Things have changed in the business of article writing. It used to be a lot easier to get a top five to ten page ranking consistently. All you had to do before Google cracked down was hire some cheap writers in India who could bang out a vast number of articles that were keyword rich. Now these early article submission sites still work, but not as well as they used to and it's getting more complicate to be successful using them. But make no mistake, articles are still a great method to grab links and exposure for your site.

However, there are a few things you should look at before you submit to an article site. For instance, make sure the one you're thinking of is in the Google cache and has positive PR. The site should have more than 500 articles with some experts suggesting up to one thousand and the site should be at least two years old. The name is important as well. Watch out for ones than have more than one hyphen.

You can ignore some of the rules above if the site has a niche. As well another good angle is to create a network of webmasters that work in your niche and build your own list. You'll want to keep writing and submitting all the time as readers are always after fresh content and stick close to 10 of 15 good sites. Play by the game as well. Fewer and higher quality is what the market is looking for now. As well, you can try offering to exchange articles with links. Be forewarned here though. Most sites won't respond to this kind of offer but those that do are the kind of places you want to do business with anyway.

Another good method is to vary footer and anchor text. Here you'll want to submit each article in a slightly different manner. Try including the links with a footer bio. For each syndication site all little variations work as well. Try varying the bio and footer text here as well. The results you get should be pleasing. Although it may sound strange, it's not a good idea to build your entire strategy for linking on articles. You should always be ready to use the directory submissions and one way links and to keep using these techniques.

Here's another good idea for variation. Write two sets of the same article and keep one for you and your website. Send a shorter version to other places in the hopes of getting some syndication for it. The idea here is to try and diversify the methods you use to go after links and to try and use several different ones.

Remember not to make one critical mistake. Don't mistake the reason you need to write articles. They generate traffic. Links are just an added bonus. Firing out articles for links will land you in trouble. Interesting articles that are well crafted drives traffic.