Submitting to article directories has been one of the gruesome tasks SEO experts recommend in order to derive more traffic and links to one's site, yet a lot of debatable views have now risen against this once popular technique. Indeed you introduce your site to your chosen niche community when you submit to directories, but given today's technology and changing web promotion strategies, is this SEO method still effective?

The answer is both a yes and a no.

Article distribution, as we know it, is a technique developed to increase link exchanges with different sites that fall under the same niche. Among the benefits of spreading your articles is that you get to inform your target audience of what your site has, as well as help them find the answers to their inquiries. It is also a legitimate method search engines permit, as long as the articles abide by the rules such as no keyword stuffing and following the prescribed keyword density.

Submitting articles to directories is a form of article marketing, since you not only promote your site across the web; you also market the substance and credibility of your service through the words you use in your articles. Your target audience is in a way meticulous about this matter, since they often look for sites that hold substance and value, not just mere sales talk.

However, there are some times when article distribution does not work as effectively as it once did. This is because of the boom of article syndication. Upon discovering that spreading article promotion is a highly profitable business, companies have come up with a lot of submission sites, which greatly exceeded the demand for such pages. Not all article submission sites are constantly viewed by audiences, so you have to make a good choice when selecting the places where you will promote your articles.

The disadvantages of article marketing can be avoided however. The first thing you have to do is to find the most popular sites in which you can submit your articles to. Among the most visited submission sites include Ezine, StumbleUpon, Digg, DMOZ and Reddit. You can set up an account in these sites so that you can start posting your articles.

Next, you need to use the right keyword phrases and density on your articles. This helps in preventing your articles from being penalized by both the directories and search engines, and at the same time promotes well-written compositions which your audience would easily understand. As you can see, article distribution can be tedious, but knowing where to go and what exactly to do, you still can achieve positive results from this method.

There are a lot of web promotion and SEO techniques that have been developed recently; all you have to do is find the right ways. Submitting to article directories may not always be as effective as before, but still you get the target traffic that you need for your site as they are viewed by persons concerned about your niche. So, if you think article marketing serves best in promoting your site, then use it; it might be the key to your site's total success.