Many people doing business on the internet still don't realize it, but simply writing articles about topics that you are familiar with is both an effective and free (or very inexpensive) way to generate traffic to your web site.

People on the internet are constantly looking for information about various topics, either for their own personal reading, or for content for their websites. Often these searches turn up free articles written by authors who have first-hand experience with those particular topics. There is a wealth of information available online in free articles - you can find free articles out there covering most any topic that you can think of.

So, why do all of these authors take the time and put in the effort to write these articles and then release them on the internet for free? The answer is simple: exposure.

A single article can quickly spread throughout the internet and end up on literally hundreds or even thousands of websites as webmasters and ezine publishers that are constantly looking for new content to offer to their readers pick up and publish your article. This is a great thing for authors because it allows not only their writing to be exposed to a large number of people, but more importantly, it also gives their name AND their website exposure.

The key to using articles as a web site traffic generator for your business lies in what is called the "resource box" or the "about the author" section that should be included with each article you submit. This section of your articles will include a short blurb about you as the author, and most importantly, a link to your website. You can see an example of this at the end of this article.

You will be surprised at what writing articles can bring you - in a relatively short time frame, your name and your work will begin to show up in the search engines, and you will become known as an expert in your field. Your website will benefit from many "one-way" links back to your website, which will help your rankings in the search engines, as well as generate interested leads coming to your site!

Here is a quick example - do a Google search for the following terms all together: Eric Mathieu home business

What do you see? Those are articles I have written about home business showing up on many sites, creating back links to one of my websites and generating interested visitors! One of the articles, "Are you the home business type?" is one that I only wrote at the beginning of this month (May 2006) and it is already showing up all over the internet! When I check again in a month or so, this article will have spread to twice as many websites, giving me even more exposure for something I only had to write once. I'm sure that you are beginning to see that this is a powerful advertising method!

As people come across and read your articles, there is a very good chance that they will want to know more about you, your work, and your business. This is where the links in your "resource box" come in. Also, it is very important to put something like the following at the end of your articles:
"ATTENTION: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the resource box at the end of the article."

This will let people know that it is okay and actually encourage them to reproduce the article and post it on their websites and in their newsletters. This is great for them as they have access to some new, quality content, and is great for you because you are getting more exposure.

I hope that you can now see that writing articles is most definitely worth your time, and could very well be the "missing component" in your current marketing strategies. In future articles that I will soon be writing, I will explain how to get started writing articles for those of you who don't think they can do it, as well as how to get your articles out on the internet for the widest distribution using an article submission service (although you can also do the same manually for free - it is just much more time consuming and I'd rather use that time to write more articles!).

Now that you understand the traffic and exposure that writing articles can bring you, it's time for you to get started! I look forward to reading YOUR articles in the near future. Good luck!