I have written quite a few articles about articles and their benefits, thinking to myself that I really understood the nature of articles and article marketing. For certain, after what I have experienced in the past couple of months with my own online home based business opportunity, I did not. As a matter of fact, I knew very little as to why I had to write and submit articles as the gurus instructed. I heard that it was because of the one way back links to my own web site. But that was not enough to motivate me. Eight months ago, I did not even know what a back link was. Instead, I focused on other aspects of internet marketing like Adwords, blogging, linking, list building and email marketing. These are all excellent endeavors, and they will help build the long term foundation that will eventually lead to success, but if you do incorporate article marketing into the repertoire of your internet marketing efforts, you will see improvements in the volume of website traffic to the tune of thousands, not the leanness that most marketers experience.

Articles are important for anyone with a website, big or small. Even an established online home based business opportunity is like a basketball with a leak in it. You have to keep pumping it up on a regular basis. There is a reason they say that the search engines like fresh content. The fresh content gets the most attention. The submission of one article to one article directory does not equal one back link to your website. It could mean thousands of back links to your website.

This can be explained by looking at a typical article directory. Each article is assigned a unique URL which is equal to one back link. Did you ever notice the article contents surroundings? These are the places that article back links multiply.

1. Featured (front page) - If your article is fortunate enough to land in the featured section of an article directory it is worth an additional back link in the search engines, the front page of an article directory is a web page after all. It is probably the most important and the highest pr web page of the article directory.

2. Article categories - Most article directories have a category column. If you go into the category that you chose when submitting the article, you will find your article. The same one that has not only the unique, but also the featured url. This makes 3 back links.

3. Author profile - All of your articles will show up under the author's page or profile.

4. Most popular - If an article directory has one, the most popular articles, those having been read the most, will also have a web page of it's own. This makes 5 back links for one article.

5. Recent - Most article directories display a list of the most recent article submissions on their front page. Of course, since so many articles are submitted, they usually do not stay there for very long. Yet for a few days you will have 6 back links for the same article.

6. RSS or copying- this is where the internet shines. Five or six back links per article is never enough. You ever hear that webmasters are looking for fresh content for their WebPages? If nothing else, your article is being found sitting in an article directory, usually a very popular and high pr article directory, and "scraped" into a new web page by a very different website.

Actually this is repeated by the thousands, especially if you submit the article to a couple of hundred high pr article directories. This is mostly done to build additional Adsense web pages and is income motivated. They are not stealing your article, only borrowing it on the condition that they leave your author's information intact, and thus creating yet another back link. It is these thousands of back links that actually push your web page to the top of the search engines quickly. Seem like a lot of work? Use one of the popular article submitter applications.

Once your online home based business opportunity web page is on page one of the search engines it just becomes a matter of keeping it there. This is where regular article maintenance comes in. Monitor an article title's back links by searching it in the search engines with quotes around it to find the total number of back links the one article is creating. Count the number of days it takes to reach it's peak and start back down. That is when you will need to submit another article. Depending on the size of your niche market this could be daily, every few days, weekly, or even monthly.

With regular traffic you should start making some money from your online home based business opportunity. You don't have to write all of these articles yourself. There are many ghost writing services that are more than willing to help you on your way to success. Just keep up the routine and your online home based business opportunity will behave like an automobile that is being injected with nitrous.