A few years ago article directories began popping up all over the place and ordinary people began the difficult task of learning to write articles. Today things have changed.

Article writing is not enough anymore because the quality of many article writers has improved. Plus the way you use your articles to get traffic to your website is different than it was even a couple of years ago.

Now you articles that target specific keyword phrases and are well written. Part of that is writing for search engines. Not the complete article, but part of it. You want to target keywords that are not searched as much. These are words that generally are long and more targeted for the article you want to write.

For example an article on Internet marketing business could now be written around the phrase "start an Internet marketing home business" and you would want those words in the title of the article, in the intro and closing paragraphs, and one time in the body.

You would write your article using variations of that phrase using words like start a business at home on the Internet, or start your home business using the Internet, etc.

This should be done so it sounds natural. Just like you were talking to a friend. Forget about keyword density. I am getting traffic via all kinds of keywords and I do not target keyword density anymore in the articles I personally write.

Now that your article is done you need to do 2 things with it.

1. Post it in you blog and social bookmark the post. You can quickly do that if you have joined Onlywire.com. Even better is to bookmark it to Windows Live, Google Bookmarks, and Yahoo. I also like Stumbleupon, Digg, and Propeller.

2. Submit it to a few quality article directories. Using a submission serivce for your article such as Submit Your Article works well and you will want to use their Article Leverage Program. If not through them at least manually submit to a few quality directories such as EzineArticles, Idea marketers, Go Articles, and others.

What you are doing is setting up one article to give you traffic from article directories, your blog and RSS feed, social directories, and search engines. When you understand how you can take one article and create long term traffic for maximum website traffic you will want to write on a consistent basis targeting more words.

Someone in your company is going to have to become a good writer. If not that than consider hiring an article writer to do it for you. This will really allow you to combine article writing good seo practices,and blogging to maintain and increase your traffic with very little advertising expense.