This benefits you in a number of ways: The article is published on its own page in each directory and each gives you a back link to the URL quoted in the resource. The published page can be listed on Google and the other search engines in the same way as any other web page can be, and many of these appear on the first page of Google for the keyword for which the article has been optimized.

However, that's assuming that the article has been properly optimized for the keyword, and that is a skill in itself. Many good writers have no idea how to go about optimizing a web page using good keyword density and latent semantic indexing principles. LSI, use of keywords and the use of semantic relevance to indicate the relevance of a web page to search terms used by search engine users is a skill that has to be learned, and part of that is understanding how search engine algorithms work. Professional article writers understand, but others have to be taught these skills.

Readers of the article also have the opportunity to click on the URL if they like your article and want to know more, and furthermore, other webmasters are permitted by the directories to copy the article for use on their own websites, assuming that they retain the author's resource section, complete with your URL.

Writing articles, therefore, enables your web page to be advertised in a number of different ways: on the directory itself, on another person's website and through a prominent listing on Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine assuming that it has been effectively optimized. You can submit your article to an unlimited number of directories or ezines, and the more that accept it for publication the better. You need not change it for each, though it helps if you do. It's not necessary though.

You can effectively advertise your website by writing articles and submitting the same one to as many different directories as you can. Google will not punish you, but over time will start to drop those listings where the article appears elsewhere. However, that takes time - several weeks, and you can compensate for that by writing at least one article a week.

When writing articles, however, it is best to write a slightly different version of each for each directory or ezine, and so avoid the duplicate content penalty. There are ways to achieve this easily and quickly, although many 'article spinning' techniques can produce articles that make little sense, or read badly and can do more harm than good to your site.

Trying to do that manually can be difficult, particularly if you have a number of websites to maintain. Writing articles can become a chore rather than the fun it should be, and you will eventually see your web pages drop down the listings till they disappear altogether. That will certainly happen if you submit the same article to every different directory and ezine.

The answer is to have your articles written for you by an article ghost writer. You pay the ghost writer to write your articles, but in all respects the article is yours. Your name goes with it as author, your URL is in the resource and you own the copyright. If a writer keeps the copyright, then don't pay them since they are writing on your behalf, not selling you their article and retaining copyright.

A professional ghost writer can rapidly write several versions of the same article, and if each paragraph is written in a different way, you can mix them all up to provide loads of different articles.

There are no doubts at all that the advertising you get through article marketing is far superior to that from having your website URL listed in a website directory, or from quoting it in forums. Writing articles gets your web pages noticed by readers who have an interest in the topic of your article and who are likely to click through to your website.

Make the landing page a squeeze page, and you can capture their names and email addresses, and so keep in touch with them by providing free tips, courses, free eBooks and the like, and then, occasionally, offers for your products.

That is the best way to market your products and your website, and writing articles is the only way that some people use to advertise. Apart from the cost of the ghost writer, it is free and very effective. Writing articles and using article marketing as an advertising technique makes sense since it has repeatedly been proved to work, and brings you a far better return on advertising costs than most other advertising techniques.