Article directories are playing as a major part of SEO link building strategies over years. It is a place where various authors and website owners publish their articles on various article submission sites related to express categories. There are thousands of such directories, out of which Ezinearticles, ArticleDashboard, Goarticles, Sooperarticles, etc., are some of the best directories that are available. These article directories are filled with thousands of such articles related to each category.
The article that goes to article directories need not be written by professionals; it can also be written by beginner level writers. Many of the webmasters prefer automated submission tool, which helps in spreading the given article in hundreds of different article directories.
Out of those thousands of article directories, some of them are paid ones and some of them are free. Many times, paid directories make sure that those articles are submitted to other relevant directories too, while you can’t expect too much out of the free services.
The main purpose of posting articles in article directories is that we can generate backlinks for our site and depending upon the article directory we can get traffic to our websites, which in turn helps in building the website reputation. This way, you can get more chances of getting ranked in Google’s first page. Later, professionals started calling it as Article Marketing strategy. Well Article Marketing is not just mass posting on these Directories, but yea it is one of the major part of Article Marketing.
Google, has been really severe on these Article Directories over past few months. Most of the low quality directories have been de-indexed which lead to loss of SERPs for most of the webmasters who gained links from these sites. Technically, Google named this latest Algorithm as Google Panda – that which slashed hundreds and thousands of low quality and no use websites.
Before Panda, for those folks who write articles or content and use them as a tool or medium to earn some money, the directories enable the blogs to run on auto pilot. Even we have used RSS feeds, it makes blogging a risk-free task for the blogger, but the Search Engines have started taking some serious measures on these Blackhat techniques.
Many of the article directories have a closed focus on few of the audiences for some particular topics, though they serve for various categories. Sometimes, these directories give more importance for that niche like Marketing, Online Money Making, Technology and Computers or something like Health tips. You can see, that many web-masters or self-claimed SEO experts are considering that backlinks from Article Directories have no impact currently, because of Google Panda. If you are one among them, you are travelling in a wrong path. The Article Directories still deserve the respect from Search Engines as they always had, as it is one of the major technique to build backlinks.
But, the respect has been limited by Search Engines. They respect your links from Authority Directories, instead of getting links from crappy directories. I have personally tested this.
I’ve considered a couple of keywords (with similar traffic and same competition) for my 4 year Domain. For my first keyword, I’ve submitted an article at Ezine articles, Sooperarticles, Articledashboard and Goarticles with 1 link/submission, while for my second keyword I’ve spunned an article and shooted that into 200+ Article Directories with minimum of Page Rank 1+ (instant approval directories). I’ve checked the rankings for both keywords after a week.
- 1st keyword – SERP improved by 700%
- 2nd keyword – SERP improved by 37%
So, it is proved that getting links from High Quality sources will always help instead of getting hundreds of crappy links.
Benefits of Article Directories
Below are 5 most important benefits you get from article directories:
- Build great backlinks
- Customize your anchor text
- Get syndicated with in no time
- Build status and name recognition
- Gain Traffic
Using the Right Directories
Having seen the importance of article directories in SEO process, it’s time to take a look at the noteworthy ones; here are our top 6 contenders, that definitely help you to rank higher –
- Ezinearticles
- GoArticles
- Amazines
- SooperArticles
- ArticleDashboard
- Articlesalley
Don’t Spread Dupe Content
Rather than submitting an article across 20 sources, it’d be a wiser idea to spin it as many times, as the number of copies that wish to submit across the various article directories.
Only EzineArticles and some of the top article marketing directories don’t accept dupe content, while others do… But, you’ll need to understand that submitting copies of a particular article, to hundreds of directories won’t help!
The Webmasters, must keep in mind that, getting backlinks is not just the goal, you need to make sure that all your backlinks gets indexed in Search Engines and that is what exactly counts. It is also estimated that only 40% of backlinks gets indexed on an average and most of your backlinks will stay unnoticed. So, posting articles on authority websites where the crawl rate is high, helps you in many ways.
This article is written by Siddartha Thota. He works as SEM for Cordell Estimator V4 which is one of the best construction estimator software.
Ya, your are right not all back links get indexed.
Can you please share how we can get backlinks indexed?
Thanks
Hi Vineet, it entirely depends on the kind of backlinks you generated mate. Is it like blog comments, forum threads, guest articles, or any other sort of linkbacks? 🙂
Is this still a good practice?
Thanks, Siddartha Thota.
I’ve been building links for several months with directories, but didn’t pay much attention to Article ones. I wonder about the effects of other kinds of directories? Or just article ones make you a boom?
Yes i am totally agreed with you this is one of the nice way to get the backlinks of high quality sites which have much more importance than others
Many of the article directories have a closed focus on few of the audiences for some particular topics, though they serve for various categories. Sometimes, these directories give more
NIce list! I believe its much better to submit a few high quality articles to a handful of directories, than it is to submit 100’s of spun articles all over the net with duplicate content. But idk I never tried it, maybe that works lol but I’m way too paranoid that Google will penalize me or something.
Interesting article, Siddharta. What criteria have you used for selecting those 5 directories? Pagerank, Alexa rank or something else?
Article directory marketing can be very advantageous for your SEO efforts if you will perform it right, which consequently means submission of high quality contents and avoiding duplicate content.
We need to differentiate between syndicated content versus duplicated content. Many people has a wrong view, understanding of duplicate content. One news article can be syndicated and posted across hundreds of news sites. It's intentional . Likely there is nothing wrong if you so choose to post your article (without spinning ) to many article directories. But note that the search engine will select what it determine as the original piece ( which is what is indexed first),
when returning the search results.
This is really a helpful guide because i was really not aware about such enormous advantages of Article Directories.. I am thinking forward to write some good post on all of the directories you mentioned here..
But sumit you can submit spunned versions of guest posts.
I also personally tested it.even its same in blog comments.can u suggest any free spinning software?
I don't think article directories are as much effective as this was before Google Panda update.
so what does you suggest since we cannot post a dupe content, it might be better to write a guest post instead of directories
Google Panda affected only those sites or articles that didn't add any value to the readers. Of course there were other good sites that got washed away in the Panda tide. But that was bound to happen. I am sure those sites would be reinstated to their original ranking and traffic sites.
Well, article marketing is as powerful and effective as before and was never dead or never will. The key to a successful article marketing campaign is to provide well researched, informative and comprehensive content to your audience. And it also stands the chance of getting syndicated over other authority blogs or sites.
I really don't think spun articles would work at all ! Google uses a smart technology called LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) to sift through the site, so spinning is not at all a smart way to approach article marketing.
Give good quality and relevant content to your audience, that's all you need to do as a blogger. And again, content need not be just words, it can be an audio podcast, video or even a one on one session.
So think out of the box and be innovative and never try to fool the search engines or your audience!
I haven't been working for SEO on Article directories.. to be frank its getting boredom 🙂
Yes i am totally agreed with you this is one of the nice way to get the backlinks of high quality sites which have much more importance than others.
Submitting duplicate articles might prove quite unhealthy for your seo, so be careful when you do link building in this method.
Yea bro, thats what I mean to say….. Ezine and other article directories doesn't allow spinned content as well. They are having pretty strict rule and regulations. So, for initial SE boost, we need to spin and try to get few pr 1+ links which helps search engines to crawl our post, and once it started ranking around page 2 or 3 or 4, we can start building quality links and get back strongly 🙂
100% agree with you mate 😉