Article directory sites have popped up everywhere in the last few years. They are great places to find articles to enhance your newsletters, school research papers, websites, and product promotion. Most article directories accept articles posted to them for free. Why do these free article directories want you to submit your creative talent for writing or utilize free articles without remuneration in a central location? The answer is that both sides benefit.An article directory survives and thrives when advertisers place ads on their website. They can charge more as the traffic to their website increases. By getting original, high quality articles on many subjects posted to their directory, a critical mass is reached on the web. By gaining a superior reputation for quality and by having lots of content, they move up the ladder in the search engines.When you get ready to submit articles to the article directory or use articles from that directory for your own purpose, always carefully read the Privacy Policy or Disclaimer in each directory website to ascertain which directory you feel most comfortable using. If they are honest and open they will thoroughly explain what they do with the personal information you provide, and clearly explain their terms of service.Read a sampling of the articles submitted and decide if they meet your standard. You don’t want to submit your articles to a site that is just posting garbage. You want to make sure your article is posted to well-respected sites so that your article gets a good reputation as well.Now, how do you benefit by submitting unpaid articles? If you have a website selling a product or service, you want as many people knowing about what you have to offer as you can possibly get. Every general article you write pertaining to your product or service will generate a link to your website or blog. The more articles you write the better chance you have of “capturing” a sale. The more visitors you have, the higher up the list of a search engine you will climb. To get noticed on the web you have to generate content!Article writing is one of the best ways to generate traffic and links to your website or blog. To decide on the article directory you want to submit your writings to, look for articles directories that allow at least two or three links per article. Just as you may utilize articles already written, any articles you write (you should write as many original pieces as possible) should be good enough to be picked up by other websites. Your links will be included in the article and you will be eventually known online as an expert on the subject. This might result in “spin-offs,” hobbies and many other opportunities that you haven’t even thought about!One word about copyright: Your article is automatically copyrighted the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that is perceptible either directly or indirectly with the aid of a machine or device. You do not have to register it with the copyright office, but to be on the safe side, at the end of the article you write, either place a “c” in a circle with the year you submitted it and your name, or write “Copyrighted, the year and then your name” before submission.Choose an article directory with a wide range of articles. The more content on the directory, the more traffic that will come to submit or utilize the articles. Remember, integrity, quality and interest are the main criteria to make your decision about submitting articles and using them to further your business.

Local business directories are popular with consumers because they provide an easy way to find businesses in their local area. If you have a water leak, it makes no sense to call a plumber who is based on the other side of town, or even the other side of the country – and a good local business directory should provide you with a list of plumbers who are nearby. Some business directories will allow you to search within the directory by suburb as well as by business type.Local business directory listings provide compelling benefits to business owners as well, particularly if the listing is free of charge. Simply put, the more exposure your business gets, the better. If your business is listed on 20 local business directories, that’s 20 more places that people can come across you.A good local business directory will give you a live link to your website. This helps in two ways – firstly, people may click on the link, increasing the number of visitors to your website. Secondly, the search engines see every incoming link to your website as a ‘vote’ for your site. Having many incoming links helps boost your website’s search engine ranking.The search engines often rank business directory entries highly in their results pages. Directory owners go to great lengths to ensure that their listings are search engine optimized. Even if you have a website, you may find that your listing in a directory appears before your website listing, because of the search optimization strategies used by the business directory. If you add your listing to a number of popular business directories, it is possible that more than one of the first page search engine results will link to your business.If you find that your website is getting more visitors from a particular directory, or that you are getting more calls because of a specific listing, the directory in question is evidently doing its job. It may be worth your while to find out if the directory has a way to make your listing more prominent, such as paid advertising.

The watch words of any internet directory should be “quality of service”. Read on to find out this can help your business and website.Submitting to internet directories helps build your back link power, improving your sites relevancy to its subject matter and category. Having third party sites link to you is good for your off page SEO or search engine optimisation strategy. Mastering this art is all important for the success of your site, its keyword relevancy and association.When you list with an internet directory you should also look to submit articles to the same directory about yourself, providing you even more scope for building your advertising and public relations campaigns.The directory should be human edited, priding itself on high standards of quality and integrity. This ensures listings are accurate, up to date and of good taste.The system should ideally utilise a voting mechanism to aggregate review results, thereby capturing the global market sentiment. This all helps to build a buzz around you business or website, developing a customer conversation about you.A web 2.0 shape to a directory will enable you to get ranked and rated by visitors. A good directory should allow users to review and comment on your products and services. Building on this functionality they should allow visitors to star rate your service offering. This facility ensures even the busy have time to provide an opinion.You should require that the directory have the latest automated screen capture technology, complimenting and enticing potential visitors with a snapshot of your site.Look for a comprehensive and growing category listing. If you feel a directory hasn’t got your niche covered, see if they have the ability to open up a new category for you.Look for directories with a discursive quality, this will incorporates more authority in the eyes of Google, allowing visitors to talk about content and sites. This will continually provide the internet spiders content to crawl, and most importantly this content will be unique and of a third party opinion. With these features, a quality directory will provide depth and width to it’s service offering, continually adding value and relevancy to your site listing.Don’t just look for the traditional link back to your site, seek more detail in a listing such as the ability to post your contact details, email address and telephone number. This will provide the maximum number of customer touch points possible, never forgetting users and visitors potential requirements. This feature incorporates the best of an old paper directory, something that is often forgotten by many internet directories.Listing with an internet directory can be a highly effective piece of advertising. The directory should have quality look and feel, combined with its ease of user access, this will enable a fluid search and review process, helping visiting users find quickly and easily the services and content they are looking for.Above all try and find a directory that is continually innovating and adding functionality to it’s platform. With a myriad of developments in the pipeline, a quality directory can offer a subscriber a continually improving product, helping you extract the most from the internet and your advertising strategy.