Articles are an important part of internet marketing. It is one of the best ways to generate free traffic to your websites. But what makes a good article? What do articles need be accepted by the article directories? Most importantly, what has to be included in every article to make sure the article drives traffic.

There are six components to a successful article. When I say successful article I am referring to an article that can be accepted by article directories, will be picked up by publishers, helps your search engine ranking and generates direct traffic to your website.

The first component is the keywords you want your article associated with. You should know this ahead of time because you want to make sure you utilize your keywords in a normal fashion through out your article. You will also need to list keywords when you submit your article.

Related to the keyword is the category you will want to list it under. It should be a category that anyone searching for your keywords would naturally look under. Again, you will need to have a category in mind when you submit to the directories.

The next component is the title. Your title should accomplish two things. It should create enough interest to motivate a reader to want to see the whole article and it should have some keywords in it.

Next is a summary. This is a one to three sentence synopsis of the article. Like the title, this should entice someone to want to read the whole article and should include a keyword phrase.

The main component of the article is the body. This is the full article itself. It needs to be interesting and relevant to the reader. It should contain useful information. It should be written in an easy to understand format, almost like you are talking to friend.

The body of the article must have correct spelling. There is nothing that destroys your credibility as an author faster than misspellings in your article. Lastly, while you need to have a number of mentions of your keyword in your article, you must not spam it with keywords. Use them, again, like you are explaining something to a friend.

The final part of a successful article is the most important. This is your resource box. Your resource box is where you sell your reader on the idea to click on the included URL to go to your site and sign up or buy. You should include your URL linked to two main keywords. That way the search engines will associate that keyword to your URL and help your ranking for that keyword.

The resource box is your chance to get the reader to take an action. That action is to click on the link you have in the resource box. You can have two links but not more than two. More than two will disqualify you from most article directories. You don't want to hard sell your reader but you do want to try and stimulate their curiosity enough so that between the useful information you gave them in the article and the message in your resource box they have no option but to click on your link.

Article writing is not hard but to do it right you need the six components discussed here. Each of those components has a specific purpose and needs to be written to satisfy that purpose. If you follow these guidelines you will have successful articles.