Article submission also know as article marketing is one of the most effective way to drive traffic to your website. Ask any seasoned internet marketers and they would definitely endorse this tested and proven method.

However, article submission takes time and effort. And there are certain “rules” that you need to following in article marketing.

I have been using EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com for my article marketing campaigns. These are the two most popular portals and get lots of traffic every day. Many webmasters also publish articles found in these article directory portals.

Here’s an article I submitted last week:

Why Your Business Needs Professional Search Marketing Services

There is no point submitting to article directories for the sake of backlinks and PR ranking. The point is Dense Writing Does Not Get Read and published by other webmasters. You’ll need good quality articles for your article marketing campaign.

Even though most articles get through the editors of article directories, they are not worthy of your time and effort to publish on your website. These articles are written by ghost writers and have little knowledge on the topic. Very little research is done for such poor quality articles since each 300-word article costs $5 or less.

For effective article marketing, you’ll need good writing skill and produce well researched articles. You can learn the basics of good copywriting for article marketing but the substance of your article must come from your wealth of knowledge on the topic discussed. Otherwise, you will need to hire an expert to help you with the knowledge accumulation or you’ll need to spend time to research on the topic.

Recently, I started publishing articles for distribution aka article submission to build inbound links for my main website. My favorite article submission site is EzineArticles.com. So the question is: after you submitted your article, how do you know if it was being picked up and published by other websites.

One of the easiest way to track your article is to search for it with exact search option. For example, I would search for the title of my article – “How Companies Can Optimise Their Web Pages for Search Engines” – to track who used it on their website.

And here’s the list of the URL’s that has my article:

Nov 23, 2006 – Total 3 (First published Nov 13, 2006)

1. http://seo.crollmm.com/content/how-companies…
2. http://www.positionseo.com/seoarticles/seo…
3. http://www.seomyths.com/articles.asp…

Dec 21, 2006 – Total 4 including the 3 above

1. http://googlebotindex.com/articles/HowCompanies…