The article directory is used by people wishing to share their insight into a variety of subjects, this can be from their pets and training them to sewing. The list of subjects in an article directory is literally never ending. As long as there is a subject and a writer you will most likely find an article on whichever subject you are interested in, in an article directory.

The function of the article directory has a multidimensional role, in that it can be used to host the regular article writers works for people to use and refer to when required. Or it can even be used as a platform for a budding writer wanting to be published in journals or even within the print media.

The article directory can also be used as a marketing tool when one is looking to promote their companys products and services, it forms the basis of a type of information brochure. Although it is not allowed to market your products directly through an article directory, the option of submitting an article to a directory allows one the exposure for the reader to then click through to the companys website. It is recommended that if you are going to use an article directory to submit articles to increase awareness that you do it on a basis of an informative and helpful topic, related to your core activities; providing some insight or a solution to a problem, without directly marketing your services to the reader. If you structure and compile your article in the correct and desired format, according to the rules of that article directory, then you have got your foot in the door, so to speak, with that reader. This reader is a potential customer and you would want him to be captivated by the article that was submitted to that specific article directory to entice him or her to follow through to your website, where your sales and conversion skills can be utilised upon that interested or potential buyer.

The article directory offers one a very low cost or even opportunity of exposure, and one should not abuse this by ignoring the rules of that specific article directory. Correct submission and valid articles represent a better chance for publication and exposure to new and interested clients.

Using an article directory to host articles that you have written on a personal level also allow the writer to offer insight into their various life experiences and, at times, the emotional descriptions in certain situations. It can be used as a valuable how to guide to people that have not experienced that specific event or situation. This in turn has gone a long way in helping someone else and was merely conducted by submitting an article to an article directory.

Free Articles, why would anybody want to deal with or in free articles. That is what I thought when I first saw the title then again I might not be the most up to date marketing person either. Free articles are usually submitted into an Article Directory and they have quite a few purposes.

Free articles can also be referred to as open content, as the term refers the content is available for copying and modifying some people frown about the idea of giving something away for free after you have worked so hard on it. Well the fact of the matter is there is plenty of free articles out there and varying reasons.

If we look at the Wikipedia concept that is a whole library of free articles ranging from countries and cities to animals and legal cases, it really has everything in it. That is thanks to the founder Jimmy Wales, who stated that the vision of Wikipedia was to allow each person to have access to the sum of all human knowledge, and that is exactly what they have done.

By creating a solid forum, with rules and regulations, they have taken all the free articles that people submit, or are submitting and it is collated correctly to formulate a fantastic knowledge database for anyone who has internet access to be able to gain from all this knowledge.

Would you still be raising an eyebrow about free articles, when your child is researching a school project on Wikipedia somehow I doubt it. This is an example of the power of free articles and why people do it.

The other reasons for free articles and content can be related to marketing purposes, where corporations and companies utilize the free articles and article directories as a linking mechanism to their sites, obviously to increase traffic and thereby increase turnover.

Yet the content is still free, it is a very smart tool to use in the generation of income via the power of the internet. I would even go so far as to say that the free articles for marketing purposes can add value to any individuals life, as that individual would not have taken up the call to action had they not really been in the market for the product, that the specific company manufactures or sells.

Other free articles could be posted by a writer, someone that just gets pure enjoyment out of writing and sharing their information with others, similar to the Wikipedia scenario.

These writers have day jobs, and perhaps are not good enough or believe that they are not good enough to be writers and therefore utilize the article directories as a medium of publishing their articles.

Not only has the internet revolutionized our behavior, and our way of thinking, but ancillary items related to the internet like free articles have added a lot of value and contributed to helping make our lives a little simpler, and a lot more knowledgeable.

The basis for sites like Myspace and facebook was originally made so that friends and family could easily keep in touch with each other. This is great if you already have a friend, but when if you are looking for a new friend, or what if you are looking for a long lost friend you once had? In these cases Myspace and facebook aren’t really your best bet, you would have to know either where they are living right now or you would have to search through 10,000 profiles to find them. Its pretty time consuming when you really think about it.

Of course you can refine your search down to sex, age, orientation but even then you still will have to search through a few thousand profiles to find the right person. Finding a new friend is a little easier because all you would need is age, sex, orientation, hobbies, etc. However, I don’t really like to use myspace as a way to find new friends, I just haven’t had good luck with it at all.

One thing I have had a lot of luck with is these websites called friend finders. These friends finders range from adult/mature, pen pals, online, offline, activity partners and much more. I have used a few of them to find activity partners for offline activities such as sports or just going out. You would be really surprised to see all the reasons people go on these sites, and all the different kinds of people you can find as well.

You have to figure there are 6.45 billion people on earth and there was about 729 million people in the year 2004 that had access to the Internet, so that’s a lot of people in one “place” all looking for different things and all interested in different things. You have a really good chance of finding your new best friend in all of this! And even if you don’t find a best friend, you could find some really interesting people along the way. Its sort of like visiting a new country every day. You won’t meet people from just the country you are in (unless you choose to do so).

You can use these for finding new friends, but you can also use other sites for finding old friends, its pretty simple too. All you have to do is enter in a first and last name (which myspace lets you do but it doesn’t work), and if you can figure out the age they would be now, that’s even better. Once you enter in those small attributes, you will be sent to a page with everyone that has that name and is that age. Chances are there will only be a few people or hey maybe you will get lucky and there will only be one! On a lot of these sites instead of friends name they will ask for something like high school you went to or group/organization you were a member of.

In this case, when you enter in first name and last name along with high school you are going to hit payload. Seriously if you actually find TWO different people with the same first and last name that went to the same school as you, it’s probably a mistake because that’s just about impossible.

I did a search once for myself just to see how it worked so I put in my first name, last name, and high school. I found one other person with my name but it was spelled differently, hers was Christie Amberose, so close yet so far away! It was kind of freaky seeing someone with a name so close to mine, but very different at the same time. Make sure you get the spelling right on the names when you are doing a search or you just might find someone you weren’t even looking for to begin with!

It doesn’t matter if you are a professional and have a business online, or you work for someone else doing something else offline, people are always looking for a way to find businesses for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you need to find someone to make business cards for you, or make you need to find a pest control company. Either way, you can easily, quickly and efficiently find these types of sites online by going to business finders. These finders will find any type of business for you as long as it’s a business. You can browse within certain categories to make your search even more efficient, for example, by looking under business location, distance, category or even by name.

These finders come in handy whether you know the business name, or not. If you don’t know the name or your searching for something within your area, then simply go to “location” or “distance” and it will tell you businesses located in a certain town or business located within a certain distance from you. Or if you know the category such as restaurant or airports, simply click the category name, and pick what you want. Of course if you know the name of the business this is really helpful, but I find when I use these things I actually have no idea the name of the business let alone any other info so I just usually pick category and go from there.

What’s nice about these finders is you can refine your search when you go to categories. So lets just for an example pick bakers. Once I pick bakers, then it goes to states, I’ll pick Florida then refine it to where you either are or where you think a bakery might be and you are going to be in the vicinity so you want to go to Boca Raton, and then refine your search even more to cake and pie shops, pastry shops, wedding cakes or donuts. Let’s pick pastry, now you have gone from 5,000 results down to 30 results and then up above you can pick A-Z if you wanted to.

Obviously it’s a lot easier to do than it sounds! Reading “directions” always makes things sound scary, but this is far from scary stuff and it will help you quite quickly. So why don’t people just use a phone book like they have for the last few hundred years? Personally for me? I throw my phone books away. They are too heavy, too big, and too inky! My laptop, however, is small, stable, quick and convenient and the Internet (unless you have dial up) moves super fast! Also, the results in your phone book, can’t or won’t tell you about the guy in Wisconsin who owns a printing business, or the lady in Texas who owns a restaurant you might be going to on vacation! But, the Internet? Has it all. You can search business in your town or half way across the world!

Submitting your site to web directories for SEO purposes is a tried and true way to increase your link popularity and ranking in the search engines. There are, however, some pitfalls to avoid.

Here are some tips that will prevent you from “spinning your wheels”, as it were, in the directory submission game.

First of all, do not fall for offers to “submit your web site to 10 thousand web directories for only $24.95!”. The submissions are usually done using software, and the majority of them will be rejected by the directory owners for being in the wrong category, not following the guidelines, etc. Even if they happen to actually hand-submit (yeah, right) the directories are always completely useless from an SEO standpoint.

Unless you happen upon a brand new one, they are almost always saturated (meaning they have too many pages of listings that the search engines will never crawl deep enough to find).

In most cases the directories will only be around for a short period of time. They usually stick around just long enough for the owner to get tired of rummaging through the submissions before realizing that there is very little profit from it, then letting the domain expire.

Besides the above reasons, the search engines do not favor these directories at all, and even if they somehow manage to find your link among the numbers it will not count for much.

Now that you know what to avoid, here are some tips for finding quality directories. First, we will talk about the “elite” directories that everyone knows about- The Yahoo! Directory, The Open Directory Project (Dmoz.org) and Best Of The Web (BOTW.org). These directories are well known, and the search engines love them for sure. These are the three directories any serious webmaster needs to have a listing in.

The only one of the three above mentioned that is not a “pay-per-inclusion” directory is the Open Directory Project. The problem with the ODP, however, is it’s lack of reliability. It is run by volunteers who receive no compensation for the work they do. Therefore, many of the thousands of categories have no volunteers, and because of the lack of compensation many of the volunteers often neglect the project or are just plain lackadaisical about it altogether. Needless to say, getting a listing in the ODP is a crap shoot. But it is definitely worth a try, as many of the search engines put a measure of trust in sites listed in the ODP.

The Yahoo! Directory is another one that grabs Google’s attention for sure, some believe more so than the ODP. A listing in the Yahoo! directory is quite expensive, however. At the time of this writing it will set you back $300 yearly. But if you are serious about your site, it is worth the investment.

Last but not least, we have the Best Of The Web directory. This is an old directory (started in 1994) with lots of high quality inbound links, and is a favorite of many SEO enthusiasts. At the time of this writing, there is a one-time review and inclusion fee of $240. Another great investment.

Now that we are familiar with some of the top general web directories, let’s talk about finding other great directories. There are plenty of lists out there, just Google “list of directories”. But before spending any money for inclusion fees, here are some things to look for.

First of all, the age of the directory should be looked into. You can usually obtain this information by finding out when the domain was first registered. The older the better in this case.

Next, make sure the directory has plenty of quality inbound links from other authority sites, because some of this “link juice” will be passed on to your site. Lastly, make sure the directory is “SEO friendly”.

If the link to your site utilizes a tracking URL, the link may not be counted by the engines. Also, watch out for saturated directories and ones that use the “nofollow” attribute.

These same principals apply to niche directories. Niche directories are great because they are on-topic, and there are a lot of authority niche directories out there. To find these directories within your web sites niche, Google your keywords and put “directory” after it.