If you are an article marketer, or "bum marketer" as some term it, you probably already know the downright hard work of making this business work as it should. One of the necessary activities for successful article marketing, is submitting your articles to not just one article submission site or directory, but many of them. Since the competition from the many thousands of other article marketers out there is keen, you will be tasked with the responsibility of doing the best job of getting your articles submitted, approved by the article sites and then picked up by other publishers for reprinting on their sites.

Since “content is king”, there are three fundamental aspects that must be adhered to, if your article submissions are going to be accepted and used.

First, our articles should contain unique information of value to the reader, helping them solve a problem or answer a question. Not all content on the web does this, so you will be a “leg up” on the competition by structuring your content to meet these needs.

Before you push the “submit” button on a article submission site, stop long enough to consider if your article is unique and helpful.

Unique content is enough of a consideration that most any article submission directory will have some fairly standard phrase, asking if the article you are about to submit to their site is your own unique content and not merely assembled from content scraped from other sources, mainly the internet.

Second, not only must your content be useful and unique, but it needs to be easily distinguished by the search engines, or be search engine friendly. Articles with tightly focused, search engine optimized, (SEO) keywords on your subject will help achieve this. Your prospective publisher will be encouraged to pick up your article, because they too are concerned with adding content to their site that is “search engine friendly”, or at least they should have this as one of their criteria for content.

An important part of producing SEO articles is by using keywords in your title, and then using an adequate, but not overly so, amount of them (approximately 2-4% density) sprinkled throughout your article.

Third, for each article submission directory, you will be asked to select a category under which your article will be displayed. For many of the directory sites, the selection will be straight-forward, but for others, not so easy. Just position yourself with the potential publisher again, and ask yourself which category you would look in for an article on your topic. It seems an obvious thing to do, but don’t nullify your article “sweat equity” up to this point by choosing an improper category, that will leave your article languishing for attention on the article directory.

This brief list of article submission fundamentals is just a start. Become a student of writing, specifically web content. It can be truthfully said with this profession, "practice makes perfect"...errr, well better, and more enjoyable.

There are currently several hundred article directories available for your choosing, and the list is constantly changing. Most accept articles for free listings, assuming the submitter meets their criteria.

Here is a list of current twenty top ranking article directories to help you get a start with your article marketing.

An important consideration when choosing directories for listing your articles is that the directory Google Page Rank should be at least a PR of 4 or higher. Keeping with that thinking, this list only includes those directories with a PR 5 or 6.

www.EzineArticle.com

www.Buzzle.com

www.SelfGrowth.com

www.GoArticles.com

www.BusinessKnowHow.com

www.powerhomebiz.com

www.bpubs.com

www.ArticleDashboard.com

www.articlesbase.com

www.searchwarp.com

www.Web-Source.net

www.ArticleAlley.com

www.ArticleCity.com

www.articlesfactory.com

www.articleblast.com

www.free-articles-zone.com

www.articlecube.com

www.articlesalley.com

www.articlemaniac.com

www.authorconnection.com