How many Article Directories are too many? Different people will have different answers to this question. The organised among you will know exactly how many you submit to, and it will be somewhere in the region of two or three figures. The disorganised among you will be wondering what article directories actually are.
The world of article directories is one that’s worth exploring in depth to teach you about ways for valuable SEO , but the main reason for this blog post is to remind you that there is safety, and sales in numbers. Just think, every article you send to one of these sites provides another link back to your own website.
Every single link means Google sits up and takes more notice, as it automatically thinks you have a popular site. After all, why would so many sites link back to you if they didn’t like what you were all about?
Traffic is the Goal
Now we know that it’s you that’s posted all those articles to Article Directories all over the web, but that makes no difference. They all provide valuable back links and they all provide a chance for new people to come and find your site and make it more popular.
Traffic is the goal here, and if someone has taken the time to read your article on widgets, they will provide targeted traffic if they are interested enough to go and visit your website as well.
Don’t Limit Yourself
So don’t limit yourself when it comes to using Article Directories. You may take different approaches as well to avoid the duplicate content filter with some of your articles but go for quantity and quality.
If you are submitting articles manually then there may be a limit to the number you can submit to in the space of a couple of hours. But if you get a program that takes a lot of the hard work out of submitting to these sites then you can cover a lot more ground in a much shorter amount of time.
About Sean Rasmussen
Hi Sean,
I have read your “duplicate content” post and it all makes sense except for 1 thing; how much “should” you change content around?
Is changing a few paragraphs around enough or do we have to re-look at the entire article?
Hi Cemil,
There are no “hard and fast” rules for duplicate content and how it is seen by the search engines. My personal opinion is that your articles should be 100% unique for SEO purposes. Unique content will benefit your readers and your rankings. There is nothing wrong with “borrowing” information from other articles…just be sure to put your own spin on it, add some of your own thoughts, and write with your own style.
Regards – Sean
Hi Sean,
What I do sometimes is look at an article see to see what someone has said then write my spin on it in in my own words, so it is totally mine except the subject was someone else’s idea.
Rita
Sean
Would it be best to stick to the high page rank directories or the more the merrier?
Hi Gee,
Excellent question. I was thinking exactly the same thing because I have a list bookmarked of the top PR article directories. I think it’s better to go with the higher PR ones.
Submitting articles is great, but I understand that I can’t (or shouldn’t) submit the same article to different article directories. It has to be re-written or at least changed substantially for each and every one. Being (still) not a fast writer this puts a limit on my submissions, as I am just to slow to write my regular posts plus several versions for articles.
So I will keep going, one text at a time.
But – practice makes perfect
I’ve never written articles for ezines, or the like. I’ve written the occasional newspaper article, so I guess that’s somewhat similar. I will definitely look into this.
My answer to the question of how many article directories do I submit articles to is a big fat 1. Thats it and thats not even very often. Ezine articles won’t let you submit your article if the content is very similiar to something already there and creative writing is not the most prominent skill I have so I really need to work on this side of things.
The whole purpose of putting your article up on an article directory is for it to be syndicated. That syndicated article stays exactly the same when it is put onto other websites and therefore becomes duplicate content. What would be so wrong with your article being syndicated lets say 1000 times. This cant reflect bad on you as its out of your control and its the whole purpose of article submission. Article websites also take articles from each other.
I would suggest submitting same article to about 20 sites then change it around a bit, if you have a list of 1500 websites submit it to more. For top article websites try keep each one unique – although sharing it with 3 wont be so bad. Even if you worked through the article again changing things you can end up with a totally new article. (well that depends how much you know about the subject matter).
Seriously would you consider writing a new article for every directory out there!!!
@David Kimberley; you said it best and finally someone who knows that they’re talking about!
Listen up people, because this is the truth: SYNDICATION HAS BEEN THE STANDARD MEDIA PRACTICE FOR DECADES. Syndication is a way of sharing information in the publishing world. You will NEVER be penalized for submitting the same EXACT article to one, two or even two hundred or more directories. RSS feeds, aggregators and ALL syndication tools take one piece of content and send that out to their affiliates in the exact same format that it’s in. In fact, rewriting someone else’s work or changing it for submission purposes is called plagiarism.
There’s also such a thing as self-plagiarism, and if you’re rewriting your content at anything less than 100% original; you’re guilty. Think about it. What you’re saying is: I either care about quality or being penalized so much that I am going to take my 1 good article and turn it into a number of mediocre articles, then send those out. Does this make sense to anyone? Ever?
This “only submit one unique article to each source” myth is one of the oldest in the IM industry and I get so tired of seeing otherwise intelligent people propagate it. Just ask anyone who has a media or journalistic background: SYNDICATION is the lifeblood of the information age! And Google will NEVER penalize you for “duplicate content” because properly syndicated work is NOT duplicate content.
People, syndicate your articles. Send them to as many HIGH QUALITY directories as you want. Think about it – would your readers rather read one awesome original article, or would they rather stumble upon a rewrite that you only wrote because you thought you had to in order to prevent being penalized? Use your head!
The important thing to remember is to make sure your content is indexed on your own website first. Then send it out to the world – that’s the whole point of syndication and anyone who tells you differently is poorly and regrettably misinformed. If the content is indexed on your site first, search engines will recognize it as the original source and that piece of content will hold the most weight when it comes to ranking considerations. That’s why I no longer care when people steal my work. Screw ‘em.
In fact, you can even take articles from directories and put them on your own site, (I don’t recommend this I am just making a point.) thereby syndicating them. As long as you credit the original source with the original link, you’ll never be penalized for duplicate content because you properly syndicated it, and syndication is GOOD.
The last comments on this post was more than a year ago so I hope in that time you posters above me learned that you’ve been listening to a bunch of hype.
Write quality content.
Index it on your site first.
Send it to as many directories or editor email inboxes as you like.
Stop listening to useless internet marketing myths and get informed.
Ross. I really like your take on this and tend to agree with you.
Thanks for sharing.