Any web site owner wants as many visitors as possible. A web site could have the best and most relevant content in the world, but it isn’t likely to be found without a little self promotion.

One popular and effective method of promoting a web site is by submitting articles to sites called article directories. What’s more, this sort of site promotion can be done for free!

Article directory submission is a lesson in interdependence. The site owner submits his articles to the article directory and benefits by getting visitors. The article directory on the other hand, also benefits from the submitted articles, usually through advertisements displayed with the articles. There is also some benefit for third party webmasters and ezine authors who can use articles from the directory for free. Don’t worry though, this benefits you as well because these webmasters must retain the links you provide back to your own web site.

Any site owner can write his own articles and submit them to article directories for promotion. However, he can also commission writers to ghostwrite articles to be submitted under his name. To maximize the benefits gained from submitting your articles, make sure the articles are easy to read and are rich with valuable information.

Many article directories accept free submissions, but you might want to take a minute and understand other requirements the directory might have in place. Make certain there are no particular formatting requirements when submitting to a directory.

To save time, always prepare a short biography to submit along with the articles. Also, to maximize the exposure your site can get from the directories, always remember to incorporate a closing paragraph with information about the site, as well as about the writer. These boxes, aptly called resource boxes, will help in promoting the site to readers who might want to contact the article writer for more information.

Make sure the author profile you submit with each article is compelling and concise. Remember you want to give the reader a reason to follow the link to your own web site. It might also help in site promotion if your photo can be uploaded to the article directory.

Any person registered with the article directories can submit their articles manually. However if there are many articles to be submitted, it might be wise to use a software or tool for automatic submission of the articles. Another option is to employ an individual or service to submit the articles to the directories for you.

If you’re short on ideas for articles, or just plain don’t want to write them yourself, you can also purchase public label rights (PLR) articles. However, the site owner should have the public label right articles rewritten to appear unique to the search engines. Also, never submit public label rights articles without rewriting them to avoid being penalized by article directories.

While there are many article directories accepting free article submissions, there are a few guidelines you might consider before using them. It would be best to choose a directory which has a high page ranking, meaning the article directory is visited by more users, so there is a greater possibility of your submitted articles bringing visitors to the site. Also, give preferance to article directories offering RSS feeds or live feeds.

Here’s a tip for selecting which directories to use. Why not check if any of the directory’s articles come up in the search engine results? Try to search for the article title, topic or even the author. However, remember brand new articles might not have been indexed by search engines yet, even in the most popular article directories.

Submitting articles to a highly-ranked article directory will help your site gain traffic and improve its rankings with the search engines.