So, you've decided that you intend to use article marketing in promoting your goods and services. You've done your keyword research and found the most effective keywords to use, and you've written your article, what next? Once you have put in this much work, or paid someone to do it for you, take some time finding an article directory that has a good reputation.

There are several good article syndication sites around, which means that your article should get noticed and bring targeted traffic to your site, which is what you want. You'll probably find several article sites that suit your purpose and it's also worth your while to set up a Google alert to find which article sites are getting good exposure for your particular keywords.

Google alerts is a service that delivers information to your inbox at regular intervals. Go to Google alerts, set up your account and put in the keyword or keyword phrase you are looking for. There are a number of categories that you can choose from, e.g., articles, newspaper articles, blog posts etc. The best thing to do is to click on all and then you will get results from a number of different sources all brought to you by Google.

Article sites will be included in the results when you click on all or comprehensive. If you're only interested in syndicated sites, there is an option for you to click web only, which will bring you alerts concerning articles posted on those sites.

All of this must seem like an awful lot of work just to get your site ranked for certain keywords, but if you want to reap the benefits that good promotion and marketing brings, then you have to put in the groundwork first. When you sign up for Google alerts you can choose whether to have the alerts delivered to your email inbox every day, every week or whenever the particular keyword is mentioned.

When you click on the alert in your inbox, you will see a list of items that include your keyword or words. Scan the list for article syndication sites as there should be at least one or two of them. Once you've read the alert you can click on the link provided and that will take you to the article syndication site. Once on the site you can sign up for an account and get ready to submit your article or articles.

Not all article syndication sites are the same. Once you have registered for an account on a particular site you should read the terms and conditions carefully. Some article sites are more particular than others about the material you can submit, but all of them will have writer's guidelines that you will need adhere to.

There are article sites that have very little in the way of writer's guidelines, and others that stipulate the number of paragraphs etc. that an article should contain. Make sure that you fully understand these rules before you start submitting your work.