You are probably wondering what writing articles has to do with your internet marketing strategy. Why bother with articles when you have all these great products to sell and a great idea for a fantastic website design: the perfect strategy to market and sell your products on the internet. But think!

What's your most important objective when you first launch a website on the internet? Before you answer, let me tell you what it is not! It is not to make it look pretty, so that everyone who sees it is full of admiration for your website designing skills. Nor is it to offer a great variety of different products or services, and give your visitors lots of choices. You might think it's to sell lots of products and make piles of money. Well, it's not!

Does that surprise you? Have you ever been on the subway and seen all these advertising posters? These are part of the marketing strategy of some of the biggest companies in the world. Where are they posted? Certainly not halfway along a tunnel between stations: they would never be seen there. They are at the sides of the escalators, or across the rails from the platform, so you can't avoid seeing them.

Putting a poster up on the subway is exactly the same as putting a website on the internet. Now answer the question! What's your most important objective when you first launch a website on the internet? What's the most important marketing strategy for any company with any product? To make it visible, of course; to let it be seen. One of the best ways to do that is by writing articles! I know it sounds unlikely, but listen up for a moment and I will explain all.

There are two major ways to make your website visible: advertise your URL and have your site displayed by the search engines. Writing articles can achieve both of these without costing you a penny. No paid adverts, no Google Adwords. If you can write an article that is interesting and relevant to your product, people will read them. Not only that, but other webmasters might want to use your article as content for their site.

You not only write the article and post it on your website, but submit it for inclusion in article directories. These are like website directories, only they are full of articles on specific topics rather than websites. You are also allowed to add a resource box to your article, which contains your website URL and a brief biography.

You can submit articles individually to each of the hundreds of directories on the internet, or use an article submission service to do it for you. The end result is the same ? your article appears on the directory, someone uses your keyword to seek what they want, and your article comes up in the results.

They will read it and probably click on your URL, or they might copy your article to use on their own websites then they must also include your name as author and your resource box. This not only advertises your website, but also provides you with a backlink to your own website from each site that uses your article, including the article directory link! Such backlinks indicate to search engines that your website is regarded as an authority on your subject, and you are provided with a correspondingly higher index listing. Your poster gets nearer the subway!

If you seriously use writing articles as part of your internet marketing strategy, then you will eventually be on the station exactly where you want to be - opposite the platform and in everybody's sight.