There are many internet marketing strategies. One of the most used is the article marketing. Writing articles can help position you as an expert in your field, gain valuable targeted traffic for your web site, drive leads to your products and grow your email list.

Once you are ready to dive into article marketing — and you have a few articles ready to submit — you can quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of article directories available. Sure you could simply use a search engine to locate article directories but a recent search netted me 17,800,000 results. That’s enough to make anyone give up before they even begin! Plus that is really not a very effective way to determine the quality of a directory and doing your own quality check can be extremely time-consuming.

Why should you care about the quality of the directory? Just think about it. On the internet you are very much judged (by search engines and visitors alike) by the company you keep. Another important reason to carefully select your article directories is that your time is finite. It is better to regularly submit to a core group of high-quality directories than to throw the same handful of articles at every directory site you can find.

Finding the best high-quality article directories that meet your specific needs and match your specific goals can greatly increase the power of your article marketing campaign. You need to become a savvy article marketer to maximize your article marketing campaign.

How do you find those high-quality directories?

You can ask people who had been in article marketing for a while and asked for their top recommendations. Search in forums about article directories.

Here are the 10 essential questions to ask when reviewing a site:

1. How old is the directory? Is it well established and ranked or is it new and growing? If not then I cross it off the list.

2. Can you easily identify who owns and/or operates the directory? Is there a way to contact that person?

3. How fast do they respond to your email contacts and/or article posts?

4. How many authors does the site have listed? A lot of authors and articles mean a well established site but there may be room on a growing site for more exposure.

5. How many articles does the site have listed? Again a big site won’t get knocked off my list for this but a small site that is growing steadily might be due for a good seo bump soon.

6. Think about the categories you are likely to need and see if they exist. Is there a place to submit all your articles? If this is a niche directory it may be very narrow but then might also be to your benefit in the long run — if at least some of your articles fit within the niche.

7. What special options does the site offer visitors and publishers? Do they provide RSS feeds, email alerts, forward to a friend function and other strategies to increase the distribution of your articles?

8. Are they responsible with the advertising clients they have on their site? ie: No popups, flashing, or offensive ads

9. Do they provide article reports to help you see which articles are getting viewed, rated, distributed or not?

10. How do the search engines view this site?

After visiting each directory and answering these questions it is easy to refine your list to a handful of top sites that you want to really concentrate your efforts upon. You can also maintain some a list of additional sites to submit to as time allows.

Repeat your articles submission many times ( one time is never enough ) and you’ll find which directories are best for you.