Writing articles and article services are essential to your online success, and if you don't use article marketing in your online business, the perhaps you should. If you want to make money online, writing articles will make it significantly easier for you to be successful. Why is that? The answer is amazingly simple, and to get it for yourself you have to consider what makes your online business what it is. Have you got it?

Customers! Customers are what make you money. I keep hearing about traffic being the all-important target for any internet marketer, or anybody trying to make money online. But is that right? Of course not - it's customers. You can have as much traffic as you want, but if nobody buys anything then you will fail. What then the value of your traffic?

So instead of trying to attract traffic, perhaps we should be trying to attract customers. If somebody doing an internet search using a keyword sees your site and clicks on the link - that's traffic. They might have a quick look and leave. They might even check two or three pages after your home page and then leave. They still leave! You have had traffic but no customers. So why did they leave?

Likely because your site and what it had to offer did not appeal to them or did not meet their needs. Now they are gone forever and will never return - but that's another problem and something for another article (though I might touch upon it later!).

Now, let's assume that your visitor had been attracted on the same keyword search to a web page providing them with a good report on the topic of what they are seeking, and giving them some guidelines as how to achieve it. Not only that, but this page also provide you with a resource URL that offered you a lot more information on the topic for which you are interested in getting more information.

What are you going to do? Visit it of course, and you will read that web page. You might also purchase a product offered on it that will help to solve your problem. You will almost definitely sign up for a newsletter or a free gift that offers you more information on the problem you are trying to solve.

So where could that initial web page be coming from? It's not your web site, that's for sure. So where? An article directory! It's no longer a surprise that many of the search engine results pages are populated by article directory pages containing articles that could easily be yours. Directories are getting better at optimizing their pages for search engines, and writers are improving the SEO of their articles, particularly those written by professional article writers.

Once they visit your article, as opposed to your website, they either find something focused on their problem or they don't. If they don't then they leave, but they are not leaving your website - they are leaving a page on the article directory.

However, if they read the article through, and they like it, and want more information, then they will click on the link in your resource and visit your web page. That web page will be relevant to the topic of the article (unless you are a dodo), and you have the potential of a customer.

So that's why article marketing is so important to you, and article services can help you achieve that. Writing articles might seem simple, but if you want your article directory page to be listed on Google then you have to write it in such a way as to be attractive to search engine spiders. If you are seeking online success, then professionals can do it better than you.