Pagerank is analogous to a voting system. Using pagerank, search engines such as Google determine how relevant a single webpage is to the entire web.
There are several ways to increase pagerank; one is submitting articles containing backlinks to article directories. This is also the easiest, and most effective way of driving targeted traffic to your website. As it contains backlinks (or votes) to your site, submitting the article to different directories is going to swell your pagerank exponentially.
Furthermore, article directories allow others to copy or excerpt your article to their own blog, as long as they link back to the original piece. If your article has two internal links, those links are replicated, and you get one more link to the original article. This process can be repeated over and over, thus giving you indefinite backlinks.
Remember that a backlink is just an ordinary link that points to your website, preferably your homepage. These backlinks must appear at least twice in the body of the article. Put one at the introductory paragraph and one at the summary, or wherever it fits.
Take advantage of the anchor text to maximize the efficiency of backlinks. Anchor texts are the underlined words containing the link, where people click on. A common mistake, however, is anchoring the words "click here." Search engines cannot interpret what you mean by clicking here, or what is in "here."
If you anchor the text "tuna sandwich" instead, search engines can easily recognize that the link is about "tuna sandwich," so they can increase your page rank in the category of tuna sandwiches. Otherwise search engines will just reward you with a generic pagerank.
To summarize, submitting articles containing backlinks can increase your pagerank invariably. If done right, your website will get that desired traffic in no time.