My answer to that question is the proverbial, ?It depends.? The key is to not get too shortsighted and it's easy to do that when you focus on PageRank.

For example, there are some successful article directories now that people submit their articles to primarily as a way to gain PageRank.

The idea is to submit to these directories because the directories themselves have high PageRank and the link in your article resource box will transfer the benefits of that PageRank to your website. That's not really a good plan.

For one thing, if the article directory has a PageRank of 6 then one article is not going to transfer a PageRank 6 benefit to you. You will have to share that PR 6 with every article marketer submitting articles that article directory.

One rule of thumb is, the higher the PR of the article directory then the more people will be submitting articles to them, which means you are sharing a PR 6 with more people as opposed to a PR 4 with fewer.

You might actually be getting less benefit from that than submitting to a site with lower PR. The best way to make that strategy work is to submit a lot of articles so that you can aggregate the total benefits of article submission. Again, that is a shortsighted approach and it could backfire in a number of ways.

Some article directories are now including nofollow tags on all of their article pages. That means if you do submit your articles to those directories then you won't get any PageRank benefit from the directory at all. But that doesn't mean there is no benefit to be gained from those articles at all.

Why You Submit To Article Directories

The real reason you want to submit your articles to article directories is not so that you can benefit from the traffic or PageRank of the article directory.

The idea is to have your articles published in e-zines, on websites, and blogs owned by someone in your niche who is not associated with the article directory.

For example, let's say you own a nutrition supplement store. You write health articles. If another website owner in your niche reads your articles and likes them then they are likely to publish your articles on their website and in their e-zine.

That results in a link back to your website from another website within your niche. That publication then will transfer the benefits that you want to your website and is the real reason you submit articles to directories.

OK, So Is Traffic Or PageRank The Real Benefit I'm Looking For?

The answer is both. You want more traffic to your website because traffic means more opportunities to sell your product.

You want higher PageRank because higher PageRank means more trust with the search engines and that means more trust with your target audience.

But how do you achieve high PageRank?

A higher PageRank is achieved by relevant sites linking back to yours. Sites within your niche are relevant. The links from those sites are high value links.

The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the more benefit you'll get from the links from that site.

It all boils down to reputation. Think about hundreds of those high value, relevant links pointing back to your website. That is the reason for article marketing.

It's a long-term strategy and shortsightedness on the way that you approach it will only kill any benefits that you might have received.