All of us, the authors, know that to enhance our sites
listings in search engines we positive need to do certain things and
some of them are :

(a) get fresh content on our sites on regular basis
(b) get backlinks from high PR (page-rank) sites

Get Fresh Content:

Inserting RSS Feeds on related subjects is a grand way to
create automatic fresh content in a website. However, we
may also put our own published articles in a section, say,
My Articles. Many authors aim to write at least one article
every week. So, every week whenever search engine robots
come to our sites, they might get fresh content.

Get Back-links

Back-links are considered an important factor in search
engine placements. When we submit our articles in article
directories, we get a backlink back from those sites. Mostly all
article directories have dazzling PR (page rank). The benefit
of submitting articles in article directories is that not only
is there a fair chance of grasping our articles published, but
also our articles get published in many other web sites with
our resource boxes. So, when different sites hyperlink to our site
from a related page (the page where our articles are
published), there are chances that search engines would
look at our sites respectfully and rank us well. So, submitting
articles to article directories is a efficient choice. We get hyperlink
back from a page, which talks about related subjects.

Actually, upto this part, I have not talked about anything
special. Authors write free of price articles knowing these features.

But, how many of our articles are positioned high in the
search engines? If not, what could be the reason?

Outbound Links

The another important factor of ranking high in search engines
is Outbound Links. Search engines consider this factor equally
important as back-links. As back-links from related sites are
important, outbound links to related sites are equally important.
In fact, thats one of the main reasons why mostly all article
directories have high PR. Because, in every article directory,
there is a huge amount of outbound links. And each outbound
link is sent out to a related site from a page where the subject
is being discussed!

Sometimes we exchange links with related sites and both the
parties put those backlink in a seperate pages. That links page
contains only links and links -- no content! So, how would
search engines ponder them as valid outbound links?

How can authors like me factor this element in our sites?

Not many of us would want to hyperlink out to sites which are of
our competetors. But wait, article writers may do this smartly.

As I have discussed above, authors should publish their own
articles in their own sites, before submitting them to article
directories. There is a reason for this. When multiple sites
publish our articles, the search engine finds duplicate content
in large number of sites. Therefore, search engines list on
top the page from where it got the article first. So, if we publish
our own articles first on our sites, it is possible that our own
sites would be listed on the top of all other sites that
published our articles.

After submitting the articles to article directories, we should
keep track of when our articles are published in those
directories. Most of the directories inform us when when our
articles get published. We must visit those sites and get the
URLs of our articles.

Let us put the links of those pages in article pages of our
sites. If we put, "These article is also