We are planing to start using article marketing much more often this year for our clients. While the train may have left the station for Internet Marketing or Make Money at Home hype articles, with complete oversaturation of those markets, my sense is that there is still lots of demand for quality, original content in other subjects.
EzineArticles.com seems to be the place to start (and strangely enough they allow affiliate links in articles now).
Beyond EzineArticles, what are the top article directories to submit to?
Here are fellow Canadian (and alas pro article spammer) Jason Potash’s own shortlist of top article sites:
- www.ezinearticles.com
- www.netterweb.com
- www.jogena.com
- www.ideamarketers.com
- www.certificate.net/wwio
- www.impactarticles.com
- www.articleavenue.com
- www.isnare.com
- www.goarticles.com
The sad thing is how much people have to be policed. All of these article directories have to have extensive automated anti-spam testing.
What is article spam?
Article spam includes:
- nonsense content (machine-generated drivel)
- duplicate content (stolen content)
- public domain content (doesn’t belong to nominal writer)
- misappropriated content (from government websites or Wikipedia for example)
- near duplicate content (machine modified good articles)
The last one is the toughest one to filter for.
After the machine testing, editorial review is also essential. While the article directory owners complain about the resources required for editorial review, it’s a little bit of crocodile tears. Newspapers, yearbooks and magazines all need extensive editorial review. Editorial review is just part of publishing. If you don’t like editing, don’t become a publisher.
On the other hand, automated tools like Copyscape to bring the workload down by rejecting flagrant abuse are essential.
In a nutshell, Copyscape will scan an article or web page and tell you how many other web pages contain substantially the same content.
I’ve used it to catch other webmasters ripping off my client’s websites. Sadly enough, I’ve also caught my clients ripping off other people’s content which they were passing off as their own.
Ironically, it’s the people who are most paranoid about having their own content stolen, who are actually the thieves themselves.
I even confronted that same client about the issue – we don’t steal content – amazingly enough the client refused to take down the articles or credit them to the source. It should come as no surprise that in the end that same client tried to burn us at the end by not paying their final bill.
Golden rules for doing well long term on the web:
- Don’t steal content!
- Do pay your web development and/or SEO company!
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
Thanks for the share mate. I shall use these article directories and submit articles manually.
Great list! I too use ezinearticles and goarticles upon recommendation from many sources including this. I don’t seem to get much traffic from the links themselves but I am certain the incoming link building has helped achieve some of the rankings I currently have.
@Justin
“http://www.yourwebgurus.com” (add more value to your comments next time if you are really working on link building: first a drive by with broken grammar and now thin gruel)
Is it best to focus on one article site, and become an acknowledged thought leader on the subject, or it best to spread your articles around the various sites to spread the impact? Any advice welcome.
Hi John,
If your question is earnest (and not just a comment for a link’s sake), here’s the bottom line.
You have to focus on two or three sites, building up a rich profile. At the same time you should spread your articles around lightly to a wider network (twenty or thirty sites).
Effective article marketing is a lot of work.
Alec Genuinely want to learn, we sell outdoor toys, and are highly seasonal. We have expert staff here with not enough to do in the winter. The plan is to write as much expert copy as we can. We have started, and have plenty, but by the end of the winter will have an enormous amount. We are starting by writing answers to every question we have ever had, no matter how stupid. Genuinely, we are looking for the best places to publish the expertise. On one article site, several, or dozens, or even none at all, just focus on publishing on our own sites.
Hi John,
You should publish your best stuff on your own site and spread the rest out widely.
One thing which helps is article spinning (so you get multiple versions of an article from a single article). We have created our own article spinner which you can find at that link.
Just paste in your initial article text and you are off to the races. Make sure to include links back to your original site.
Can you submit articles that are on your site to directories? i.e its original content from your site, but you are submitting that to several directories unchanged with a link back to your site? Surely thats just promotion and not duplicate content? Isnt it exactly the same thing as writing a nice link bait article and having in reposted on peoples blogs and sites?
I wouldn’t say what you had there was really a good quality article directory. Thanks anyway.