These directories have an ever changing, ever growing amount of quality content on a huge number of subjects. Because of this, they are attractive to Google, Yahoo and MSN. The article directories are indexed constantly by the search engines, so posting articles will also increase the speed at which your site is indexed, provided your articles link back to your site. It is not uncommon to submit an article, and have it show up in Google search results in a matter of hours.

A well written article may be featured on the front page of one of the directories and syndicated to numerous other directories, increasing the effectiveness of your article exponentially, virtually over night. I posted an article to ezinearticles.com recently, and that is exactly what happened. I submitted my article to one place, and it is now on over 300 web sites.

Your articles will provide backlinks to your site via your author bio. Your prospective customers will read your articles and follow the link to your site if they find your information useful. My one article, now displayed on over 300 web sites increases traffic to my site, increases links back to my site, increases my exposure to the market place, improves my search engine ranking, and ultimately, adds subscribers to my mailing list.

Articles can also be used as content for your blog, your web site, or you can compile a collection of articles on the same topic together into an e-book or report, giving you a valuable, exclusive product to market to your customers.

If you have a web site or blog and you are trying to market products or make money with your site, you will do well to invest the time in writing original, interesting, informative articles about the subject of your web site and submitting them to the article directories.

It doesn't have to take you a lot of time either, maybe 30 minutes a day, and in a relatively short amount of time, you can start to see increases in your traffic, search engine placement and sales.