles syndicated which gives you even more inbound links and also exposure to other readerships.
The relevance aspect is very important, though - for two reasons:
1) Your goal is to attract your ideal visitor. People who are interested in hummingbirds are not interested in finding a lawyer in Atlanta. If you keep your content targeted to your ideal visitor, you will have a higher CTR (click through rate) on your bio/sig link(s).
Also, as a publisher, I would not republish an article - no matter how great - if the bio or signature were way off base.
2) Relevance plays a part in your Link Reputation, which affects your SEO strategy. Google doesn't just look at the number of inbound links, but also the placement and relevance of those links.
Article Marketing gives you the opportunity to create highly relevant content on other domains (article directories & sites that republish your articles) that include a link back to your related site. This type of link from a relevant content page (hummingbirds to hummingbirds) carries more weight than a link from a non-relevant page (hummingbirds to lawyers).
So true about helping your reader but keeping your own goals in mind. The only thing I'd add is the thing I inevitably forget, when writing blog posts for myself - finishing off with a "Call To Action". ;-)
Lynn... say you did want to write an article about hummingbirds and post it to a directory (for whaddever reason)... would you do that under a pen name?
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