Article Directories for Article Marketing

An article directory is a website that allows authors to submit their writing, unpaid, and free of charge, in exchange for visibility for their businesses or websites. Most article directories "pay" authors in the form of live hyperlinks, either in the articles or in so-called "resource text" directly following them. These links can drive traffic to their websites.

My recommendations of article directories:

Many websites provide top 10 or top 50 lists of article directories. I think these "top" lists are misleading, because in reality, there is one article directory that performs better than all the others, and there are only a handful of directories (far fewer than 10) worth considering. Far more fruitful than pursuing the "lower" directories on a top 10 list, would be to explore other websites and publishing opportunities.

My personal recommendation among article directories is EzineArticles. EzineArticles has emerged as a clear leader in the arena of article directories, and in my detailed review, I explain why I feel this consensus is absolutely warranted. I would recommend for people interested in starting with article marketing to start with EzineArticles; most people will find this site to be adequate for their needs.

Most of the other article directories are not worth writing for; their performance generally lags far behind EzineArticles. The only other contender worth using, from my experience, has been Buzzle. However, Buzzle no longer is useful as an article directory, due to changes in their policies.

Alternatives to Article Directories:

Any website that offers a form of self-publishing allowing live hyperlinks is a contender with formal article directories. Similarly, legitimate publishing sites with an editorial team offer an (often better) alternative as well.

Squidoo is frequently discussed alongside article directories. My personal experience with Squidoo has been relatively good. However, Squidoo requires a considerably different technique and strategy to be used effectively for article marketing.

HubPages is a popular article-directory-like site with a somewhat different format and the added benefit of a revenue sharing model. I recommend avoiding HubPages; I believe that HubPages is a scam, at least as far as its traffic-driving potential is concerned; it may be more valuable for direct revenue generation. Suite101, however, is one site I would recommend; it also has revenue sharing, but I have found its business model and practices to be more transparent, honest, and straightforward than HubPages; I have also found it to perform significantly better in terms of click-through on links, and views for your articles.

Do Article Directories have SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Value even if they Don't Drive Traffic?

I am a firm believer in google's advice about SEO: design your webpages for humans, not for search engines. Article marketing is a legitimate and valuable way to help promote or gain visibility for a website, but as with any practice, I believe that attempting to use article directories to "game" search engines is a waste of time. Why?

It has been my experience that the SEO value of article directories is in direct proportion to their efficacy in terms of driving traffic to your website. Google has proven time and time again that it is able to detect and punish schemes or black-hat techniques to manipulate search rankings. Google has access to a lot of data, including substantial data on click-throughs to various sites, through Google analytics. Google likely has the capacity to make rather accurate estimates of which websites actually drive traffic legitimately through a combination of actual data and heuristics. It seems highly unlikely that they would give much weight to a website which is not generating legitimate views.

Does the Google PageRank of an Article Directory matter for SEO Purposes?

A lot of people use the pagerank of an article directory's homepage as an indicator of the SEO value of the site. I find this practice to be based on flawed reasoning. First of all, I think that PageRank is something that is, for the most part, best ignored. But even if you assume PageRank is an accurate indicator of the SEO value of links from a page, what matters is the PageRank of your articles, not of the article directory's homepage. While homepages tend to be highest in PageRank, the manner in which PageRank is distributed throughout the site depends in complex ways on the site's internal linking structure.

If you're interested in assessing how your articles will rank before writing them, find some similar articles on the site you are interested in writing for: look for articles that are at least a year old, as it can take some time for PageRank to get updated. Use a tool like yahoo site explorer to check to see if there are any external links to the article. Ideally, you want to find articles with a PageRank of 1 or 2, which do not have many links to them; this will be a sign that if you write a similar article, it will probably achieve a similar ranking with time, without you having to publicize it much.

Publicizing Your Articles on Article Directories:

I've seen a lot of recommendations made to put effort into letting people know about your articles published in article directories, and working on building links to these articles, so that these articles achieve a higher PageRank and views so that they then have more SEO value and send more traffic to your websites. This philosophy is ill-informed: putting this much effort into publicizing your articles is a waste of time. The purpose of article marketing is to publish articles on sites that already have greater visibility than your own website. Whatever methods you have for publicizing a website or generating links to it, you should apply directly to your target website, not to your articles published in an article directory.

My rules of thumb for how to and how not to publicize your contributions to article directories:

• Publicize your articles published on article directories only in casual ways that are not time-intensive, such as by posting on facebook or twitter, and linking to the articles from websites under your control when the links are relevant. Linking to your author profile or a listing of your articles is often a good idea, as it showcases your work.
• Concentrate your serious efforts on publicizing your website directly, not your articles published elsewhere.
• Focus on writing high-quality content on a website that you own and control before you engage in article marketing. If you find yourself tempted to link to an article you published in an article directory, ask yourself why you aren't linking to similar content published on your own website.

Locating Topics to Write About:

Find pages on your website that serve as natural starting points or landing pages for readers who would be most interested in your business or the subject matter of your website. Write articles specifically oriented towards drawing people in to these pages.

Choosing a Title:

Titles and topics go hand in hand; it often helps to start by thinking of a title, and writing the article around the title. Find what people are searching for in search engines. A good tool for this purpose is the Google AdWords keyword tool (which you can use even if, like me, you do not use AdWords), and another useful tool is google trends. A good title:

• Contains keywords from one or more high-traffic search terms.
• Contains keywords from search terms that do not have much competition.
• Has a natural title that is descriptive, and draws in readers who will be most interested in visiting your website.

The second and third points are frequently overlooked. When considering a search term to target with your title, type the keywords into google. If the first page of your search returns popular news articles in high-profile publications like the New York Times or reputable websites like WebMD, you will be unlikely to place an article on the first page of results for that search term. If, on the other hand, you find articles published in article directories, low-profile self-published websites, or better yet, no useful or relevant results at all, you have stumbled upon a useful keyword combination.

In keeping with the third point, make sure to pick a natural title. If you "keyword optimize" your title for search engines, but the title reads as artificial, spammy, or uninteresting, few people will click its headline in search results, and they will not share or link to the article, which will then cause it to fall out of search results.

My Article Directory Reviews:

Directory Name:	Rating:		Remarks:
EzineArticles		(4/5)	This is without a doubt the clear leader among article directories.
Squidoo		(4/5)	More of a unique web publishing platform than an article directory, but usable as both. Fun to use, rich in interactive features.
Buzzle		(2/5)	Good click-through but minimal author tools, and exceptionally unprofessional treatment by editorial staff.
GoArticles		(2/5)	Almost no click-through, not worth using.
HubPages		(0/5)	I find hubpages to be a scam, as an article directory. It may perform better for revenue generation.

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