Article marketing is the way to go for free traffic today, but it can be time consuming if you don’t use the tools and technology that is available for you that can save you time. The question to ask yourself when it comes to using these services, is “How much is my time worth?” If your time isn’t worth very much, then you can spend the several days it would take you to submit your article by hand to most of the article directories out there. If your time is worth a lot, then you will not get a very good return on your investment if you sake the time to submit your articles by hand to all of the article directories. So if your time is worth a lot, then you will want to use article submission services that submit your articles for you. There are many submission services out there, so what service should you be using and what features should you demand from your article submission service?

1) Does it Distribute Multiple Versions Of The Same Article?
The search engines are always changing their algorithms, and although there isn’t a penalty for duplicate content, you won’t receive much credit for it either. You can have the same article on different websites, and if enough of the rest of the page is very different, you can get away with placing the same article on different websites, and get credit for it. However, you will want to understand that wherever your article ends up, you have to depend upon the webmaster to make their website different enough to use your article.

The answer to this dilemma is to send out a different version of your article to the different article directories. Writing a different version of the article for each directory takes even more time that submitting to all of the directories by hand. What is the solution? Choose an article submission service that creates a different version for you as it submits it to the different directories. The key in choosing the service is to make sure you are creating quality variations of your article. It defeats the purpose of creating variations if your variations are unreadable and don’t make sense. You would be better off submitting the same version of your article to the different article directories. You want a service that will create a quality variation that still adds value and someone else would want to have on their website.

2) Does it allow you to use HTML in your resource boxes?
The article submission service you use should allow you to the option of using an HTML resource box. The value of having this feature is that you get to increase your link juice for your desired keywords. Instead of linking to your website using your URL, such as http://mywebsite.com. You get to use a keyword to link to your website (such as -my favorite keyword- ). This adds link popularity for your keyword and will increase your chances of being found in the search engines. This is actually huge because if you combine this feature with multiple versions of your articles, you can use one article to build your link popularity with multiple keywords.

3) Does you article submission service give you tools to promote your articles more efficiently?
Does your article submission service give you access to your own personal RSS feed? This is a great way of keeping your readers informed of the articles you are publishing. You can also market your RSS feed to the different feed directories that are out there to give even more exposure to your articles. This should be a standard feature to your article submission service. If it isn’t, look for another one.

Marketing your articles can be a tedious process if you don’t have the right tools or technology. To make the most of your marketing efforts, you want to use an article submission service that gives you the best chance of having your articles be found by the search engines. Using the tips along with other characteristics given in this article will make sure the chances of your articles reaching their target market are increased.

Submit your articles with ease.

This article is for Internet Marketers who want to experience the maximum benefits of using an article directory submission service. They have already gone through the exercise of realizing that in the long run (and short run) these services save them money by allowing them to make the best use of their time and not leave money on the table because they aren’t reaching their audience. So now that you are one of those Internet Marketers who want to use an article submission service, how do you make the most out of it?

First you want to understand what an article submission service can’t do for you, and that is creating quality content. So if you are making the investment in publishing your articles on the Internet, you want to make the investment to put out quality content. I can’t tell you how often I have come across crappy articles and not have any interest in doing anything further with the author of that article. It feels as if they don’t care about their target audience, and are just putting something out there that gets them traffic and link juice. What these authors are missing out on is that whatever they put out, brands their reputation. The question is; what kind of brand do you want to build for yourself? The article submission service speeds up the branding process, so that leaves less room for error. If you want to have interested visitors coming to your website, then you will need to distribute quality articles. Quality articles also build trust in who you are and what kind of integrity you have. If you don’t feel you can write a high quality article about the subject you are interested in, then hire someone. Mass produced crap never wins out on thoughtfully produced quality in the long run.

The next thing is that you should know where your articles are going. Most article submission services allow you to categorize your article so that your article is submitted to any niche related directories on the web. You don’t want a large number of your articles submitted to unrelated directories, because you’ll build up bad will with the directory owner. Your article submission service should be able to send your articles to different directories depending on the subject matter of the article.

Take advantage of all of the fields that your article submission service gives you when you submit your article to their service. Fill everything out because it is another way that you can get found. If they offer tags, or keywords, fill those in with as much information as they will let you put in without spamming them. Also, if they allow you to put in a summary, fill that in as well. You also want to fill in your URL, resource box… everything. Take the care to submit your article to the submission service because you will save time on the back end, so you might as well not cheat yourself out of visitors.

These are just some of the things that you can do to make the most out of your article submission service. Doing these things will increase your chances of driving quality traffic to your website, and build up your brand on the Internet. Adding these rules with knowing how to write a powerful article will give you one of the required building blocks for long-term success on the Internet.