Article directories are losing effect; major article directories have more than 100,000 articles that mean 100,000 pages with PR0 each. No matter what is the PR of the homepage if there are no links or at least bookmarks to subpages, these subpages will remain PR0, and it has no SEO value to your links or/and traffic. New approach of article distribution is required, how about submitting articles to related blogs! I am now at Google 1 page for high targeted keywords, also some of my subpages are at Google 1 page and I can easily get PR2 to any subpage I want. And that’s only because I use two of the most powerful articles distribution services online. One of them you can join for free, and very powerful. It will submit your articles to related WP blogs. When your article is submitted to a blog it will be in the home page for a while (that mean traffic) and then it will be placed in a permanent link (which means good related back links) If you are serious about building high quality back links and increase page rank and traffic those two services are highly recommended check out my Signature