If you are using articles to promote your business then I don't need to tell you that including the URL to your website in the resource box at the end of your articles represents payment for the hard work involved in writing and submitting those articles.

But, if you're including just one URL, instead of the two allowed my many article announcement sites, then your reward could come in the form or orange juice instead of champagne.

One of the first rules of marketing, which applies whether you're writing sales copy or an article to promote your business, is to give your reader one simple message and, having delivered that message, to clearly ask that reader to take one single action.

For this reason, people often believe that your article resource box should contain just one single call to action and, accordingly, just one single URL link. And I would agree wholeheartedly, if it were not for one simple thing ? the search engines.

Yes, article marketing is indeed about getting your message out to as wide an audience as possible so that they can read it and, hopefully, click through to visit your website. But it is also very much about getting your article posted on websites across the internet and building links to please the search engines ? particularly Google and Yahoo.

Now the subject of building links to please the search engines is a little beyond the scope of this short article, but I'd like to give you just one example of why I believe that you're leaving money on the table if you don't add a second link to your resource box.

Suppose your article is posted on a website and that the page containing your article has a PR (Google Page Ranking) of say 4, which is derived from a points score given to the page by Google. For a PR4 page this score could fall anywhere within a fairly broad range, but might for the sake of illustration be 3000 points.

This page, through your resource box link back to your website will pass some of that PR to your own website page. Exactly how much will depend on a number of factors, including the total number of links on the page that contains your article. But, If there are a total of 10 links, then your resource box link could pass somewhere in the region of 250 points back to your website page. Enough to give that page a PR3 ranking from this one link alone.

But suppose that instead of having just a single link in your resource box you have two. The page containing your article will now have a total of 11 links and each will pass a slightly lower score, of perhaps 230 points, but this is still enough to give not one but now two pages on your site a PR3 ranking.

Now take this small illustration and imagine your article being posted on hundreds of websites, many with little or no PR, but others adding your article to PR4, PR5 or even PR6 pages. If you think that getting your article on a PR5 or PR6 page is dreaming believe me it isn't. I know from experience that this article will appear on several PR5 and PR6 pages within 24 to 48 hours of my submitting it.

Now, take this illustration one step further and image submitting not one article, but hundreds of articles.

While article writing is still very much about getting your message out to a wide audience of readers, it is also increasingly about building link popularity with the search engines and gaining PR to raise your profile in the search engine listings.

Love or hate the search engines they play an increasingly important role in promoting your business and your article resource box can play a vital role in ensuring that you get those champagne top listings, rather than those orange juice second page spots.

Donald Saunders is the author of a number of Internet Marketing guides including 20 Major Marketing Mistakes. Writing articles is one of the keys to your internet success, but submitting those articles is hard work. Follow this link and discover the secret to easy article submission.