The significant income to be earned from online business has attracted many entrepreneurs. Consequently, the numbers of websites that offer products and services over the net continues to increase. With so much competition in the online market, most businesses do not stand a chance in this congested environment.

In order to gain advantage over their competitors, business owners are increasingly resorting to techniques designed to enhance their website's visibility and position in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Whilst several search engine optimization strategies have proven their worth, increasing website traffic is not an easy exercise. When you submit your website to search engine directories, it may take a while before your website gets listed by them and results may therefore take time to show. For any business, 'time is money' and should therefore not be wasted. Some, usually with deep pockets, hire the services of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals who can manage the optimization plan for them.

Article submission on the internet has come to assume a remarkable prominence. No SEO expert would dismiss this strategy. In fact, submission of search engine optimized articles is now a main stream ingredient in any effective internet marketing strategy. How does it increase website traffic? Simple… With each article submitted to a directory comes the opportunity to submit a resource box ( or 'bio') containing details of the author or of the business referred to, which may contain 1 or 2 hyperlinks to a site of the author's choice. This process originated long ago with the advent of early forms of newsletter.

Newsletters were, and still are, often published on a daily or weekly basis. Editors are always on the lookout for good content. However, while it has always been difficult for them to source the quantity of articles needed, it is often impracticable or simply uneconomic for them to pay for continuing content. For that reason and the fact that few people would write an article without some sort of return, someone suggested an innovative arrangement. In exchange for content to be published at no cost, the author would be permitted to include a small advertisement below the article. This has now evolved in to the modern internet marketing practice of submitted articles having a 'bio box' at the end of the article. A typical resource bio contains simplified information about the author or the business and usually a hyperlink to his own website.

To understand how these article submissions bring about an increase in website traffic, compare a modern article on the web to the ubiquitous offline paper flyer, where contact numbers and the address for a product or service are printed, for traditional marketing purposes. The more flyers distributed, the more people can view the advertisement. In the same way with online marketing, the more articles you submit, the more website links you can advertise and the more open market visibility is gained. The more visibility the more website traffic.