Article Directories – Are They Wasting YOUR Time?
It’s no secret that I cut my teeth in the affiliate marketing world by writing probably five or so long-tail optimized articles per day, and then submitting them to EzineArticles, Articles Base, and Go Articles. I did this for about 2.5 years, starting in 2008. Basically, I was a poster child for Travis Sago’s old Bum Marketing Method.
Now back in the day, before the Google Penguin and Panda updates that really mucked things up for a lot of us, article directories were pretty bomb. In fact, you could make a healthy income armed with nothing more than a few Clickbank affiliate redirects and a bit of long-tail keyword research.
But these days, article directories just don’t work quite so well as they used to. You would need to submit dozens of articles to see any noticeable traffic. And what about the backlinks?
Unfortunately, the backlinks you receive from article directory marketing are fairly poor as well. Everyone harks on about the high PageRank of article directories. However, the truth is that the high PR of article directories is just their homepage. Your article itself will only carry a PR of 0 or 1 (in most cases).
So they aren’t much use for driving traffic any more. Nor are they very good for building links. What’s the purpose of article directories then, and are they wasting your time?
If you’re just using article directories in the traditional manner (trying to get traffic and backlinks) then you are wasting your time,
However, if you’re submitting high-quality articles that are being syndicated by other bloggers, webmasters, and list owners, then you’re using article directories in the correct manner.
The difference really is that simple 🙂
So basically, you need to be writing high-quality articles that are loaded with awesome value and content, and then submitting them to as many article directories as possible. Aim for longer articles (700 words plus) as these have a far greater chance of being syndicated by content-hungry bloggers and webmasters. Remember to teach something of value in your articles as well.
One good article that is syndicated to a decent sized list or blog will give you more links and traffic than 100 “average” articles submitted to every directory in existence.
However, if you like the thought of article marketing and want to try and use it to build links and traffic, then I really recommend that you either look at getting a good article spinnner (such as the Affilorama Premium Spinner) or hiring an outsource worker on a site such as Elance or EasyOutsource.com to do the work for you.
You would be much better served to put your effort into creating fresh content for your blog, researching profitable keywords, and building a big list of leads.
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Hey Sam as you can tell, I’m enjoying reading your posts.
This topic is of particular interest to me as just today I submitted articles to Ezinearticles.
I would say that the article quality was high, though not quite as long as your suggested 700 words.
I’m in the process of trying to set up a system with regards to my content marketing. Here’s the process so far:
1.) I write a quality article for my website like the following about complimenting a girl: http://shyguydatingadvice.com/flirting/how-to-compliment-a-girl/
2.) I then pay a premium rate to have a writer write a high quality article based on my article and then do a complete quality rewrite of their article so I have 2 high quality articles with the same theme as my original article.
3.) I submit the first of these quality articles to Ezinearticles and link back to my site in the resource box.
4.) I then take that same article submitted to Ezinearticles and have 2 rewrites of this done in Unique Article Wizard format.
5.) I upload these three versions to UAW, add links to my content, and set to submit slowly over the course of a few months.
Now I’m just left with my second high quality article from step 2 above.
A few further ways to generate backlinks through article distribution are to:
– manually submit to additional large article directories
– submit an article as a guest post on a related blog
– submit articles on Web 2.0 sites.
So I’m wondering what you think would be the best way to progress?
With regards to further manual submissions to quality article directories, directories I’ve identified with good potential are the following: Helium, ArticlesDashboard, ArticleBase, GoArticles, Buzzle, ArticleCity, ArticleAlley, Amazines.
What I’m wondering here is, can I use the same original high quality article that was submitted to Ezinearticles in step 3 above and submit this identical article to these other directories, or does each directory require a unique article version?
Assuming each directory requires a unique article version can I submit a randomly randomly generated spun article from my articles uploaded in UAW based off of this original article?
I was also thinking to upload this article to Web 2.0 sites like Docstoc, Scribd and repurpose the article as a PowerPoint slide for upload to SlideShare (as highlighted in one of your other posts.)
Can I do all of this with the same article or do I need to use a new spun version each time?
Also does it make sense to take care of all these manual submissions before submitting to UAW so the chance of the content being identified as unique is higher?
My second high quality article that I’ve still not used from step 2 above I’d like to use for guest blogging.
To save time identifying blogs in my niche willing to publish my content one semi-automated option here might be to offer this unique content within the Content Facilitator marketplace. I am currently testing this, but I finding that the blogs on this network do not have a particularly high domain authority so I’m not sure it’s worth the effort of offering this content with “unique” publishing rights.
I’ve yet to test how often my content gets picked up on Content Facilitator with “open” publishing rights.
Do you know of other similar services to facilitate guest blogging or do you recommend going out and contacting sites directly?
Your comments and insights on my process would be greatly appreciated in order to help streamline my link building process. If you deem any of these steps as obsolete, please do let me know.
I’d be equally interested in learning about other content syndication techniques that you might be using that I might be overlooking.
I know this is a very long comment, but I do really appreciate your insights.
All the best,
Tyler
“But these days, article directories just don’t work quite so well as they used to. You would need to submit dozens of articles to see any noticeable traffic.” if it so. Can you suggest great strategies to make quality traffic?