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Spider
02-19-2009, 09:57 PM
Logically, I would think that submitting articles to articles directories would serve the following purposes--

1. A link to one's website in the bio would increase one's exposure to SE spiders and so improve a website's ranking. Many articles = many links = much exposure = better ranking = better SERPs positioning. Right?


a) Is it better to have many articles in one directory or a few articles in each of many directories?


b) As an articles directory would link out to many, many authors' sites in many, many different and unrelated topics, would that directory not appear to the SEs as being a link farm? To the detriment of all associated with it?

2. An articles directory exists for the purpose of other people republishing one's articles in their own publications - websites, blogs, newsletters and so on. Doesn't it?


a) The more that one's articles get picked up by other webmasters, the more inbound links one earns which further improves one's SE rankings and thus SERPs, right?


b It also means one is likely to get more traffic to one's site from the visitors of the republishing site clicking one's bio link, right?


c) But that means one has no control over where one's articles are published. Should that matter? What could be bad about that?


d) If one of your articles gets picked up by a so-called "bad neighborhood" website, how damaging could that be to one's own SE ranking and SERPs?

All-in-all, is submitting articles to articles directories a good thing or not? And what other advantages and disadvantages might there be?

cbscreative
02-20-2009, 12:38 AM
Overall, I think the onslaught of abuse killed off many benefits of article directories. They used to work well, but not so much any more. However, I would say some would be an exception. If the article site is "picky" about who they accept for submissions, gets good traffic, and carefully filters content submitted for quality, then you could still see significant benefits from such sites.

Most article directories are what I call article dumps. There is so much useless, low quality material, I think users would get frustrated trying to find a few gems. Good authors would not want to bother submitting amidst so much junk. So the gems may not even exist unless you find an author who has a following, so they continue to submit only because of their established following.

If you find a good directory that you can be accepted for, your question 2A is true to an extent. Once duplicate content begins to appear in several places, it loses weight. It won't hurt you, you just don't gain as much. 2B is true and will give you some traffic, plus that traffic is "warm" so it is good traffic. I don't think C and D would be much of a problem if any at all.

vangogh
02-20-2009, 12:50 AM
You pretty much hit on all the points. A few years ago article marketing as you're describing was one of the best ways to build links into a site. I think it's value has decreased since, but many people still promote themselves and build links this way. I think there's currently a better way to do article marketing.

One thing to look out for is not all directories will give you a link with any seo value. Some will use javascript or add rel="nofollow" making the links mostly worthless. View the source code for the link to see if it's a straight html link without a nofollow added.

All things being equal I'd probably go with a few articles in each of several directories. Having links from different domains is likely better than having all the links come from one domain. The better directories like Ezine will be seen fine by search engines. One way to tell is search for some article titles and see if they rank on the directory site.

One of the reasons this used to be a great way to market was because of all the other sites that might pick up your article which meant more links for you. Now most if not all of those links will probably be seen as duplicate content and the links won't really carry much or any weight. The value is going to be mostly in the link from the directory itself, which can still be a good link. Of course if your article is picked up by other sites real people will still see it and maybe click. And you're still getting your name out there for branding.

I wouldn't worry about a bad neighborhood site linking back to you. Where you get hurt is when you link out to them. Search engines realize you can't always control who links to you and if they penalized you because a shady site links to you it would be easy to hurt all your competitors by sending them as many bad links as you could.

If you don't have any quality links pointing into your site then yes enough incoming links from bad neighborhoods could hurt you, but as long as you have some good links flowing into your site they won't

Now the way I think it's better to do article marketing today is to find some authority sites on your topic and get them to accept your article. Since you're really getting the one link from the one site you might as well try to improve the quality of that link.

An easy way to find an authority site is simply to use common sense. Try a few queries around your topic. The sites you see ranking all the time are likely the authorities. They're really going to be the same site a human being would see as an authority. In SEO terms they'll be the sites with lots of incoming links. A site like Ezine will have authority, but it's more general authority. A site within your topic will be more of what's called a topical authority. Links from both kinds are good.

One thing you can do is follow some blogs on your topic. Many blogs will ask for guest posts from time to time. Even if they don't you might still be able to get published if you tailor an article to that particular blog and send it to the blogger. No guarantees of course, but it will probably be a better link if you get it. Also since your article will appear on a site about your topic, it's in front of an audience who is more likely to follow you back to your own site. Ideally they'd find a blog on the other end of the link with a few more great posts. That's actually how I've found many of the blogs currently in my feed reader. I saw a few guest posts I liked over a few weeks and subscribed.

The links will be on sites on your topic and in front of an audience that's likely to follow you as well. I think that's really the better way to do article marketing today. It's a little more work, but it's worth the extra effort. I would first try to see if you can get your articles published on sites in your industry and then if for some reason no one will publish them I'd submit to Ezine or one of the other better article sites.

Spider
02-20-2009, 12:45 PM
As always, great information and feedback. Thank you, guys!

vangogh
02-20-2009, 02:41 PM
Glad to help Frederick.

cbscreative
02-20-2009, 06:57 PM
You're welcome, I'm glad it was helpful.

Harold Mansfield
02-24-2009, 04:50 PM
All the resources that I have read recently say that article marketing is most effective theses days when you target long tail keywords and phrases with 5,000 SR's or lower. (Although I never seem to listen to that)

Most say Ezine articles carries the most weight and to link your other submissions to the actual ezine article to boost it's authority.

No one seems to worry about duplicate content much anymore, however I do change up the headline, excerpt, and rearrange paragraphs...I try not to write paragraphs that are dependent on each other but can stand alone just for that purpose.

I agree that there are so many junk articles out there, that it seems that it has lost it's luster...whenever possible try and use other sources to post on that have more authority like Hub Pages , Squidoo, Zimbio. And don't forget that you can make up blogger and wordpress blogs for free to host a bunch of articles in the same niche.

With blogger you can link directly back to your site, with wordpress.com, they are hip to the SEO thing, but using the name of your site, keyword that you rank #1 for, and a simple text of the URL (without the link) still works.

vangogh
02-24-2009, 05:13 PM
No one seems to worry about duplicate content much anymore

I think there's a misconception that duplicate content leads to a penalty. That was never the issue. The idea is more that it's not going to help. Search engines don't want to show 10 results to the same content on different domains. So they pick the one they think best and pretty much ignore the others. It used to be the dups would go to the supplemental index. Now Google says there is no supplemental index. Seems to me the name is irrelevant and the duplicate content is still treated mostly the same.

At best all those extra downloaded articles will lead to some very low quality links that are unlikely to help you in any way.

Duplicate content on your own site is another issue. It's basically having multiple versions of the same content fight for the same thing. You're better off having one version of the content get 100% of that thing instead of having 5 different pages each getting some share.

customtollfree
03-06-2009, 05:04 PM
In my humble opinion, the only good and free article site today is Ezinearticles.com, they somehow manage to deliver quality visits.

vangogh
03-06-2009, 05:29 PM
Ezine is probably the best, though I'd still prefer having an article on another site that aligned more with mine than using Ezine. I'd save Ezine as a last resort.

cbscreative
03-07-2009, 02:47 PM
I would agree too that Ezine is probably the best in their market. They do at least screen all their submissions with human eyeballs. Many of the other sites lost control a long time ago because they didn't screen their submissions well enough, and they became virtual wastelands full of useless garbage.