Why are articles important?

Firstly, in the context of web sites.... what is an article?

Well, it's a piece of writing, usually between 500-1000 words in length that has been written about a specific topic.

There's obvious advantages to writing an article:

• An article means that you have fresh content on your website.
• Articles can look like you are an "authority" on the topic.
• Articles can be used in your newsletters or eZines.
• Articles can be used to sell affiliate products.
• Articles presented in the right way can help you to brand your website.

Many webmasters and web site owners are happy with the benefits above. Afterall, an article is just a piece of writing about a topic....

Not so, it's time to think a little about this.....

The World Wide Web is full of people looking for information, or more specifically looking for content on a specific topic. As a result of this hunger for information, many "article submission" websites have sprung up. The sole purpose of these sites is to collect articles that have been submitted and make them available for other users.

Why is this good and how does this affect you?

Let's look at the many reasons why submitting an article to web site that collects articles is a good thing. Firstly, many of the established article sites now have many thousands of articles on hundreds of different topics. These are serving two very important markets:

• They are being used to drive traffic, grow awareness and generally publicise web sites or businesses.
• The articles are being used by other webmasters as content for their own web sites.

Both of points above are very good news for you. If an article site can help you increase your web site traffic, grow awareness of your site and generally make people aware of what you have, that's a good thing right?

More importantly, if your articles are used by other webmasters as content for their sites, your information and your web site details will begin to spread across the Internet. Each time your article is submitted to an article site or whenever another webmaster uses your article, you are creating a backlink for your site. A backlink for your site, is great news if you are looking to leverage free search engine traffic.

Why are backlinks important to me?

A backlink is a text link on another site back to your site. If your article is reprinted with your website details, the webmaster will also be publishing a backlink to your site. Backlinks can have an enormous impact on your search engine ratings, it's generally agreed that the more backlinks you have from sites of similar topics, the higher page rank and search engine ranking you will achieve. The higher you're placed in the search engines, the greater amount of free traffic you will attract to your site.

Why are articles important?

So to answer the question, articles are very important to webmasters that are looking for a cheap and quick way to publicise their web sites. Submitting articles, also offers the following benefits:

• Free publicity for your business
• If you're a great writer, you may receive invitations to write for other newsletters or eZines. Creating even more publicity for your site.
• You will receive targetted traffic from your site from the published article.
• You will receive even more targetted traffic from any other site that has reprinted your article.
• You will receive a backlink everytime your site is published or reprinted, this will grow your Page Rank.
• All of that free advertising

Interested to learn more about article sites, click here.