Writing & submitting articles is great way to promote your website, generate traffic, and get backlinks to your site. That is if you like to write ... if not, then you can always hire a ghostwriter using Elance or Scriptlance.

A properly written submitted article should accomplish two goals:

1) Acquire a backlink from the article directory & get backlinks from website publishers who post your article to their site.
2) Get traffic from people who read the article and click on your link in the resource box.

A resource box is what you usually find at the end of an article. It will contain the author's name, perhaps a brief description of the author, and then perhaps a call to action with a link. If a reader likes what they read, they will have the tendency to want to know more. The resource box will be their link to the source of the article and this will entice them to go to the site and do some more reading or research for the subject that they're interested in.

Like the article itself, the resource box must also be eye-catching to demand the attention and interest of the reader. While the resource box takes up very little space, with the right keywords and content it will provide more prodding for the reader to go to your site.

Don't forget to include a call to action along with your link in the resource box of the articles you submit. When possible, use your keywords in the anchor text of the link. Here's several examples of article resource boxes for articles:

You'll notice that there are two links in the above resource box. The first link uses the keyphrase "early childhood parenting" as the anchor text, while the second link uses the site url for the anchor text. Here's why ...

In a perfect world all webmasters who reprint your articles would copy & paste your article to their site as it is ... link code and all. So your links would remain intact. Many webmasters, however, lack the knowledge to copy & paste the article in true HTML format so they end up putting your article & resource box on their site without your links. That's why for the second link we used "http://www.juliessite.com" as the anchor text.

I usually try to have two links in my article resource boxes -- one using a keyword and the other using full url as the anchor text. Here's another resource box example:

and another ...

Article Directories:
1articleworld.com
365articles.com
a1articles.com
abcarticledirectory.com
allgoodarticles.com
amazines.com
aokarticles.com
approvedarticles.com
articleadventure.com
articlealley.com
articlear.com
articlebeach.com
articlebin.com
articlebiz.com
articlebiz.com
article-buzz.com
articlecastle.com
articlecat.com
articlecell.com
articlecenter.info
articlechimp.com
articlecity.com
articleclick.com
articlecompilation.com
articlecube.com
articledashboard.com
articledepot.co.uk
articlefree4all.com
articlegarden.com
articlegeek.com
articlegold.com
articlegush.com
articlehub.com
articleinfo.org
articlekarma.com
articlekingpro.com
articlem.com
articlemanual.com
articlemetropolis.com
articlepyramid.com
articlerampage.com
articlerich.com
articlerunner.com
articles4reprint.com
articles-abundant.com
articlesandauthors.com
articlesbase.com
articlesbasecamp.com
articlesearchnet.com
articlesfactory.com
articlesfactory.com
articleshmarticle.com
articleshowroom.com
articlesinsight.com
articlesnatch.com
articlesonline.org
article-space.com
articlesphere.com
articlespromoter.com

articlesworldonline.com
articletap.com
articletrader.com
articlevista.com
articlewide.com
associatedcontent.com
aword2thewise.com
bestnichearticles.com
brightarticles.com
businessknowhow.com
buzzle.com
bytepowered.org
content-articles.com
contentking.eu
content-syndication.org
dk-article.com
easyarticles.com
explorearticle.com
ezinearticles.com
ezine-articles-planet.com
ezinesarticle.com
free-article-info.com
free-articles-zone.com
freewebideas.com
gestbiz.com/articles
goarticles.com
goodinfohome.com
hobbyarticledirectory.com
ideamarketers.com
indoarticles.com
info-hog.com
itempad.com
just-article.com
justarticles.com
magportal.com
mainarticles.com
marketfinding.com
marketingarticlebank.com
mintswords.com
myarticlesdirectory.com
myarticlezine.com
notepad.in
onestoparticles.com
particlearticles.com
perfectarticles.com
promotearticles.com
reprint-content.com
rightarticle.com
rightbiz.com
searchwarp.com
selfseo.com
share.onlypunjab.com
smartfindsdirectory.com
submitondashboard.com
thearticleworld.com
tss-articles.com
upublish.info
urarticles.com
where-to-find.net

You gotta be kidding me! There's no way I can submit an article to all those directories!!!

That's what you're thinking, right? I know, that's quite a long list! Seriously though, you don't have to submit your articles to all the directories above because ...

Here's the 5 main article directories that (in my opinion) you must submit your articles to:
Article Alley
Article Biz
Article Dashboard
Ezine Articles
Go Articles

If you prefer not to manually submit your articles, then you'll be happy to learn that there are several article submission services that will do it for you.

Article Submission Services:
Article Marketer
Isnare
The Phantom Writers

Article Submission Software
Article Announcer
Article Post Robot

Whenever you submit articles to various directories, you should try to change the article around a little bit for each directory. That's one of the nice features of several of the submission services and programs (like Article Post Robot) -- they will rotate your title, summary, article body and resource box for each submission!