The new approach:  Pick two or three quality sites.

Why the difference?  There are some good reasons for the divergent perspectives.

Those who advocate mass submission are generally more interested in backlink generation than in direct traffic production.  They realize that Google’s treatment of duplicate content will render most every submission “invisible” to searchers.  They also know that Google will still take note of the backlinks.

Those who advocate limited distribution argue that you can muster the same traffic effect from a single submission to the right directory and that Google doesn’t seem to be treating inbound links from articles with the same gusto it once had.

So, which way should you break on this issue?  If you have mass submitter, software, I’d continue to bombard the net with  your articles.  There’s no such thing as a bad link, after all.  If you don’t have a submitter and you’re more interested in driving traffic to a landing page than engaging in SEO, it makes sense to limit your submissions to the sites that matter.

Their evidence?  It usually involves their own little tests featuring content of questionable quality or the use of strategies that deviate from best practices.  And while some will buy the naysayers’ stories hook, line and sinker, many of us will just go quietly back to generating a consistent and impressive flow of traffic via the very practice everyone else is burying.

Article marketing will last.  That’s because it’s not based on a hole in the system, an algorithmic shortcoming or a new fad that Google hasn’t caught up with.  Article marketing is based on a solid, logical model.

Which is why thousands of people can use it every day to generate free traffic.

Even though it just died for the umpteenth time!

Unfortunately, reaching a mass audience can be rather tricky if you don’t know how to go about it. Writing articles and submitting them to various article sites and portals can be the answer you’ve been looking for.

Once you’ve written an article (or hired a professional writer to do it for you), submit the article to various free article sites. Your articles should be relevant to your website and keyword rich in order for it to rank well in search results. One of the benefits of article submitting is that after the article has been submitted, there is little else to do. There is no additional maintenance needed.

Make sure that your articles contain links back to your main website. This way, readers and people looking for more information can click through to your site. Your site can gain a great deal of exposure by submitting your articles to multiple sites. This will result in authentic traffic from those who read your articles and click through to your main site for more information.

One way to get this information to consumers is through the use of free article directories. Submitting articles relevant to the product or service you are offering is simple and quite effective. If you’re selling hardwood flooring, for instance, you can submit a short article about different types of hardwood. At the end of the article, simply insert links to your site with an invitation to the reader to visit.

These articles often turn up at the top of search engine rankings because of their keyword density, giving you added exposure. While you may need to pay a professional writer to churn out a few articles for you–depending on your writing ability–there is no fee to submit your articles to these directories. Consider writing one or two, and see how much traffic you can gain through the free incoming links.