These are two very distinct questions that many just don't understand. Do you ask yourself; why should I write an article about selling toilet seats? Or, why should I waste my time? Nobody is going to read it. Or, you want me to pay money to distribute my article where? Writing articles is one of the most important aspects of any sales and marketing campaign, regardless of business type. Why? Writing articles demonstrates knowledge. Knowledge creates credibility. Credibility creates consumer comfort. Consumer comfort creates spending and well earnt profits. Now lets discuss some further avenues that are not well known.

Writing Articles, Why?
Some Technicalities That Many Overlook

Simply put - articles promote. Any business, that has an Internet presence, needs to write articles on their products and services. How does the world, country, city or local community, that you service, know that your product or service is of a high standard? Consumers are more aware than ever before.  Quality, quantity, reasonable cost, perhaps freebies and definitely after sales service is what they want. Everyone asks questions when purchasing or looking to purchase products and services. Honestly, if I don't know anything about an item, I ask around for advice from others, knowledge, personal experience and so on. Having descriptive and informative detail about your products is essential, now more than ever with an online business. What better place to express yourself than an article?

Writing articles online to promote in conjunction with your website, demonstrates an active interest and sound knowledge base of your products or services. If you have an image intensive website, without a lot of room for text, then it's a sure bet to place a little hyperlink pointing directly to your product and services articles. Problem solved? Especially online, articles are generally text driven! Search engines only read text, not images. So, sounds like an all round smart idea. I can't find one bad thing about writing articles on your products, services, industry or technology advancements. Can you?

Marketing Articles, What For?
Marketing Articles Online Has More Substance Than Meets The Eye

Well, if your handing out product brochures to clients, generally they already know about you. What about the hundreds, thousands and millions  of potential clients that don't know about you. Let them find you with a little effort on your behalf. Contrary to popular beliefs, marketing articles does not require the assistance of a third party. Well not if your willing to save yourself some money, with a little effort. If you simply purchase Ezine Announcer from http://www.ezineannouncer.com or similar, you will be well on your way to successful article marketing. The program is simple and easy to use, and yes, I use it myself. It comes with complete training to get you on the road to successful article writing and publishing.

It doesn't matter what your specialty is, someone will want to know about it. Lets use Google as an example here. Google's PageRank system calculates Google's importance factor of your website. Now, say you find an all important website with a page relevant to your product that holds a PR7. Guess what? To advertise on that page, your going to pay money, unless you are extremely lucky. However, if you have an article that complements that webpage, you can send that to the owner and hopefully have it published on that page for free. That's a win win approach for both website owners. At the bottom of every article you ensure a link to your website remains, and make copyright to stay that way. Now, a different approach, same end result. You have a link from an important page back to your website all because of your article. The other website owner has relevant content to enhance their site with no extra work required. Articles do that.

Now, lets stay with the Google example. You do that a few times and suddenly Google ranks your website as important. What does that mean? It means that Google will rank your website slightly higher for relevant terms because it has quality inbound links reported from complementing websites to yours. Higher rankings mean more targeted traffic. More targeted traffic, means more sales. And so the circle of life continues. Without even breaking an hour or so of your time and US$69 for the marketing software, you will see the rewards within a few months. Now that is only one search engine as an example. The problem is, you don't know what the other search engines do and do not deem as important websites. So, go with the Google guide and you should be close enough with the other engines. That's about all PageRank is good for. (Lets not confuse PageRank with higher rankings either! Relevant links make higher rankings, not PageRank)

Conclusion
You Should Be Thinking About The Content Of Your First Article Now

Can articles determine the fate of an online businesses success? Possibly. You can well establish now, that there is no down side to writing and publishing articles online, only positives. When it comes to marketing your business, website or information, there is no such thing as too much marketing. I don't know about you, but I can always do with more sales, more satisfied customers and more publicity. If you think like that, you'll have great success with your online marketing. Writing articles is what its all about for credibility, so get cracking, purchase some quality marketing software and start writing. If you struggle with the written work, then employ a professional copywriter to put together those killer articles on your behalf, or at least proof read them anyway. Good luck and happy writing!

Australian company providing long term search engine ranking services, which includes optimization, copywriting and search engine submission.
http://search-engine-optimisation.anthonyparsons.com