Here are nine ways in which articles can increase your website's traffic.

One. Increased page rankings. Search engines index your pages primarily based on the number and quality of links coming in to each page. The quality of links is partially determined by the relevance of the keywords used in the link text. Distributing your articles to relevant article directories is a great way of getting quality, one-way links.

Two. On-Page Search Engine Optimisation. On page factors are still important determinants of your web sites search ranking. Keyword location and density are both very important. By building your site using keyword rich articles you quickly build pages with built in on-page optimisation

Three. Web site content. For most people, surfing the web is all about finding relevant content. Using keyword rich articles is a great way to build relevant content. If you have great content you will start to get traffic through simple word of mouth referrals.

Four. Key word rich titles. The titles of articles are a major factor in getting articles read. They are also often used as the descriptions used in your search engine results. Customers like titles that sound like information they want. Titles that lead to interesting, pertinent articles will, consequently, please customers and increase your web traffic.

Five. Get your web site indexed quickly. Distributing your articles to good quality directories and web sites provides many links for the search engines to follow back to your site. The more links for the search engines and the more likely your site is to be listed quickly.

Six. Crank up the output. Many people create one article, post it to a directory and expect the traffic to pour in. Sadly, it does often happen this way. The key to masses of traffic is masses of articles. Developing a plan for regularly creating and distributing articles is the real key to generating traffic from articles.

Seven. Keep visitors on your site for longer. Using high quality, relevant, themed articles on your web site is likely to entice your visitors to stay for longer. While this in itself does not increase the web traffic, visitors staying for longer means that they are more likely to buy, click on your ads or do whatever else you want your visitors to do.

Eight. Get more repeat visitors. Getting more repeat visitors is the holy grail of web traffic. High quality content from articles encourages repeat visitors.

Nine. Establish yourself as the recognised expert. Articles are a great way of increasing your own reputation. Writing and publishing articles is a brilliant for this. It's amazing just how much traffic you can get when people start using your name as a search term because they see you as the expert.

There are many more ways to use articles to promote your website: article exchanges, posting to forums, publishing in established ezines... The list is long and will have to wait for another article. For now the key is to get started on building your article empire.