When I started in IM and SEO Ezine Articles was the King of article directories. They have lost some importance over the past year or so. I still post there but not as often as I used to. I now divide articles up between Buzzle, Hubpages, and a couple other smaller directories. I'm really starting to wonder if EZA is still worth submitting articles to for link building.

"According to me,
If you have good articles, you should keep them on your own site.
Good content along will get you rank high in SERP.
As for article directories, even if you are after the backlink to boost your SERP, you should just use a spine off.

You would get way more traffic for posting the same article on your own site than posting it on a popular article directory site with a backlink to your own."