A recent article at ArticlesBase claims that its host is the best article directory online. Is that true?

It really depends on what you use as your criteria for judging and what your niche in marketing is. There are several ways that you can judge, but I have my favorite places to publish. Here are three article directories that I highly recommend:

EzineArticles - EzineArticles is clearly the industry leader. Lots of traffic and lots of article categories. If you do any article marketing at all, you should consider using EzineArticles.

HubPages - HubPages not only allows you to publish your articles, but readers can vote on them and you get paid when they read the articles. You can build “hubs” around your articles and earn a little extra income in the process.

Evan Carmichael - Evan Carmichael publishes articles for entrepreneurs. If you write for a B2B audience then this might be an article directory worth considering.

Are these three article directories the best ones out there? It depends on what you mean by best. If you are a business-to-consumer business then you won’t benefit much from publishing at Evan Carmichael, but you might get a lot from publishing at EzineArticles. You have to analyze your goals and offerings and see what will benefit you.

Article marketing is most commonly used to promote an online business or website, but you can also use this handy technique to market your offline business. It works equally well with regular contact information in the resource box, though if you have a business website, all the better.

Article marketing is a fairly simple concept. Let´s say you own a wedding planning business. You could write (or hire someone to write) several articles about weddings. These could be anything from how to choose the right bridal bouquet to top ten gifts for bridesmaids. The idea is to provide some information that potential clients may be looking for online. Each article should ideally be focused around a specific keyword or keyword phrase to help it get listed in Google, which will bring plenty of extra traffic.

The next step is vital to article marketing, the resource box. This is where you put your information. However, a dry bio with a link to your website or a phone number to call won´t work well. You need to make the resource box stand out and make people want to contact you. Offering a free consult or ecourse can be an excellent way to get people to pay attention.

Finally, submit your articles to a few big article directories. The best one is EzineArticles.com, since your article should be indexed by Google fairly fast. Some article marketing advice will tell you to submit to hundreds of directories, but the truth is that this won´t really gain you a lot of extra page views. Most of the small directories are so unknown that no one even looks at them. Save yourself the hassle of signing up for hundreds of article marketing directories and focus on a handful of bigger sites. You´ll have the same results and won´t waste any time.

It can take a few days for your articles to be approved, but once they are, you are ready to experience the wonder of article marketing. This won´t bring in huge amounts of clients, but it can certainly help . . . even if your business is offline.