Article submission

I'm using an article directory every day, to build my business, so I'm hardly saying that.

What I'm not doing is depending on any article directory for their own traffic or their own backlinks.

I'm using them, literally, as directories: for the purpose for which they were set up.

According to most of the standard SEO textbooks, yes. And it's very easy to believe that. And actually they were saying that before Google's recent algorithm change devalued the directories so much further. I strongly suspect 100,000+ would be a more reasonable figure, now.

It sounds a far better plan, to me.

Well, partly by writing for syndication (or making sure that your writers do, and know how to!).

And this post neatly answers that question, I think.

If that article's come from EzineArticles, they can't "legally"/rightfully do it without also passing some of the consolidated link-juice of all those backlinks to your own site, through your article's resource-box links.

Anyone republishing articles from EZA is supposed to comply with these two requirements (among others):

(1) They have to leave your resource-box links intact. Failure to do so warrants the removal of the offending page/site from the SERPs and/or the suspension of the hosting service on which it resides. A DMCA served on the appropriate parties by the copyright holder will quickly deal with that, normally.

(2) They're not to assign the "nofollow" attribute to an article's resource-box links.

In reality, the latter is a little hard to enforce (or remedy). Not everyone (including hosting companies' abuse-department staff) has an understanding of what nofollow means, and won't necessarily recognise that as an obvious infringement like they would a straightforward breach of copyright. But it's doable.

Just saying.

Yes, I recognise that syndicated articles won't usually link back to the exact same article on the originating site, and so someone can fully comply with EZA's ToS and outrank you. It's not foolproof. But then again, it's also not too common. And I'm just pointing out that they can't really do it without feeding your site with a backlink or two and sending referral-traffic there. Plus, if you're syndicating successfully, it wouldn't necessarily be detrimental for a handful of your articles to be outranked (which doesn't have to be a permanent thing) as you'd still be receiving ample referral-traffic from that article, and other syndicated instances of it.

That's not an assumption I share at all. Not on the basis of my own observations. Not on the basis of what I've read in SEO textbooks. Not on the basis of what SEO experts I trust and respect have taught me. And not on the basis of what other marketers have told me about their own experiences.

Furthermore, if that were so, it would disprove all I've read, learned, tested and verified (at such length!) about the value of article directory backlinks, in general.

If I can find a "fishing article directory" (please excuse me: this isn't one of my niches and I have no idea whether there is such a thing, really), then for me, that will perhaps be a whole different ball-game ("line-game"?) and I'll "jump" at the chance to have my fishing articles (of which there are none) published there.

Well, off the top of my head I have only seven things to say to this ...

1. It's in the introductory email series that they send out to all new authors who register there. They themselves openly invite and suggest it.

2. It's also on their blog.

3. As you can see from this post, people can register there as authors, submit 10 previously-published blog-posts and immediately get to "Platinum".

4. EZA also has (or had until recently) a special Wordpress plug-in, produced (free of charge) for their authors, to enable people to post articles on their own blogs and at the same time submit them to EZA for approval for subsequent publication there.

5. And as I mentioned, like hundreds of other article marketers, ALL my EZA articles (and that's over 1,350 now) were published elsewhere (some of them even in several places), prior to EZA submission.

6. And as you can see from this thread, a whole succession of professional article marketers are explaining why they (wisely) always publish their articles on their own sites first and only then, after initial indexation on their sites, submit them to EZA.

7. Immediately after Google's recent algorithm change, EZA held an open discussion on their blog, in which they (briefly) raised the possibility of for the first time not accepting content previously published elsewhere. Predictably enough, many of their top authors more or less said "We obviously won't be submitting to your directory any more, if you do that", and they very rapidly recanted the suggestion and announced that they wouldn't, after all, change their policy in this regard.

How clear do you want it to be, Christian?!

With respect, I think you're confusing two different things. They commonly reject articles for being "derivative", by which they mean "containing very similar content to articles already published inside EZA". That's a completely different matter. They don't want duplicate content within their own site, obviously. Who does? That's very different from "syndicated content", though.

EZA has never required "unique content", and they still don't now.

Article directories do not require previously unpublished content.

It's absolutely basic and fundamental to article marketing that you publish your articles on your own site first, have them indexed there and then submit them to article directories. Who would want to give an article directory the initial indexation rights to their own work, which they can keep for themselves and acquire for themselves the cumulative, long-term SEO benefit of being (in Google's eyes) the "source"?!

And here's a really good, really helpful, closely related short article from expert article marketer Anne Pottinger's blog, highly recommended indeed, which clarifies the confusion about what "duplicate content" is.