Whooo. The economy is bad. People are out of jobs. Some are looking to internet marketing as a way to make some extra cash. So, if you are a newbie, and you are looking for a way to promote your website that is free, and effective, you should submit articles to article directories. But, before you start, here are four things you must do.



Know your purpose

Okay, we all know you are looking for traffic to your website. But that is not your real purpose. Your real purpose is to inform your target audience. If you put up a bunch of gobbledeegook, your target audience will not be interested in reading the entire article and will never get to your resource box at the end to follow your link for more information. Ergo, no traffic to your website.

So, do yourself a favor. Provide interesting, informative, content. Make your audience want to read the entire article. This is how to submit articles to article directories that will be read.

Research your keywords beforehand

Now that you know you have to write an informative article that makes sense, you need to know what keywords to sprinkle throughout your article. Pick two to three keyword phrases (aka long-tail keywords) only. You can do your keyword research on several sites.

--Google Adwords Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)

--SEO Book Keywords Suggestion tool (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-----tools/seobook/)

--Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/)

Just plug in a generic phrase, like submitting articles, and see what results you get. Pick keywords that will naturally flow into your content and give you the most bang for your buck. Don't release a flood of keywords (like every other sentence). This will be viewed as spammy and ignored by the search engines.Sprinkle them throughout the article. This is how to submit articles to article directories that will be picked up by the search engines.

Make your bio or author box a call to action

So often, you read the entire article on a site, get to the resource box and read something like this:

"Joe Jones is a very good writer and writes about stuff on his website www.I-Write-About-Interesting-Stuff.com"

Yeah, well who cares. That doesn't call me to action. You want the reader to follow the link to your website:

--For more information

--For a free download

--To sign up for a newsletter

--To purchase a product

--And so on

So, instead of the blasé article resource box above, it could go something like this:

"Joe Jones unlocks the secret of stuff. Click here to download his free guide to stuff."

See, you are calling the reader to action. Inviting them to download something is an action. This is how to submit articles to article directories that get the reader to click the link back to your site.

Submit lots of articles

You can't just submit one article to one article directory and expect a flood of traffic to come your way. To submit articles to article directories is a lengthy process (some take weeks to approve). To get any kind of results in the search engines, you need hundreds of quality backlinks to your site. Which means lots of articles being submitted across lots of directories. That's lots of logins and passwords and forms to fill out for each manual submission to an article directory.

To make it simpler for you, there is such a think as automatic article submit software that takes the sting out of the repetitiveness of manual article submission. The article submit software prefills all of those boring forms with your title, keywords, summary, content and resource boxes. Usually, all you have to do is pick a category for your article to fall under.

If you are serious about internet marketing, purchasing an article submit software is probably well worth while. It really does save a ton of time.