I love to use articles to promote my websites, for the simple reason that it works. Ever since I first read Jim Edward's ebook Turn Words into Traffic, at the beginning of my online adventure, I've seen the power of article marketing. Then Captain Tim Gorman recently came out with a free ebook that gave an almost fool-proof day-to-day formula for using this system to bring any website, with almost any keywords, to the top of the search engine rankings.

I suspect that more people don't do it because of the boring part of article marketing that I hate doing. Unfortunately, it's the part that comes right at the beginning of the process. It can take hours to get set up to mass-submit your articles, and those hours seem like time "stolen" from activities that appear to be more important.

Here's the bottom line - you can get hundreds of one-way backlinks to your site by submitting just one article - then, of course, you'll want to continue submitting articles once a day or once a week to keep your search engine ranking and to get more links. There are several article submission software programs out there that will help you do it. But before any of those programs work, you have to actually create usernames, passwords, and pen names in every single article directory where you want your articles to appear.

Leave out any of the steps, and even the best automated systems can't possibly work.

There are 400 to 600 article directories now, and the number is growing every day. Some of the directories can get your article on the top of the search engines overnight, if it's a hot topic or the article is well written. Except for the big and popular sites, most of the directories are only good for the one-way links that search engines love. Even if nobody ever reads your article on those directories, it's still worth the effort to get those links.

Unless you can hire your teenager or someone in India to do the directory account setup (the boring part) for you, here's how you do it:

First, you find the list of article directories that your software program will submit to. (You can also submit articles by hand, and there are websites that will give you lists of article directories that accept submissions, but you would spend your life doing it by hand. A good submission software program costs under $80, so it's worth it.)

Then click on the first directory on the list, find their signup button, and fill in the form. Be sure to use the auto fill button on your Google toolbar for this part of the process to speed things up, and use an email account that you don't mind filling up with junk. I use a free Yahoo account for this purpose only. Always use the same password for every directory, to make it easy to set up your submission software later - but I make sure to use a password that I don't use for anything else - just in case.

Then click the agreement box and submit your registration info. You'll get a confirmation screen, which directs you back to your email account. Find the email they just sent, click on the activation link inside the email, and you will get another confirmation screen. Now go back to the directory's main page, log in with your email address and password, and add a pen name. You can add several pen names if you want.

The first time I used my article submission program, I signed up for hundreds of directories by hand but I didn't realize they almost all required a "pen name". I started the software with my new article, and then wandered off to do something else. The program chugged away for several hours, trying to submit my article to every directory site, and yet my article didn't actually show up on any of them because the pen name was missing big mistake.

Once you have your logon, your password, and your pen name, go out to your submission software and input the information. That doesn't seem like it would take much time, does it? But multiply that by 4 to 600 directories, and you can see why most of your competitors are probably not using this powerful link-building system.

It sounds boring, and it is - believe me. But the rewards are well worth it. Article marketing can bring enough traffic to your website so you don't have to pay for any advertising at all. If you can find the patience to set up those article directory accounts (or have a young member of your family do it for you), you'll be ready to move your website to the top of the search engines, for free.