Article directory submission involves submitting your articles to the directories. Each article directory has their own submission guidelines which you must follow.

The article which you submit must be original and written by you. If you purchase the article from someone else, make sure he had transferred all the rights to you. If the author did not transfer the rights, you should submit the article under the name of the original author.

The article must not be taken from a public domain. Though the article in the public domain is completely free, it is inappropriate to put your name as the author of someone else works.

If you are using a PLR article, make sure you rewrite it properly so it passes copyscape.

Your article must be informative and helpful to the readers. You can write on any topic including tips, techniques, opinions and commentaries. If you want to cite references, make sure you don’t cite more than 5 resources. The articles must not use promotional words that aim to sell a product or service. Some of the types of articles which are generally declined by the article directory include press release, advertisement, and sales letter.

Before submitting the article, you must proofread it to avoid grammar mistakes. The most important thing is that the article must be written in proper English and readable. If you are not fluent in English, you can ask someone else to help you to proofread the article.

In addition, the article directories have set down certain punctuation rules. When using "…", you can use a minimum and maximum of 3 dots. If you are using dashes, you can use at least two in a row, for example "--". You should never insert a space before a period and comma since it is against the punctuation rule.

Your content must not contain pornography material, content that infringe copyright, promotes hates or violence, racial, and etc. Information that encourage student to cheat such as term papers and essays will lower your chance of getting approved in the article directory.

When writing the article, you can include some keywords in the article body. You can repeat the keyword 2 – 3 times in the article. You should not repeat the keyword excessively in the article otherwise the editor will ask you to correct the article thus delay the submission process. Bold keywords that aim to help in search engine optimization are also not allowed.

You must not include contact information in the content of the article, including email address, telephone number and physical address.

There are hundreds of article directories that exist on the internet. With so many article directories, it can take a long time to submit to them. If you want to focus your time on more important things, you can outsource the article directory submission to a SEO company. Before hiring a SEO company, you should check how long they have been in business. The SEO company must also receive an overall positive feedback from its clients. You can also ask them to show you the list of article directories where your article will be submitted to.