Title: Article Directory Sites Word Count: 507 Summary: Large content rich sites can be real traffic magnets, attracting visitors more efficiently than any other form of online advertising. There are various ways to increase the content of your site, including writing on blogs and forums, creating and distributing articles, link exchanges and search engine optimisation techniques. Successfully integrating all of these methods into one web site can seem a daunting task, but in effect is relatively simple; most of the promotion is d... Keywords: article directory sites Article Body: Large content rich sites can be real traffic magnets, attracting visitors more efficiently than any other form of online advertising. There are various ways to increase the content of your site, including writing on blogs and forums, creating and distributing articles, link exchanges and search engine optimisation techniques. Successfully integrating all of these methods into one web site can seem a daunting task, but in effect is relatively simple; most of the promotion is done automatically once you have laid the foundations. For example, writing one fresh and original article related to the topic of your website can have a huge impact on the volume of traffic passing through your site. It is essential to include your web site details and personal information (author name) in a resource box/bio to go alongside the article, but once this is in circulation it can reach no end of people in a huge range of countries. By submitting it to a number of article directories and /or article banks, this will allow other webmasters the chance to read you material and post it to their own sites, keeping your links intact. As the article is passed round and more people read it, the reputation of the author grows, and the number of visitors to the parent site increases. It doesn’t stop with article sites either, editors of e-zines, newsletters and other online publications may also include your work, which all leads to a healthier volume of internet traffic directed back to your site – all from one article! Imagine the power of 100 articles being circulated around the internet! Alternatively, you can use other people’s existing articles rather than having to come up with new and inventive ideas for articles yourself. This is where article bank sites come into their own; these are large repositories of free to use content that you can copy and use on your own website. The material is free provided you don’t change anything and include a link (often including in their resource box/bio) back to the author’s chosen web page. There is web etiquette, more commonly known as ‘netiquette’, which suggests that it is only acceptable to use another author’s content if you are willing to stick to the rules. It is often best when using article banks to look for articles written by professionals or experts in those particular fields, as the content of their articles is likely to be of a high quality. It goes without saying that, as with everything on the internet, the quality of work varies from author to author, and it is important to be aware of posting with suspicious sites that may turn out to be involved in spamming, or worse, link farms. Links to reputable sites are very valuable as they not only help the search engines to categorise pages, they reassure them that their links are genuine and that any content linked to them is likely to be from a good source, and not involved in any unlawful link exchanging.