To get backlinks from high pr websites and to get traffic. I use to use the Ezines a lot. I do't any more as they have become too picky about approvals and I now question their worth. One article I posted did get me some traffic.  It didn't seem to help with my PR much at all. It remained at one for a long time.

These sites often have a high PR but I've always wondered how much Google values the links from such sites. Google has to know that most of the content on these sites are publish in order to gain backlinks from the site owner.

I'll usually add a spun article to several of these sites for a new site.  Having multiple links from the same domain is not a huge value unless you get traffic from it. If the directory loves your content and features it, you'll get traffic. Otherwise, I'm not sure. I found the articles on Ezine competing with my site. They allow you to post the same content from  your site IF it is posted under the same author name. If you play with Ezine they will ban you in a heartbeat. Only post original content there. Not spun.  I often saw my article ranking slightly higher there than I did on my own site. I even removed on article from Ezines because of that.

Now if you're having trouble getting a site indexed at all, article directories will help.

Others swear by them and put a lot of time into them. I think blog networks work much better if they have a large number of sites that my articles get published on. That is what is meant by in content links. And they are the links that Google is said to put the main value on.  I'm in two such networks. One has almost all PR0 and PR1 sites. So its not of a great value. The other one though has given me links from PR4 and PR5 sites which is very good.

I'm about to drop them though and go with an out sourcing. I found someone that will write the content, spin it and publish to seven of the largest and best article directories. The cost is not cheap at $37 per article but the impact will likely be higher than me posting manually to the to the two blog networks each day. My cost are going to double and the number of different links and different articles is going to go down. However, I'll be on more websites with higher PR and I don't need to sign up for all those network blogs myself. One of which would cost me $99 a month.  I'm in that one now on a trial but I'm going to cancel it.

Now my thinking could be all wrong but that's how I see it.

I have a pitch/sales page that has a PR of 2, mozRank of  4.17 and a moz page authority of 38.  Not great numbers but considering its a sales page probably not bad. I don't have a lot of affiliates because the niche is quite small.  People that want to move to the Philippians and live the expat life in the Philippines.

Based on this, I'd have to say that I'm getting link juice from affiliates.  Most of the sites linking to me are PR0 or PR1 and Moz Rank is showing only root domains linking to the site. The site/page is a two page site and about a year old.