One problem faced by home based business owners is how to successfully market their business. The importance of having a web presence cannot be over emphasised, however, it is no longer enough to just have a website without using proactive marketing strategies to promote it.In order to get visitors to your website who are interested in your product or service, an important, popular and effective form of marketing to utilise is article marketing. For anyone running a top home based business, article marketing is an important element in the marketing mix.Article marketing is a form of website promotion which allows the owner of a website to write articles and post them on Ezine Articles or other article sites for syndication. These articles need to focus on certain keywords relevant to the business that the website is promoting and are provided free of charge to those who are interested in using them.There are several benefits to using articles to market a business but the most important one is that it attracts visitors to a website and these visitors are not just random people who stray by accidentally, but are actually those who are interested in the site and may become potential customers.Another benefit is that article marketing can be used for search engine optimisation. Most people go to search engines like Google to search for what interests them. When a particular keyword or keyphrase is searched for, the websites that show up in the first few pages are usually the only ones that get any visits from that search. Very few people are willing to go beyond the first few search result pages when searching for websites that might have solutions to their problems.In order for a website to feature in those early pages, that website would have to be optimised for search engines. The process of search engine optimisation includes link building which is where the use of article marketing comes in.Most article marketing sites allow articles to be posted for free. In return, those articles are available to users to read and also re-use on their sites or blogs. If an article is well written and has a catchy heading, it is likely to get re-posted on a number of sites and if the article contains a link back to the site of the author, it makes that site attractive to search engines.The three essentials to remember are the heading, the body and the resource section. Most sites that allow articles to be submitted for marketing purposes often have several other articles in the same niche. As such, in order for a particular article to stand out so that a user will notice and take interest in it, it needs to have a catchy heading. This is what draws people to the article in the first place.After attracting maximum attention, the quality of content is what would ensure that the article will be used on another website or blog. Articles that are well written and most importantly, unique in content, are more likely to get re-used a number of times.The resource box is where information about the author including the website is posted. For most submission sites, this is the only place where a link is allowed to be placed. If the resource box is engaging enough, people tend to click through to the website.Article marketing is generally free and is a great way for home based businesses to get good levels of exposure. This is one source of online marketing that should not be ignored by anyone running a top home based business as the results can be very rewarding. It’s a marketing strategy that I would highly recommend.