Article directories help you in two ways - they get you ranked faster on new keywords and they help spread your marketing message. While you can write generic articles about your niche topic, you can also write articles that are a review of your services or are a promotional piece that links to your site. Article directories usually do not discriminate against such content unless the quality is poor or it appears overly spammy.

Some article directories such as Ezine have human editors that read and approve every article. An article directory like this does not allow links in the content other than would be required to understand what you are writing about. But they do allow authors to plug their website and put a signature on a bottom footer attatched to your article. For this type of article directory, you want your content to appear professional and unbiased, and most of all avoid sounding like a sales pitch.

Remember, any articles you submit with a link to your site will usually be associated with your brand (or remembered as such). So you always want to submit quality articles and not a lot of junk that does not read or make sense even if an article directory allows you to do so without anyone rejecting your article. If you plan on having others help you write articles, make sure the quality remains high as these often get redistributed giving you additional links you did not plan on. Also, you should not submit the same article with the same exact text to mulitple article directories. A few times is ok, but too many copies of the same text can get you penalized by the search engines.