I've now heard two cases on article submission for helping a site. The first case says submitting to article directories will NOT get you traffic from the articles. However, the articles will form as inbound links from a bunch of different sites that will improve serp's and PR. The second case says article submissions will draw traffic because people will reach your site when they read the articles and click on your authorbox link. I've seen the claims of "submit your article to 100 directories and you'll see some incoming traffic." Submit N articles to 100 directories each week and you could have 72,000 visitors each month. Why should I submit (quality) articles? Links or Direct traffic?
You should submit for both reasons, I would say. I rely quite heavily on article marketing to bring traffic to my site. As an example, I wrote an article last week (on copywriting) which I distributed to a number of article banks. It was picked up by the publisher of an email newsletter which went out two days ago to a a huge opt-in list. My traffic for that day almost tripled, as did the number of sign-ups on the site. Not all articles will get that kind of result of course, but I've found that it's worked well for me. In terms of links, my articles tend to be picked up by sites which are relevant to the audience my site is aimed at, so those links are good for me.
It can do both, I wouldn't rely on it for link though. Article tend to get pick up by the duplicate filters so in the end only one link from each article tends to count.
One of the general theories also is that your article will get picked up by someone who is an authority in your field of work and rely on your article as content to support the theme of their site. If that site gets 100,000 visitors per day, and maybe 10,000 view your article. It's not just the fact that your link is there to click, it's the association of the fact that someone on an authoritative site is using you for a quality piece of material. Association goes a long way..especially in niche subjects on the net.
Great information! Follow-up questions. I don't have the $$$ to buy any article submitting software....with this in mind...how may article directories should I submit to as a minimum? 100? 20? Is article directory quality more important than the quantity of article directory sites I submit to?
I personally find that when my articles are picked up, they tend to picked up from one of a handful of sites, most usually ezinearticles.com or articlecity.com. I guess it can't hurt to submit to other directories too, but I tend to use just a handful which I know work for me.