Articles are definitely not only easy, but productive. You should be able to write them in 15-20 minutes each and submit to at least 5-10 directories. So we're talking about 10-20 good anchor text links in return for about 30 minutes of time. In non competitive keywords, that's going to be enough link juice in the course of a month or two (of writing 2 articles per day) to get you in the top 5 or so.

Great post, thanks for this. After three months of SEO on my site it's actually starting to pay off. And you have a couple of things there that I wasn't aware of.

I've read a few times that Keyword Meta tags are ignored by Google, and some suggest that they even frown on it because some of their competition still uses them. Personally, I've seen better results from Google on the few pages I have added Keyword Meta tags to. So I have no idea what that's about. Didn't think directories use them too though.

The only thing that I don't see results from is Article sites. It's really difficult to find decent article sites for my subject matter. eZine had an attitude with me and refused all my work (and I'm a published writer!), so I am certain they allow "moral opinions" to cloud their judgment and refuse work that doesn't suit the personal beliefs of those who assess submissions.
The one or two article sites I've found other than that are not showing as backlinks in Google, so they must be filtering those out.

I'd appreciate anyone who can show me a list of article sites open to adult articles specifically and that Google recognises for backlinks. I just can't seem to find them.