Without wasting any time on fluff, here is why writing articles is so important to your online business. There are basically two ways to use your articles: by submitting them to article directories and by using them as online content on your own website or other online presence. Let's consider each of these in turn:

A. Articles published on article directories benefit you in four ways:

1. They will be read by visitors to the directories. It has been said that no visitor to an article directory actually reads the articles published in it. That is totally false, since you will get many reads from visitors to directories. Some will click through to your website using the link you provide in your resource.

2. You will get links back to your website from the directory: you should choose the best possible page to which to direct that link. These back-links give Google an indication of your site's popularity, and they will reward you for it with Page Rank and listing position.

3. Your articles will be copied by others and used as content on their websites. Anybody using your article in that way must also include your resource, along with the link to your website that it contains. Some people delete the resource, but there is software available with which you can detect these people and warn them - it generally works. This provides you with a) a link back to your web page from the page that your article has been copied to, and b) the possibility of clicks to your website from readers of that page.

4. The directory page containing your article can be listed on search engines results pages for your keyword, and provide you with lots of free traffic. It is possible to have the same article listed several times on Page #1 of Google from a number of article directories. Google appear to be very lenient to article directories with respect to duplicate content.

These are the four ways. However, it need not only be regular websites to which you direct readers of the article and links from it. You can also use a Squidoo lens, your blog, your Facebook or MySpace page or any of a 101 other types of page available on the internet.

B. Writing articles as content to promote your work at home business enables you to benefit in two major ways:

1. Nobody knows your business better than you, and if you write honestly and intelligently, then that knowledge will be obvious. It is very important that you persuade visitors to your website that you are an expert in your subject, and content rich articles published on your web pages is the best type of content you can offer people seeking information. Guess what? Most people use search engines to find information, and if you can provide that, then they will be more inclined to purchase your product or use your service.

2. Search engines love content-rich web pages, and if yours is also properly SEO optimized for your keyword, then you will have a great chance of being listed in a sufficiently high position on Google or any of the other search engines so as to provide you with lots of free traffic.

These are the major reasons why writing articles is important to your online work at home business, but there is one proviso associated with each of them. You must know how to write articles in such a way that people will read them, and then continue reading them to the end where they will find your resource, and you must also know how to write that resource so as to compel people to click on the URL you provide within it.

Irrespective of how good a writer you believe yourself to be, it is not writing ability that counts, but the ability to write articles optimized for search engines and that people will want to read, and also how to select the right keywords so that your article gets a #1 spot, while those of your competitors compete against each other leaving you to clean up.

Writing articles is more than just putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), but of promoting your online work at home business both to search engine spiders and to real people that want to learn more and will visit your website, blog or Squidoo lens to find what they want to learn. You, yourself, have to learn how to do that properly, but if you succeed than you will have the best free advertising on the planet at your fingertips, and a dam of traffic just waiting to burst and flood your website or blog. Just for writing articles!