are article directories a good way to get traffic?

28 replies
I just built a squeeze page, i found a site that submits your article to 100-1000 article directories, is this a good way to get traffic compared to banner web sites?
#article #directories #good #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author dreamtunnel
    or do article directory submission softwares work?
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  • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
    No! Those article directories as people call them are content farms (matt cutts words not mine) that are loaded down with ads and improper structure with far too many links on article pages.

    This is how article marketing was taught for some unknown reason (well I know the reason to sell junk software and submission services) to many and it is the wrong way to do article marketing.

    I know many will disagree and that is fine, everyone has an opinion. I tested 1,200 article directories for 6 months and submitted to them by hand without software. I found them to be useless due to the fact they are loaded down with ads and links.

    Can you get traffic ? Sure but will that traffic convert for you ? I think you will be disappointed if you are expecting to get huge amounts of traffic, backlinks, and sales.

    Syndication is not mass submitting to content farms.
    Originally Posted by dreamtunnel View Post

    I just built a squeeze page, i found a site that submits your article to 100-1000 article directories, is this a good way to get traffic compared to banner web sites?
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    • Profile picture of the author tbtb123
      Originally Posted by Ord Allenbea View Post

      No! Those article directories as people call them are content farms (matt cutts words not mine) that are loaded down with ads and improper structure with far too many links on article pages.

      This is how article marketing was taught for some unknown reason (well I know the reason to sell junk software and submission services) to many and it is the wrong way to do article marketing.

      I know many will disagree and that is fine, everyone has an opinion. I tested 1,200 article directories for 6 months and submitted to them by hand without software. I found them to be useless due to the fact they are loaded down with ads and links.

      Can you get traffic ? Sure but will that traffic convert for you ? I think you will be disappointed if you are expecting to get huge amounts of traffic, backlinks, and sales.

      Syndication is not mass submitting to content farms.
      So all that left is to pray getting a good SERP on Google ?
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by tbtb123 View Post

        So all that left is to pray getting a good SERP on Google ?
        On the contrary. Article marketing isn't intrinsically about SEO at all.

        It's a traffic-generation method in its own right.

        As so many Warriors discovered (some to their very great cost) during 2011, a business which is dependent on Google for its primary traffic can only ever be one algorithm-change away from a potential disaster. Article marketing is a way of avoiding all those problems.

        Fortunately, SERP's traffic is far from being the only source of traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
        There is a proven and time tested full article marketing plan in my sig that is free. The panda update that many "think" targeted article marketing, which could be nothing further from the truth.

        Article marketing and syndication done properly works like a charm.

        Originally Posted by tbtb123 View Post

        So all that left is to pray getting a good SERP on Google ?
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  • Profile picture of the author Avy Smith
    Originally Posted by dreamtunnel View Post

    I just built a squeeze page, i found a site that submits your article to 100-1000 article directories, is this a good way to get traffic compared to banner web sites?
    Relying on a software for article submission is no good nor do spinners help for any such purpose. I tried Sick Submitter but that dont get you good results. Any automated system gets identified by various article directories. Most of the time they dont even make it the article directories that you have chose to.

    Article Marketing has limits and specifications. One cant just go on submitting and stuffing content mindlessly and squeezes hands by expecting that a flock of people will fly to the linked website. But that does not mean article marketing does not work at all.

    Organized way of submissions can bring an enviable number of people to your website that makes a portion of your traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author AnniePot
    Originally Posted by dreamtunnel View Post

    I just built a squeeze page, i found a site that submits your article to 100-1000 article directories, is this a good way to get traffic compared to banner web sites?
    See the response I've just posted on another thread running alongside this one:

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5612252
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  • Profile picture of the author Dann Vicker
    Bum marketing otherwise called article marketing is no longer as effective as it once was. You could look more into doing some forms of guest posting on popular sites. Should get you a lot more traffic for less work.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
      Bum marketing is in no way article marketing and never was. Bum marketing was about spitting out garbage to mass submit to a bunch of adsense content farms.

      Article marketing has nothing to do with mass submitting to a bunch of content farms filled with adsense and other links. This is how article marketing was taught WRONG!

      Article marketing is very much alive "if" done properly. Forget about the mass submit software and the 1,000's of useless content farms. They will do you very little good and always have done very little good even pre-panda.

      The panda update did NOT target article marketing, this is a huge misunderstanding in the marketing arena. The panda update slapped content farms - ezine articles, articlesbase, articlesnatch, and the rest of those adsense filled content farms.

      They was slapped due to the poor structure of their sites and all the garbage spun junk on their websites. They was slapped because of all the ads on their site that did NOT provide a good user experience.

      Article marketing is very much alive and if you need to find out more about the panda update you can see that is my sig. Article marketing has not changed, has no evolved to something else, it is being done the exact same way it was done for years.

      Those that done it right from the start never had to worry about the panda update.
      Originally Posted by Dann Vicker View Post

      Bum marketing otherwise called article marketing is no longer as effective as it once was. You could look more into doing some forms of guest posting on popular sites. Should get you a lot more traffic for less work.
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  • Profile picture of the author rooze
    There's a guy somewhere around here who posted his Ezine Articles stats showing over 3 million clicks to his site in around 4 years. 3M is a lifetime of traffic for many people. Of course that was pre-Panda, so now his efforts have turned out to be worthless, he should have known better.
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  • Profile picture of the author WebMarketWiz
    Originally Posted by dreamtunnel View Post

    I just built a squeeze page, i found a site that submits your article to 100-1000 article directories, is this a good way to get traffic compared to banner web sites?
    Not at all. Sites that submit your "same" article without changing title tags, making significant changes in the content and so forth, are very risky.

    The misconception is that article submission is dead, on the contrary, if done properly and if your articles are very high quality (words not less than 400, variation in title tags, etc) they could bring good backlinks to your site.

    Those back links in addition to other ones from different sources will give you better rankings and THEN..The traffic comes.

    Banners bring very little traffic in my opinion.
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  • Profile picture of the author positivemagic
    I started out with articles putting them manually on only 4 key sites. My articles had alot of content and how to's so it was easy to implement the concepts right away. This is key. It gets people to trust you and share your articles on all their social media sites which in turn explodes your traffic. I don't do much in the way of articles these days but I did have alot of fun writing them. (May do some more soon.) But that is how I made my first few thousand. So I wouldn't use article submitters, they don't work and its over saturated.

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  • Profile picture of the author Josh OConnor
    In a previous niche Article Marketing via EZA was my main source of generating traffic. Now, for me personally I think that it is a time consuming process which can be better served elsewhere. I understand that I could outsource it but I'm not convinced I'd get the most out of my buck.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Josh OConnor View Post

      In a previous niche Article Marketing via EZA was my main source of generating traffic.
      Welcome to the forum, Josh, and congratulations on having put an incorrect and misguided attempted use of article directories behind you. That isn't how they were ever designed to work, at all. http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5075780
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      • Profile picture of the author dreamtunnel
        well then is it a good idea to add lots of articles ot your own site but send 1 article a month to the article sites?
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by dreamtunnel View Post

          well then is it a good idea to add lots of articles ot your own site but send 1 article a month to the article sites?
          Not really ... not nearly as good as adding a small number of articles to your site, gradually building a syndication-list and having them all syndicated elsewhere in relevant ezines and on relevant niche-sites, and then submitting them all to Ezine Articles in the hope of further syndication.

          Not so easy to imagine any benefits from regularly having significant numbers of additional articles just on your own site and not syndicating them anywhere else, is it? :confused:
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        • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
          You post your own content to your own site before anything else, this is your content after-all.

          Your content (if using a wordpress blog) you would schedule to post 1 article every 24 hours. You will make sure you have google xml sitemap installed along with ping services. So when that article is posted the search engines and ping services are notified.

          When that article is posted to your blog then you will do a few bookmarks on it (diigo, stumbleupon, dig, facebook, twitter, delicious) so it gets into the social media realm.

          Next you will take that article and post half articles on livejournal and multiply with a read more link going back to the original post on your blog.

          After that is done then your article is ready for syndication. I personally use my own network of 300+ sites that are all Google friendly, properly seo'd and ad free. Do not want this post to seem like self promotion so I will not post my link here.

          Point is the above should be done first and once done then you can syndicate that article. This way you are slowly dripping content out there on the web. Doing it slowly is certainly far better than mass submission.

          Originally Posted by dreamtunnel View Post

          well then is it a good idea to add lots of articles ot your own site but send 1 article a month to the article sites?
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Don't mass submit your article all over the place using a submitter. It's an exercise in futility. Just manually submit to the top 5 article directories by hand:

    1) Ezinearticles
    2) Goarticles
    3) Articlesbase
    4) Ideamarketers
    5) Articledashboard
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  • Profile picture of the author adembell
    yes, because it gives a best ideas about the sites and it`s contents ..
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  • Profile picture of the author SecretDots
    Hi DreamTunnel,

    Article directories to me seem old school. Everyone was extolling the merits of publishing articles on them. Fine if those directories only published real and unique content, nothing spun, or recycled stuff. I put some effort into publishing some good articles on them to have them, in the end, stolen.

    Of course the retribution of Panda had to come, given the philosophy of Google.

    Blog recycled posts don't seem a good idea to me either. Why not take the time to post what Google really values.

    Yes it's a chore writing articles, but a worthy endeavour. Writer's block facing you? That can be overcome. Perhaps a fresh pair of writer's goggles can see topics to write about, what to find of value.

    One very place to find topics to write about, and find quality stuff to write about can be found right here in this forum. Or other forums, of course. The classic potion: identify a problem, see what people are saying, offer an answer ( the solution ).

    A problem or a twist or a fresh angle can be the departure point. Besides, as it happens in the fashion world, people are always looking for something new. What's new still rings in my ears all the time.

    Places like wikipedia and similar are a better alternative to article directories that are article farms.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SecretDots View Post

      I put some effort into publishing some good articles on them to have them, in the end, stolen.
      Please excuse the observation that you seem - with this and other comments in your post - rather to have missed the point of what the purpose of an article directory is, and how they work, SecretDots.

      There's absolutely no use (compared with the alternative) in submitting unique, previously unpublished content to an article directory. Contrary to what some imagine, they don't require it and never have, and the author can't gain anything by submitting it rather than publishing his material himself first and then submitting it after it's been indexed on his own site.

      You say that you had articles "stolen" from directories, but the reality is that in submitting to a directory, you're announcing the availability of the article for re-publication, and inviting people to take it. That's what a directory's there for - that's why it exists - that's the need it fulfils for publishers - that's what it is.

      http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872
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      • Profile picture of the author Yura Lee
        Banned
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Fox
    I got a guy off fiverr to post articles for me... Didn't turn out too well! My site went from page 4 and thinking I just needed a wee boost (so got this guy to do it) my site disappeared from even the top 100! It's still nowhere to be seen! Lesson learned - you definitely get what you pay for! He was using an article spinner and submitter. I would never use one now. I would manually submit to 4 top ones - EZA, ideamarketers, Goarticles and Articlesbase...
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  • Profile picture of the author GeraldNitram
    Alexa, that has got me thinking about how DeviantArt submissions are being used by people other than the owners of the image. Anyway, from what I see, article directories aren't necessarily for traffic. Even though you have links there, it's actually a place for publishers to look for content, and they have the liberty to take anything from there because you shared it.
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  • Profile picture of the author SecretDots
    Hi Alexa Smith,

    I have read all the posts, I agree with your point, I have missed the point, thank you for pointing that out. That's the advantage of being in a forum such as this.
    I had a misconception, in fact.

    This thread has some excellent points abount the merits of article marketing and related marketing techniques.

    Thanks, Ord Allenbea and MarketWiz, to affirm that article marketing is not dead and that Panda did not diminish the value of article marketing. It has reassured me.
    The tips for article marketing are very helpful.

    I have noted the different opinions about article submitters, and I have done my research:

    "It's gotten so bad, in fact, that many article directories have taken extreme measures to prevent the "one clickers" from ever reaching their submission forms by adding "captchas" and other security devices to force human presence."

    And:

    "And on top of all this other havoc fully automated submitters cause, there's one thing that can actually be more damaging . . .
    You see, there are over 20,000 possible category and sub-category choices that can be made when submitting an article throughout the hundreds of article directories. These categories are the front line of keyword identification for both the search engines, and your potential readers.
    Without categories, visiting an article directory for relevant material would be the proverbial "needle in a haystack" hunt.

    Relevancy is the key to success! "

    Quotes from the leading article submitter software website. That shows that completely re-written software with a semi-automatic solution so eliminates the deficiencies of fully automated software.

    That sounds good to me.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
      One thing I would like to point out about article directories, not all of them are the same. I know there is a thread here speaking about how to use them or what they are meant to be used for.

      I own an article directory but it is nothing like those lame adsense filled content farms. It is ad free, allows links in the body, and actually syndicates your articles and builds instant backlinks to your article. Why ? because I provide Google with exactly what they have asked for all along.

      Backlinks built to your articles is because the articles are ad free and all link juice on those articles transfers directly to your site thus increasing your sites ranks. This is totally different how any other article directory works.

      So while most of them work as said on that thread that Alexa always post, note that not ALL article directories work this way.

      Originally Posted by SecretDots View Post

      Hi Alexa Smith,

      I have read all the posts, I agree with your point, I have missed the point, thank you for pointing that out. That's the advantage of being in a forum such as this.
      I had a misconception, in fact.

      This thread has some excellent points abount the merits of article marketing and related marketing techniques.

      Thanks, Ord Allenbea and MarketWiz, to affirm that article marketing is not dead and that Panda did not diminish the value of article marketing. It has reassured me.
      The tips for article marketing are very helpful.

      I have noted the different opinions about article submitters, and I have done my research:

      "It's gotten so bad, in fact, that many article directories have taken extreme measures to prevent the "one clickers" from ever reaching their submission forms by adding "captchas" and other security devices to force human presence."

      And:

      "And on top of all this other havoc fully automated submitters cause, there's one thing that can actually be more damaging . . .
      You see, there are over 20,000 possible category and sub-category choices that can be made when submitting an article throughout the hundreds of article directories. These categories are the front line of keyword identification for both the search engines, and your potential readers.
      Without categories, visiting an article directory for relevant material would be the proverbial "needle in a haystack" hunt.

      Relevancy is the key to success! "

      Quotes from the leading article submitter software website. That shows that completely re-written software with a semi-automatic solution so eliminates the deficiencies of fully automated software.

      That sounds good to me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Richard6666
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
      No worst thing you could do for your business.

      Originally Posted by Richard6666 View Post

      or do article directory submission softwares work?
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  • Profile picture of the author SecretDots
    Taken note of your article directory, Ord Allenbea. Seems one good directory to post to.
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