This is how it works .. .

Apart from the general public, the people who visit article directories on a very regular basis are people who own websites or blogs, looking for good content for their site. This works greatly in our favor, because the number of blogs has exploded and they all need content. And you can add to that the direction in which the search engines are nudging the internet is towards more content, particularly articles.

The search engines say this is to "improve visitor experience", which is probably true. The cynics might add this is really to increase the amount of article real estate which are the perfect medium on which to place the search engine's contextual advertising!

Perhaps both are correct, but the important thing from our point of view is there has never been a better time to write articles, because there has never been such an insatiable appetite for them. This means you will have an increasing number of places who are happy to post your articles, which will attract an increasing number of excellent visitors to your site.

This really is a perfect win-win arrangement for you, because your article gives them what they want - content for their website - and you get what you want, which is people, having read your article on their website, coming to your site, in droves, following up from what they have already read in your article.

Now here's the really important bit:

In order for the webmaster to be able to legally publish my article on their website, they have to comply with one simple condition. This condition is that they publish the article in its entirety, unaltered. "In its entirety" means they have to include the final section at the bottom of the article, which is really an advert for me and my site.

So, by submitting articles to directories, not only do you attract tons of visitors, you also get plenty of valuable back links coming to your website to increase your ratings with the search engines. Eventually, these will build up and make an appreciable difference to your position on the search engine results pages. Other people spend fortunes on consultants and software to achieve this. Yet you'll do it merely as an automatic by product of your article marketing. Result: even more free traffic for you!

One of the very best - if not the best - ways to get noticed and promoted by the search engines is to get plenty of links from other websites coming back to your site. But just getting any old links won't do it. You need specific types of links.

You need one way links to your site. These are often hard to get because most sites will only give you a link from their site to your site, if you give a link back to their site. This is called "reciprocal linking". Now, whilst that's not quite as good as a one way link, provided you can get a link of higher value coming to your site than the link you send back in exchange, you've done good! That's like giving five dollars and getting ten back.

There's just one problem .. . Why would a website with high quality links on offer send a link to you, when all you can send them back is a low value link? That would be like them giving you ten dollars in exchange for five. Not a very good deal for them. So it's a bit chicken and egg: until you get loads of links and become a high value site worth linking to, nobody of any value will want to link to you. But .. . until you get those nice back links, you'll never be a site worth linking to!

But there are some sites that are happy to send you one - even two - live links to your website, irrespective of the current standing of your site and without requiring a link back. And not only will these be a very desirable one way back link, it will also be of the finest quality.

Guess what these sites are called. Yup! You've guessed right .. . the article directories!

Many article directories have high page ranks, often 5 or more, and a link from them can immediately increase your website's SEO score.