eah, write quality articles which have some interesting and useful stuff, and submit them to free article directories.

You need to put link back to your site. Let your article do double duty- (1) bring traffic and (2) link building. You need to make your keywords anchor of link to your site.

To be very frank, I see quick results when I succeed to place my 2-3 articles on high PageRank and high traffic sites. Some times we need to submit article like submission to directories and sometimes we need to request webmaster via e-mail. You need to tell them why they should put your article on their site.

I have well refined list of article directories with me, and I can share the list with you. Few examples of article directories are:
http://www.awomaninbusiness.com 5
http://www.a1articles.com/ 5
http://sbinformation.about.com/ 7
http://www.addme.com/nlpast.htm 6
http://www.advertisingknowhow.com 5
http://www.allfreelancework.com/ 6
http://www.allmerchants.com/ 5
http://www.allthewebsites.org/articles/ 4
http://allwomencentral.com/ 5
http://www.articlealley.com/ 5
http://www.articlebar.com/ 4
http://www.articlecity.com/ 6
http://www.articledashboard.com 6
http://www.articledepot.co.uk 5
http://www.articlehub.com/ 4
http://www.articlenexus.com/ 5
http://www.articlepros.com/ 4
http://www.articlesphere.com/ 4
http://www.articlewarehouse.com/ 4
http://www.articles-submit.com/ 4