If you want information on practically about any topic under the sun, the first place that will pop inside your mind is the Internet. Where else? The Internet seems to have every kind of information that is easy to find. Just type some relevant keywords on the search box, a click, and - voila! Every possible answer to your question has unraveled in a long list right before your eyes. Incredible, isn't it? Yes. It is amazing that a very large amount of information can be stored in an intangible place such as the Internet.

Some magical places on the Internet are the article directories. There are articles here that are written by authors from around the world and are submitted to article directories for free. Why? First reason, the writers of these free articles want maximum exposure to many readers. Second reason, these article writers (who could also be website owners) also want to collect many backlinks to their website. Because search engines always notice a website which has high number of backlinks and thus put it on high-ranking position. And one of the best ways to get backlinks is by submitting free writings to article directories.

If you are a website marketer, you may think that the article directories are gold mines of informative articles which you can use freely. You are right, if you're just doing research. If you want to use these articles on your website, you should know that there is a drawback. Every article has a writer bio attached to it. You can publish as many articles as you like on your website; but because you are not allowed to detach the author bio intact, you are also sending the visitors from your website to competitors' websites.

You have to be aware that other people will also be using the articles that you have chosen from the article directories. Your website will surely get caught by Google's duplicate content filter and will surely get penalized by dropping to low rank position.

If you do not want this nightmare to happen to you, just write your own articles for your own website. Submit them to article directories so that you will have backlinks to your websites.