All Entries Tagged With: "article directory"
Article Submissions To Article Directories Is Not The Way To Go
Seriously, are you still getting a bunch of cheap articles written and distributing them to thousands of article directories? That method used to work. It was never that effective, but now it’s simply obsolete as a link-building method. The last Google update, Panda should have convinced you of that, but that method was dead before the update.
You don’t even have a way of knowing how many people actually read those articles let alone if they actually got published at the places you submitted them to. Plus, if it is garbage content, then no one who does read it will ever visit your website. Using article marketing just for link popularity is the wrong way to go.
1. Well-written articles will help you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
2. Well-written articles that are interesting to the reader will get them to click through to your website where you can actually make a sale.
Those are reasons to do article marketing. Links back to your website are the side-benefit of article marketing, not the purpose!
You need to promote good, original content, not spinning articles or hiring people to write them for the lowest price possible. It seems that poeople get the idea that something works and they will stay with that method even if it kills them. People hate change.
If you are still going with the cheap articles, thousands of directory submissions method, then you are missing the boat. Good article marketing is not cheap anymore. get over it. Hire some good content writers. Have them get those new articles onto knol pages, hub pages, squidoo lenses, large forums that allow articles to be published and other high-traffic websites.
These high-traffic websites that allow you to place good, original content on them is the method you should be using. You will know exactly where your article is published and know exactly how many people read it. Here are some details for you to look at;
Image via CrunchBase
1. Google Knol Pages – http://knol.google.com If you go there and do a search for your keywords, you will see several knol pages about that topic. You see next to each one how many people read those articles. Nice to know how many people actually read your articles. We can add images, embed video, use bold text, headers and other formatting to dress up the article and make it more appealing, more like a web page than an article. If you build the first one that is just all about your company, then build more knol pages, you add links to those knol pages from your first google knol page about your company. So you end up with a Central Knol about your conmpany that links to all of your other knol pages. That is exactly like having another website. 
Image via CrunchBase
2. Hub Pages – (This is going to sound almost identical to a knol page) http://www.hubpages.com is another place you can search for one of your keywords to see what other people have done with their articles. Again, you get to know how many people read the article and get other useful analytics as well. We can add images, embed video, use bold text, headers and other formatting to dress up the article and make it more appealing, more like a web page than an article. If you build the first one that is just all about your company, then build more hub pages, you add links to those hub pages from your first hub page about your company. So you end up with a Central Hub about your conmpany that links to all of your other hub pages. That is exactly like having another website.
Image via CrunchBase
3. Squidoo Lens – http://www.squidoo.com You can also search there for lenses about your topic to see what others have done. You’ll notice that these are much longer than knols or hubs. Knols and hubs are one article. A lens is 10 articles. As with the hubs and knols we can add images, embed video, use bold text, headers and other formatting to dress up the articles and make them more appealing. The difference here is that you have us write a series of articles that flow from article to article like chapters in a book. Again you get to see how many people read the lens and everything.
Using Google Analytics in your website means you will also know how many of those readers actually visited your website. It’s crucial to know what kind of return you get from the different methods you use to drive more traffic to your website. The same things do not work for everyone. Having the knowledge of what is and is not working allows you to make adjustments and improve the return on your investment in SEO and Marketing.
Now that is article marketing. You may need to review your own article marketing plan if you are not including these methods. We can help.
Pricing
Google Knol Pages run $80 including the content writing and everything.
Hub Pages run $60 including the article writing.
A Squidoo Lens runs $400, including the 10 articles.
I’ve been doing article marketing longer than almost anyone on the web. I own 2 article directories myself, one of them with more than 150,000 articles in it and I’m still advising my clients not to go that route. The options above are so much better and the sites are much higher quality and they have more traffic than the article directories. For instance; My article directory gets 35,000 unique visitors per month. Hubpages.com gets 1 million+. Combine that higher traffic with the tracking that analytics gives you and you have a real article marketing plan.
Contact us here or call 512.322.9566 for a free, no-obligation consultation.
Related articles
- Introducing Knol (buzz.blogger.com)
Article Directory Review
Article Content Provider would like to thank Directory Blogger for his fair and honest review of the ACP directory.
There needs to be more sites like this that give good an honest reviews of article directories and other directory and content services. We appreciate Directory Blogger for his honesty and fairness and willingness to review our article directory. Thanks!
Article Directories: What Makes A Good One?
How do you know which article directories to submit your website to? Believe me, it’s not easy. I’d be real careful about submitting to every directory out there. Some are better than others. But there is one criteria that is often cited about article directories that I would caution you against in using as a selection criteria. That criteria is PageRank. Don’t use it.
PageRank can be deceiving. Just because a web domain has a high PageRank doesn’t mean it’s a good article directory. Maybe it has a high PageRank because it was another type of website for 10 years and just recently converted into an article directory. If that’s the case then it needs to prove itself as an article directory.
A better thing to look at is traffic. How much traffic does that article directory get? You can find out by going to Alexa.com and checking the traffic stats. This isn’t a perfect tool, but Alexa can give you an idea about traffic. Look at the upward and downward trend over the last 3 months. Then look at the raw traffic numbers. If the traffic is low and the downward trend is going down then it’s not a good site. If the traffic number is high and the trend is upward then that’s a good sign.
Another thing you can do is go to Google and type in site:http://www.nameofarticledirectory.com. Google will tell you how many pages of that article directory have been indexed. If the number is low then the directory probably has website crawl issues. If the number is high then it’s a good directory.
Also take a look at the cache option in your Google toolbar (you do have the Google toolbar, don’t you?). How long ago was the site cached? If it’s been too long then it isn’t getting updated very often.
Keep in mind that Google no longer passes link juice from article directories. That’s not to say that it couldn’t. Google often overlooks its own policies. But don’t count on links from article directories. You are submitting articles for traffic. It’s nice if that traffic comes from the article directory, but it doesn’t to. You want other publishers to use your articles. The traffic and links from those publisher websites are what you really want the article directory to do for you. If you find your articles getting published then you’ve found a good article directory.
ArticlesBase Has Added New Categories
If you use ArticlesBase to distribute your articles through then you might be interested to know they’ve added 11 new article categories. Here’s the list:
- Business-> Franchise
- Home and Family -> Fathering
- Health -> Vision
- Hobbies -> Crafts
- Sports and Fitness -> Water Sports
- Sports and Fintess -> Archery
- Sports and Fitness -> Self Defense
- Law -> Immigration
- Law -> Bankruptcy
- Spirituality -> Christianity
- Relationships -> Breakup
In my opinion, ArticlesBase is one of the best article directories online. They at least have a commitment to improving, which is more than I can say for most. For more information on the new categories at ArticlesBase, read the ArticlesBase blog.
Need an article submission service?
Use Your Author Resource Box To Build Links
It seems that everyone and their pet rattlesnake has an article directory now. Here’s a new take on the article directory: AdSense share. I’m just not sure about it.
Nevertheless, this article writer understands how to put together a good author resource box.
Optimizing Your Author’s Resource Box
By Kerry Thomas
Article marketing is a very effective way to promote your web site and services. One simple article can ultimately end up on hundreds or even thousands of other sites. The links back to your site from these articles is what drives your web traffic. You can get direct referrals as well as organic search results via an effective article marketing strategy.
A very important tip for article marketing is to always optimize your author’s resource area. The author’s resource box is usually the area where you are allowed to place links that point back to your site. I’ll demonstrate an optimized resource box below.
Your Name loves to write and (submit articles) to http.//www.examplesite.com/ (actual link would have a ” : ” after the http instead of a ” . “)
My example is a very short bio, but in this case it shows how I have made the article resource links work for me. In this example (submit articles) would represent the anchor text of my link. I would hyperlink the text “submit articles” and have it pointing to the example site. In this context, submit articles would be a keyword that might help drive traffic to the site. I have basically told the search engines that the text “submit articles” is relevant to the site and I want to place a little more emphasis on it. Here’s the key…the text you choose to hyperlink should be keyword related and you should always take advantage of the ability to hyperlink keywords in your author’s bio area.
I have also allowed for the http: version of the URL. Most article sites will automatically hyperlink the http: format of the URL. If by chance the article ends up on a plain text article site, then the link will not be hyperlinked, but the user can still find your article by simply copying and pasting the URL to the browser’s address bar. While the the plain text version will not help your search engine rankings, it can and will allow for direct referrals to your bio information. As you can see I have allowed for both plain text and html rendering of my bio information.
Apply these same principles to all your article bios and you will be effectively working towards driving both organic search results and direct referrals to your work. As you can see, choosing the right link text, and properly hyperlinking it, can add a considerable boost to your search engine rankings. Please remember that most sites will only allow for a couple of links in the bio area so don’t over do it. The http: version will count as a link itself in most cases. Choose your keywords carefully and get them properly optimized to maximize your traffic.
Kerry Thomas is an article writer and owns an Article Directory offering AdSense® revenue sharing here: http://www.myarticle-writer.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kerry_Thomas
Not only does an article resource box build solid links, but it also can drive traffic to your website from highly trafficked sites within your niche. Here’s another article directory you can submit your articles to.
Learn how you can have your articles submitted to 40,000 directories and websites for less than $5.
