Submit Articles to EzineArticles After Other Article Directories

It is not a problem at all for EzineArticles in which order you submit to other article directories - although of course be sure articles are first indexed on your own site. As a personal preference, I actually don't use any other article directory besides EzineArticles, but it is almost always the last site to be submitted after publishing to other context-relevant sites, niche ezines, blogs, and offline publications.

You're just doing it so Google knows that the article is YOURS. Besides that it doesn't matter.

Yes, clearly!

I'm afraid your confusion shows in every paragraph you've written.

The reason there are apparent conflicts in everything you've read online is that some of it was about "article marketing" and some was about "article directory marketing". And typically, the people writing about article directory marketing are not even aware that they're two different things. And as a result, they confuse other people, such as yourself.

This is both extremely misguided and completely wrong.

Article directory backlinks are worthless. Google has made quite sure of that. Even as long ago as 2010, before all Google's 2011 series of "Panda updates" devalued the SEO potential of article directory backlinks so much, standard, established SEO-textbook writers were explaining in some detail why one would typically need many tens of thousands of those "backlinks" to confer the same linkjuice to your site's off-page SEO weighting as that arising from one backlink on a quality, relevant site. Nowadays, of course, the value of those backlinks has declined still further, as so many members attest to so regularly.

It's easily enough verifiable for yourself, too.

This isn't what article directories are for. These backlinks have no real value. They're all non-context-relevant (and PR-0) backlinks. As the saying goes "100,000 of those backlinks and $3.50 will buy you a cappuccino at Starbuck's".

(And these days it will also get your site heavily penalized by Google's Penguin update, of course ).

This thread might help you: How do Article Directories work?

People are using article directories as a stepping-stone toward achieiving syndication.

That's why article directories exist.

That's their sole purpose and function.

Google will not "submit" any versions of the article.

It will index all copies, and aims to show one in the main index and the remainder in the supplemental index (but doesn't always achieve that outcome).

This is completely wrong and extremely ill-advised.

The people who do this are the ones starting all the threads with titles like "Is Article Marketing Dead?"

It's dead for them (though they're actually talking about "article directory marketing", typically while referring to it as "article marketing").

And the reason it's dead for them is they've submitted content not previously published to article directories. To express it very bluntly, it's just insane. They're consistently shooting themselves in the foot and they don't even realize that they're doing it to themselves. And then they discuss (what they mistakenly call) "article marketing" here, and say things like "It doesn't really work very well these days, does it?"

Respectfully, it will help you a lot to read the following ...

This little thread explains fairly succinctly why it's a big mistake to submit to an article directory any article that hasn't already been published and indexed on your own site: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...marketing.html

In this much longer thread, a whole succession of experienced, professional article marketers explain all their shared reasons for never submitting to an article directory any article that hasn't already been published and indexed on their own site: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...eza-first.html

This single post explains fairly clearly why no article marketer should ever want to get potential customer traffic coming to his/her site from an article directory.

And this single post, together with the links referenced inside it, explains how article directories work: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

It makes no sense for marketers to try to use article directories for their backlinks or to give them any previously unpublished content. That isn't why they're there and it isn't how they work. Doing that can damage your business. It can't help it (compared with doing it the right way round).

I agree, post great content to your website, but high quality content will never get you on first page of Google for a "competitive" keyword. Thus, you will need links. Links from other sites... article directories are some good choices.

No, and it shouldn't be.

(Except that you'll want to add for an article directory copy a "resource-box" which you don't need on your own site, because traffic reading it on your own site is "already there", of course).

Not to the original source. Linking from one copy of an article to another copy of the same article is a recipe for losing traffic.

"With a link back to your landing-page" is good.

Unless you have the copyright-owner's permission, that would be theft. You'd also be risking having a DMCA take-down notice served on your hosting company and losing your site!

It's ok to take other people's articles from article directories (in accordance with the directory's terms of service), because that's what those copes are there for. By putting them in a directory the author is permitting other people to publish them (and indeed hoping that they will). But you mustn't take articles from people's blogs. Giving them a link does not make it any less of a breach of their copyright.

Alas, no. It's also the general opinion of everyone who's actually making a living from article marketing, and the general opinion of all the standard SEO textbook writers, too.

Sorry, but again, this is completely wrong. (Please excuse my blunt wording).

The linkjuice value of a backlink is determined now (as always, but even more so now) by the relevance of the site on which the backlink is situated to the site linked to (as determined by Google in its normal way, according to commonality of keywords/vocabulary and so on). And by some other factors, too, certainly, but principally by site-relevance.

It is not fair to say that 99% of blog backlinks are worthless. This is, in fact, nonsense.

If you have an "arthritis site", then backlinks from "arthritis blogs" are highly valuable. Backinks from "arthritis articles" in "general article directories" are worthless.

Agreed. But it greatly further diminished the already-almost-useless linkjuice value of articles in "general directories".

If you want to imagine that that makes them significantly more valuable, be my guest. (But don't expect to be able to express that opinion here without people correcting it).

We can all see for ourselves, from the ever-increasing regularity with which lower-PR pages are outranking higher-PR pages in Google's SERP's, that there's very little worth talking about, in that context.

Agreed.

Nevertheless, it will heavily penalize a site if there's been mass backlinking from article directories. Google has explained this openly. There are countless threads in the SEO folder here in which people explain how and why this has happened to them. Some of them even reprint emails which Google has (eventually!) sent them about this, explaining it further. There's no "big mystery" about it. Google announced pretty openly what they were going to do, and why, and then they did it, and then they commented on various specific effects it had, and why.

This is just ludicrous. First, when you say "original", you actually mean "unique", in the sense of "not previously published". (I appreciate that, by your own admission above, you're very confused about this, but "original" and "unique" are actually two entirely different things - as both Google and Ezine Articles go to some lengths to explain on their respective blogs.)

Secondly, I've already explained above, at some length and in some detail, with various references to other posts and threads some of which themselves contain links to Google's own websites/blogs, that submitting "unique content" to article directories is ... well, I used the word "insane", above, which was admittedly a little strongly worded. But to put it more mildly, it's based on a very fundamental misunderstanding of what an article directory is and what purposes it's able to fulfil for a marketer.

Certainly. Agreed.

But that doesn't make it remotely sensible to give them the initial indexation-rights to content not yet published and indexed on your own site, and for all the reasons explained above, that can collectively damage your business, in the long run, compared with the situation which would result from doing this the right way round.

Let me say this in very simple, unambiguous words: there aren't any circumstances in which your off-page SEO will benefit more by giving an article directory unique content than it will benefit by publishing it yourself first and then giving it to an article directory - and this is absolutely fundamental to any model of article marketing.

To state the blindingly obvious: the value of a backlink is not determined by whether or not the content to which it's attached has previously been published!

The discussions in the threads I've linked to above really will help and inform you a lot, but - as the saying goes - only if you're willing to read them rather than struggling to defend the bizarre assertion that it makes sense to put unique content in an article directory. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Personally, I think you're exaggerating there (i.e. I think that number's not really as low as you claim - you're exaggerating the rarity), but neither of us can prove our opinions on this point, and I entirely accept the validity of the underlying point that many people (though admittedly not as many as previously) misuse article directories without understanding their functions, and suffer the consequences of so doing. It was ever thus.