Links pointing to any website are a MUST - and ONE-WAY links in particular are essential - if it is to rank nowadays in the major search engines.

One of the best ways of building up one-way links is to write an article and then to submit it to article directories. The directories usually allow a resource box to accompany each article, containing information about the author.

But, more importantly, the resource box can also contain a link directly to the author's website! These one-way links, in essence, act like a 'reward' for the author, because under article directory rules, normally, anyone using the article in their website MUST include the resource box, too.

And they are NOT allowed to change anything about the article, including the resource box. Hence, a popular article, in theory, could generate a large number of one-way links, all pointing back to the author's website.

However, once a would-be author starts writing articles and submitting them to lots of different directories, keeping track of the whole process can become a bit complicated and confusing.

But Article Writer solves the problem, easily! And it does a lot more besides, making the whole creative process a breeze, including hunting down article directories to submit to. One thing it doesn't do though is write the articles for you - that's up to you!

UPDATE: (September 11, 2007) Scratchpad facility added and accessed via the main menu. Enables snipits of information to be collected as an aid to research. Simply highlight and copy from the webpage browser (or wherever) and paste into text area. Then save for later use.

Now, look at the following images below, showing the four main tabbed areas found in Article Writer, with specific aspects within each also illustrated:

Write Article

This is where an actual article is written or created. Your going to turn it into a web page for your site.

Click on Write Article in the menu at the top to Open an article, Save or Clear a previously written article.

Keep track of how many words you've written by clicking the Word count button. Very handy.

Upload

There are four aspects to the Upload area:

1. The sitemap page

2. The HTML article web page (template)

3. FTP details

4. Saving and uploading to your server

We'll go through each in turn. This is an important area to understand, so take your time.

As you can see from the image to the left, access to various aspects of the Upload tabbed area is achieved via Upload on the main menu.

Here, you can open, save or clear the Sitemap/link page, the HTML article page, or FTP details.

To create a sitemap page, first create a template, a bare-bones html page from your site (minus any text on the page) via your favorite HTML editor. Call it mysitetemplate.html, or something similar, because you'll be using this over and over again, both for creating the sitemap and the HTML article page. Save it somewhere safe.

As can be seen above, a simple template has been loaded (in fact, why not click the Write Article tab and the HTML page button in the HTML code area, then paste into the sitemap area and save as your template). Then click the HREF button in the HTML code area and paste as above. Change the link as appropriate in order to point to the web page you'll be creating later. Then save the sitemap page, ready to upload.

Now look at the following three images, illustrating the creation of a web page. Make sure an article is already loaded in the Write Article text box in the Write Article tabbed area.

Load the previously saved template by going to Upload in the menu and navigating to HTML article page, Open HTML Page, as shown left.

In the HTML article page (template) box add the following marker !~! where you want the text to appear (as shown).

Then simply click the Merge button and the text in the Write Article text box will be transferred to the HTML article page.

Then SAVE with the same filename as in the link you've already added to the Sitemap page.

We've created and saved the sitemap page, and also created and saved the HTML article page (with the link on the sitemap page pointing to it). Now to the next stage - the FTP details. Look at the next image, showing the information required. It goes without saying the details shown, such as the password, are made up!

The details required are Server (ftp.yoursite.co.uk), Username (joeblogs, or whatever), Password, and Server directory name/path to where file goes/ (NOTE that this MUST end in a forward slash).

Once the FTP details are entered, save them as something memorable (in the above case, I would save it as simply freebieads). Then, when you need them again, go to Upload in the main menu, FTP, Open FTP.

The Directory Manager opens, as shown left, which can then be loaded with URLs of article directories previously saved (Browse, URLs, Open URLs).

You should find a file already saved, called bestdirectories, which can be loaded right away to get you started!

The image left shows the Directory Manager with the bestdirectories file loaded.

Simply double click any entry to automatically load up your browser with the website you are interested in.

Else, go to the main menu, click on Google, then Go To Google. After a few seconds, you should find you are now in the google.com search site (instead of freebieads.co.uk). If you want, click on the google.co.uk link to go there instead.

Enter a search term, such as article directory, in the Google search box (as you would normally do).

The Directory Manager should fill with results AND scroll to the bottom of the search results page. Simply click the '2' link for another 10 results, then the '3' link, and so on. Easy! You'll have a huge potential list of directory sites to submit to in no time at all.

You've clicked a site, or two, and you've joined an article directory.

Now keep the article directory url highlighted (as shown left), enter the username and password of your new account in the Username and Password text boxes and click the Add button.

Notice how the username and password have now been added to the article directory url. Do the same whenever you join a new article directory. Then SAVE the password list by going to Browse, Passwords, Save Passwords in the main menu.

Now, whenever you load a saved password list in Directory Manager, double click an entry and not only will your browser load automatically with the article directory concerned, but the Username and Password text boxes will be filled with the appropriate username and password, too. Just click the small 'c' button to the right of each text box to copy its contents to the clipboard. Then paste into the article directory log-in. No more frustration trying to remember which username and password applies to which directory!

Article Submit

This area is concerned about only one thing, the articles you intend to submit to the article directories.

The Article Submit process should be separate from the Write Article process described earlier.

However, you could load a previously written article in the Write Article tab textbox and then copy it and paste into the Article body textbox shown left.

But think a moment. Doing so means, presumably, a web page on your own site with the same content which you are now going to submit to an article directory. And if lots of people use it on THEIR web site!! Surely you want little or no duplication of your own web page efforts, given how strict the likes of Google can be. It's good to have articles of a similar topic/theme, but identical is generally not a good idea. The choice is yours.

Anyway, the Article Submit area allows you to create an article to submit to the directories with ease. It mimics the sort of information which, for example, ezinearticles.com asks you to provide - the article itself, of course, the article title, keywords, a 2 to 5 sentence 'teaser', and the all-important resource box.

When everything has been filled out, go to the main menu and click Article Submit, Save Directory Article to save the whole lot. Then submit to the directories at your leisure. Log in to each and simply click the little 'c' button on the right of each textbox to copy its contents to the clipboard. Paste as appropriate. That's it!!!

Hope you enjoy using this FREE program. Any feedback to john AT freebieads.co.uk - and don't forget to post a FREE ad on freebieads (or to check out my sponsors). And a link to http://www.freebieads.co.uk would be very much appreciated, too :). Make sure the link text contains the word 'freeads' or 'freeads uk'. Many thanks. John.