If you're not promoting your website with articles yet, get started. Submitting articles to article directories is one of the best ways to:


1. Establish yourself as an expert in your field.

2. Get one-way links to your website which will help you with your search engine position.

3. Bring you traffic from people reading your article.

With all the talk about links and pagerank going around lately, number 3 on the list gets missed by most article authors. A lot of authors forget how this whole article thing became popular in the first place. People are on the internet to find information. And right or wrong, they expect to get it for free. They arent online looking for you or your latest business. Give them what they want. Give them an informative, well researched article about a topic they're interested in and they'll read every word of it.

If your article is good enough they may even click on the link in your resource box to read more from you. Everyone is in such a big hurry to pump out as many articles they can to boost their search engine ranking that they forget that they can actually get the best quality traffic from the article itself.

Who do you think is more likely to buy from you? Someone who found you on a search engine or someone who read your article and liked it so much that they actually took the time to click on your resource box link.

You provided the reader with something they needed. You gave them valuable information they needed on a topic important to them. What's more, you gave it to them for free. Talk about great pre-selling. This is going to be the best pre-qualified visitor you can get. Don't forget, you got the click for free too. This is better traffic then you can get from the big pay-per click search engines.

OK. You've written your well researched article with an enticing resource box. Now what. Are you going to just submit your article to the three biggest article directories or are you going to take the time to submit to the small directories too? A lot of people make the mistake of just submitting to the big directories and they entirely skip the hundreds of smaller directories out their. I think that's a big mistake. If you've got a really good article, you'll want to post it at as many places as you can.

Authors see a small or new article directory and don't want to bother with it. But all directories were new at one time. Even if it's small now, if it's got a clean layout and looks decent, go ahead and submit there. If the owner of the directory is a real go-getter, he or she may build that new directory into a high ranking, big traffic site in no time. Also, it's easier for your article to get noticed if it's 1 in 1,000 compared to 1 in 150,000.

You'll especially want to submit your article to niche article directories. These types of directories get more real readers. Someone interested in gardening might go to a popular garden site that offers free gardening articles. If you write articles about gardening, then this is a great place for you to submit to. Instead of hoping some big publisher will pick up your article, you'll actually get real readers seeing your article and clicking on your resource link. What better traffic could you hope for?

The big directories might get looked at by publishers more but you're after real readers too, not just publishers. How many times has a publisher with a really huge list grabbed your article and published it in their newsletter. If they have, then congratulations. If not, then you may be leaving money on the table by not catering more to real readers instead of just to publishers.

Brad Bahr is the editor of two article directories where he helps authors to gain publicity with free article submissions at: http://www.articleclips.com and http://www.health-article-archive.com