We all know that the key to successful business on the Internet is to actually get people to visit your site. After all, if they never find their way to your site, they can hardly purchase a product or service from you. With the millions of websites out there, the prospect of getting customers to yours might seem a bit daunting. For real success, your website must rank highly on search engines so that it's seen and clicked to.

Article writing is an excellent means of quickly boosting your search engine ratings. In fact, writing articles and using them as marketing tools -- known as article marketing -- has become an exceedingly popular means of drawing visitors to the websites of the authors. Not only does it provide a way for the authors to share their knowledge about their field, it also helps to establish them as experts, and gives web surfers a way to find the authors' websites.

To effectively use article marketing, you'll need to write a number of good, informational articles that are related in some way to your field. For example, if you sell fishing lures, you might write articles about everything from the best fishing spots to the various species of fish. If you've suddenly gotten a case of the cold sweats at the thought of having to write, relax! It's really much easier than you might think.

The articles don't need to be terribly long -- anywhere between 400 and 800 words will do just fine. That's only a page to a page and a half of text. Your articles do need to be well-written and informative while making good use of keywords, though.

Before you begin to write, do a bit of research on popular search terms related to your field. You can do this for free using keyword research tools provided by many websites or you can purchase a sophisticated software application to assist you. Either way, just make sure you know which words people who are interested in what you have to offer will use to search and use them sensibly within your articles.

In addition to good use of keywords, each of your articles must include a strong resource box describing what you do and a link to your website. This link in combination with keywords will help dramatically boost your search engine rankings.

You see, each time someone posts your article on their site along with your resource box, another link back to your website is created. And, since many search engines use keyword relevance in combination with the number of links to your site to determine where your website will fall in their rankings, the more links that are out there, the better off you'll be.

To make sure your articles reach as many sites as possible, you'll have to submit them to article directories. If you're uncertain where to find a directory, simply search for "article directory" or "article marketing" and you'll find links to many sites offering such services. Use many of them since it will help your article spread more quickly. Some of them are free and some require a subscriber fee. Either way, be sure you check out their terms of service to find a good fit with your goals.

If you're still quaking at the idea of writing, many article directories also offer article writing services. The best ones will take the keywords and topics you specify and turn them into great articles that you can attach your resource box to and use in almost any manner you see fit.

Because of its effectiveness, article marketing has become an extremely popular means of boosting website traffic and search rankings. Fortunately, it's also a relatively inexpensive marketing tool. It's really a win-win situation -- your articles provide prospective clients with interesting, informative reading and you get better search rankings.