I know article marketing is good for building backlinks for example writing an article on ezine articles has a pg rank of 6. Whats the best way to build links to help your website page rank? is to write many single articles and post them to one directory? or to write one single article and post it to all of the different article directories? about 5 for example all with a pg rank of 4+
First at all, not all the backlink help on your PR, only dofollow backlink helps. Therefore, you need to submit them to dofollow directory if you target on improving the PR it doesn't matter to submit your article to thousands directory if you only care about PR. however, it might not good on serp
nofollow links may not work as well as dofollow links, i think it should be included too. ANyway, it is hard to guess what google thinks.
You will not able to get a PR for your article. If the article directory has PR 4 , it does not mean that you will get PR 4 for your articles. Submitting 1 article to hundreds of directories will not give any SEO benefit. You have to submit unique articles to get SEO benefit.
I think second way is best way to make back link but article directories should good PR and dofollow as well.
Create more backlinks with your aricles, just dont stop at directories. Take your arcticles, turn them into PDF's, read them outloud and turn it into a podcast, take the audio and turn it into a youtube clip, syncronize all your content with your social accounts. Do this for each article and you will see better ranking