Article Syndication Submission Doubt

@gillw254 thanx for asking these questions as I also would like to know the answers.

I too just realised from reading many threads regarding article marketing that the old way of gaining some backlinks from directories is dead. So we aren't looking toward 50 directories for any backlink benefit, but for a exposed to more publishers benefit. Doesn't it make sense that just like some people shop at Costco, some at Walmart, some at Cash & Carry, that some publishers prefer Articlebase, or Articecity or whatever (as opposed to just one like EZA). The reasoning is expose your article to as many publishers as possible? Please shed some more light on this.

Here is where it gets terribly confusing for me according to my standard backlink model. It sounds like even if you find a relevant "PR9 site" in your niche, and you find a category pertaining to your niche quite "deep" in the website (i.e. not the Home Page, like Fitness Category, then Yoga category etc) , and you post a comment or reply with a link to your site; that backlink will effectively not be PR9? 99% of websites where you have links on them won't be their Home Page.

It feels like whatever I knew about backlinks got turned on its head, lol. Please help me where I make a wrong turn.

Thanx in advance.

What?? Some new rule? I have heard about it first time, can you please tell me in detail. I am submitting my guest posts with same anchor text to other blogs, am i doing wrong??

I can't make it much clearer than I have done, sorry.

I've very nearly run out of words (and that's an achievement, for a mouthy chick like me).

If the words "absolutely no benefits from it" and "high risks from it", combined together, don't satisfy you, then you're just not going to be satisfied.

I can live with that.

The question is: can you?

Nobody knows the exact number of directories that's going to cause you problems. Google doesn't announce it. I don't know it. You don't know it. Nobody else who replies here knows it, either.

There's no real benefit from it, so the number doesn't matter anyway.

This was all so even in 2009/10, before the Panda updates (when SEO textbook writers were pointing out that 50,000 - 100,000 of those backlinks gave the same linkjuice as one backlink on a quality, relevant site), and it's all the more so, now.

As the saying goes, "100,000 of those 'backlinks' and $3.50 will buy you a cappuccion at Starbucks".

And since the Penguin update of early 2012, a plethora of article directory backlinks will also get your site heavily penalized. And there are plenty of threads in the SEO folder here in which people attest to that, and explain that Google told them openly that that was why they'd been penalized. "Don't even think about it" is a very good approach.

To be fair, that was never part of the purpose of using an article directory, anyway. An article directory is only a stepping-stone to getting traffic (and backlinks, if you insist) from the relevant sites who re-publish the articles, having looked them up there (not in Google!) in their "available content-sourcing".

Yes. Completely wrong.

The "categories" and "approval times" you've mentioned have absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

I know you want the answers to be different, because you want to believe that it will somehow be better to submit to 30 article directories than to one or two (I strongly suspect that you mistakenly imagine that their backlinks "must be worth something" and that misguided belief is your real problem here), but I'm afraid that just doesn't make it true.

Yes, there might well be, as there has been for so many other people ... and nothing to gain anyway.

Where do you get all this stuff from? Who told you that, and what were they trying to sell at the time?

Again, there is no such thing as a "high PR directory". I know everyone uses the phrase. They're all wrong to do so. Websites don't "have page ranks". Only pages have page ranks. This is simply factual. However many times you choose to ignore it (which is exactly what you're doing) and come back with another comment about "high PR directories", it still won't mean that there's such a thing as a "high PR directory", because there isn't. That's not something you can change by repeatedly referring to them. I'm not being pedantic about it just for the sake of it: on the contrary, if you called them "article directories that happen to have home pages with a high PR", it might help you to understand a little more clearly what's actually going on and what to do (and not do) about it.

I advise you not to do that. The Panda updates of 2011 were (as so many of us who make our livings through article marketing have been explaining here repeatedly and consistently since early 2011) a major benefit to article marketing, because they effectively removed the risk that our article directory articles will rank well enough for our potential customers to be able to find them with a Google search (that's the last thing we'd want to happen, for all the reasons explained in this post), and you're trying to undo that, and increase the SEO value of those copies? I don't think you'll manage it, anyway, and I hope (for the sake of your own business) that you don't, but it's hardly a sensible thing to try to do.

I just want to add another perspective on this point.

First off, I'll tell you that I work on both sides of the syndication fence. I syndicate my own content as well as using syndicated content on my own sites when it fits.

When I'm looking for content, I look on EZA. Period, full stop.

Why?

Look through the various article marketing threads and count the number of times people carp, whine and complain about EZA's high editorial standards and how tough it is for some people to get their 'articles' approved.

I use EZA because of that. They filter out a lot of the crap so I don't have to.

I did use other directories when EZA was at the height of their 'we'll take almost anything we can hang Adsense on' phase. And I often filter out submissions from those years. But since Panda opened their eyes and they tightened up the standards again, they're back in my good graces.

On the other side of the coin, I generally only post my content for syndication on EZA. The exception is if I can find tightly-themed niche directories related to my markets. I'll submit to any of them I find. But submitting to a bunch of general directories has not proved effective for me.

There is some chance of getting some traffic through them which you'd otherwise have had at your site instead, but only by losing most of it.

It would be a bad thing to get traffic from them.

You'll get more traffic at your site if you don't get traffic that way.

It's easy to imagine that you're gaining something, when you're actually losing something, overall.

You're by no means the first person who's had trouble appreciating this point, but that's not "traffic you wouldn't otherwise have had". It's "traffic of which you would otherwise have had more".

Sorry, but there just isn't an infinite number of different ways to say this.

I know you're thinking that.

It isn't true, though.

I understand how much you'd like it to be true. I understand how wonderful it would be if all the expert article marketers here had been getting the whole thing wrong for so many years, and if all you had to do was submit your article to 20 more article directories to get a lot more traffic. I do understand, really. And I'm really sorry that that isn't going to be the outcome for you, just like it wasn't for me when I tried to do it that way.

What you're asking about doing isn't "article marketing". It's "article directory marketing". And that was only ever based on a fundamental misunderstanding anyway, even back in the days (before I was online) when there was allegedly a little bit of mileage in it. (There isn't any more, now).

Here's a different way to look at it (and "my last try", here): every article directory in which you put a copy, where you have a click-through rate of under 100% (and that's all of them, isn't it, because nobody ever has a CTR of 100%?!) is costing you traffic. The article directory makes its living out of the visitors who don't get to your site, doesn't it? The ones who click on the AdSense and go away. You can choose to have all those "lost visitors" going straight to your own site instead, if you want. This thread and all the links in it will teach you how: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

It's nothing at all to do with whether you change your resource-box. The anchor-text point, sadly and entirely unnecessarily mentioned above, has to do with backlinks only. But these backlinks aren't worth anything anyway, so it isn't worth talking about.

They don't.

Some "SEO people" who didn't understand the difference between article marketing and article directory marketing said that a few years ago. They were mistaken, even at the time. Possibly a few people, still now, mistakenly assuming (as you have perhaps done) that they know what they're talking about, are still repeating parts of this nonsense?

The idea of building backlinks to an article directory was always about as misguided as it's possible to get. The people who did that were the ones who ended up starting off all the threads here with titles like "Is Article Marketing Dead?". For them, it is dead. (That isn't actually "article marketing", but they think it is). They end up with websites that can't outrank an article directory (even after all the Panda updates!!) and they typically don't even begin to appreciate that they did it to themselves, by following that sort of advice. (So they quite like to blame Google, or just "article marketing", instead!).

They certainly get corrected on it, if so, by a large number of us who are actually making our livings from article marketing rather than just repeating the urban myths of the past. Remember that there used to be many people here (and there are still a few now) selling services that provide those "second tier backlinks", and they'd like people to imagine that those are still helpful. :p

Maybe. Maybe there are a few for whom that did some have value, many years ago, before I was online. (I'm doubtful, about even this, but it's possible and I wasn't here so I can't promise). Many are - of course - misleading themselves, too. It's really easy to think that you're benefitting from something when you're not, just by mistakes of causation-attribution - as we saw years ago with all the people who were "spinning" articles, which was in fact just as misguided then as it would be now. Many genuinely believed they benefitted from it, though, not realising that they could have had all the same benefits - and sometimes more - without doing the "spinning". And some simply have no idea what they're talking about, and are just repeating age-old (in internet terms!) urban myths, as people do. But there are sometimes large numbers of them, and when they say "This helped me", it's very difficult indeed to know whether it's actually true. Fallacies of misattributed causation are everywhere, in internet marketing. Certainly there are instances where it's all been mistaken.

Yes. My entire business model is pretty openly described, starting with this post (and "working outward" by following links): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5721774

I've tried some of those things, about 4 years ago. Articificial "backlinking" was no help at all (and it's much harder to do safely now, and all it can ever bring you is SEO traffic which is very precarious and has very little value, for me, anyway).

."edu"/".gov" backlinks aren't intrinsically worth more than any others (contrary to the "views" of the people selling them, of course). That's all explained here (and in countless similar threads): http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...ml#post5994962 .

I used to submit articles to PDF directories, for attempted SEO reasons, in early 2009. At first it appeared to work a little for me, but its efficacy declined greatly throughout 2009/10 and (like many others here) I stopped bothering with it ages ago.

I know nothing about video marketing and can't help you with that. I know from constant feedback that video is very high, across all of my niches, on the list of things my customers/subscribers dislike. I don't normally even send any of my traffic to sales pages with video (and if I do, it's never autoplay video, and I apologize for it in advance and explain why I'm doing so). I also know that some of the people now rather actively promoting video marketing were, a few years ago, actively promoting "bots" to produce mass/automated backlinking which was even at the time clearly deeply misguided and eventually duly proved non-viable, so some of them are not quite people for whose internet marketing skills, perceptions and activities I have the greatest respect, myself ... but that small part of it is admittedly only a personal perspective and it may even be an irrelevant one to this conversation.

Yes, I understand. There's a lot of conflicting information, wherever you look, about internet marketing.

The single most valuable skill you can acquire, in the long run, is the ability to determine by whom you choose to be advised.

And that isn't easy, I know.

It took me several months to learn and judge it, when I started, and that was the main reason I earned nothing for my first 4 months.

It isn't always easy to know who's repeating out-of-date urban myths and who really knows what they're talking about.

Sometimes it helps to see whether people are selling/promoting WSO's/services/products here or elsewhere, though: I always find, when assessing people's varying perspectives on various subjects, that it's interesting to see whether they might have any potential financial motivation of their own underlying their apparent perspectives.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves whether we want to get our advice about "what works" from people who are making a living by actually "doing it themselves", or from people who are making a living just by selling services/products about it to others who aim to make a living by doing it.

I only said "for me", and "by comparison with every other sort of traffic I've ever had", John.

I've always found that visitors from search engines stay the least time, view the fewest pages, opt in the least often, and buy anything by far the least often.

I'm only "talking results", really ... not "philosophy".

I do strongly suspect that everything you mention above is true, though. It seems to me that article marketing traffic (which is the majority of my own traffic) is just "several stages further on" than SEO traffic. And that traffic from most sources is "a little further on" than SEO traffic? The freebie-seekers and casual surfers are already removed, and so on?

Subjective only, perhaps, but it's always seemed to me (trying to "judge it backwards from the results", admittedly) that the more remote visitors are from a search engine at the point at which they come to your site, the better/more "qualified"/"targeted" they're probably going to be for you?

For what it's worth, if anything, this has been equally true for me in niches in which I've just done a very little SEO research myself, while selecting the niche (to produce my own list of keywords of "medium competition" to use in article titles and so on), and niches in which I've outsourced serious, professional keyword research done in great detail with all kinds of software tools. I have experimented with such services, and I don't question the competence or professionalism of the people who have produced them for me. But I can't actually claim to have benefitted from them, at all. Probably because "it's only SEO traffic anyway"?

What does surprise me is that I can't even claim, overall, that I get - pro rata - more (let alone "better") SEO traffic from the "professionally researched" ones than from the ones I've "just looked at myself". A quick play around with Google's free external keyword research tool seems more than adequate, really. And just "guessing well" probably isn't far behind, either.

Strangely, (ironically?), I get far, far more SEO traffic now, just through article syndication, than I ever got (in 2008/9) through consciously trying to attract SEO traffic and build backlinks. But that's doubtless because "linkjuice" depends primarily on relevance and quality, just as Google's Matt Cutts keeps on saying. And people whose sites aren't relevant to you aren't really going to syndicate articles anyway? Even so, it doesn't help me a lot. I'd certainly hate to have to make a living and build my business from it. :p

It's not for everyone, clearly.

It's a long-term business model based on producing and circulating high-quality content regularly, building relationships with publishers. It's not "fast money".

I never know how competitive it is. Clearly there are more of us here making our livings from it than was the case 2/3 years ago. But I think of it as "less competitive" than many business models, to be honest. I can't prove that - it's only personal impression.

I'm sometimes asked for a photo, not often. More so with "guest blogging" (which is very similar to article marketing, anyway, of course). I have a photo for each niche, on my niche sites, anyway. I use a pen-name for each niche. I generally use photos/pictures of myself which people at Fiverr have made for me in various "stylized" forms - silhouettes, drawings, cartoons, and so on. So I'm not recognizable. This isn't much of a problem, I think. You certainly won't often be asked for a photo, just to have an article published.

It varies enormously, from niche to niche.

Exactly the same benefit they get when they syndicate articles from places like Ezine Articles (as many of them do): "content for their readers".

Maybe they're people who don't let Google predicate how they run their businesses? There's no downside, from their perspective, from syndicating content. If there were, many of the world's leading news and sports websites who exist mostly on syndicated content would look a bit silly, wouldn't they?

It varies hugely. I've had many thousands of visitors from individual articles, sometimes. Other times far, far fewer, of course. It's a long-term process. If you have a good niche in which there are lots of suitable ezines, websites, magazines and so on, with high traffic, it can be very successful.

It supplies about 80% of my traffic, across all my niches. Something close to that, anyway.

It varies enormously. You can start getting traffic within 12 hours from some high-traffic sites. On the other hand, you can also wait 3 weeks if your timing's bad, and they have their own publication-schedules (with other things laybe ahead of yours). Timing isn't something you can control a lot.

I produce about 24/25 articles per month, divided between 8 different niches. My own traffic-figures are too variable to be relevant to you. They range from "low" to "many thousands" per article. Sorry, I can't help you with many of these questions because I'm not in your niches, and not syndicating to the same places.

No, I almost never believe people who claim to be making "HUGE $$ easily". It's certainly not a good business model for you, if that's your aim.

Some people who steal articles from other places do that, yes. (There's no great downside, even when they do, and you can always serve a DMCA takedown notice on their host, if you really want to). People who have arranged and agreed to publish your article are hardly likely to do that, are they? They'd never get another one, obviously enough. So people would only ever be able to do that to you once. (I don't recall it ever having happened at all).

Yes, you can waste a minute or two sending them a ready-to-go, fill-in-the-blanks email, I suppose. The same's true if you don't syndicate your content, you know? People can still steal it from your site.

Sorry, again I don't know the niche, so I can't help you much. I know that there's plenty of content syndication going on in the fashion world, though.

No. I wouldn't think so.

The first one's promotional (nobody's going to re-publish a promotional article).

The second one's far too short and seems not to have any striking, original content at all.

Here's a quick summary of the sort of articles I've found tend to get published successfully: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post3188316

There has to be a "wow factor", at least to some extent, which makes people say "Oh yes - this is one I want to share with my readers".

The English needs to be perfect, too.

I think it probably is.

I don't think they would be, I'm afraid.

You're not far wrong, anyway. As you get to know publishers better, you can often get away with a little bit more. I do have some on my syndication-lists now who'll let me put links inside articles, if I really want to (I don't think they help me much, actually), but to start with, one wouldn't offer that.

Please excuse a very direct, honest answer to this, with absolutelu no intention of offending you: if the price of DofE is a big issue for you, I can't begin to understand how you're going to employ writers to produce syndication-quality articles. I'm not trying to be rude, but we can see that your English is far from fluent (and that the person who's written the posts in this thread hasn't written the articles on your site). There are certainly people who've become very successful in article syndication by outsourcing all the content, but you'll appreciate that we're not talking about "$15 articles", here? You'd still have the publisher relationship-building aspect of the business to contend with, too, but outsourcing all the writing would certainly necessitate some starting capital, to put it mildly.

Yes, usually.

Unlike yourself, they don't look at everything in SEO terms at all.

Anyone interested in doing a little online research can see for themselves that huge numbers of people are syndicating previously published articles. How else do you imagine that people are getting their EZA articles published?

I was thinking the list you gave above looked like a nice start?

There are more suggestions here: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6575732

Not being in your niches, I can't offer specific suggestions, I'm afraid.

Neither am I! It sounds a lot? But once you have the email written, it's not a huge amount of work to amend it and send it to different people, I suppose? As long as it looks like an individual email to each of them and talks about their site.

Yes, I hear you there. Paul ("myob") can advise you much more about that than I can. I've never outsourced an article at all. The writers I know here who produce articles of this type are far from cheap, I have to say. (Writers at "this end of the market" tend not to advertise much, as they typically have all the work they want/need from regularly returning clients).

I do this: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7475055

Yes ... probably your home-page? I always link to my home page because that's where my opt-in's displayed with the "prominent incentivization". You wouldn't want to go to all the time and trouble of article marketing without opting in as much of the traffic as possible? (At least, I don't think you should!).

I'm not so sure about this, but it's almost outside my experience (I have some pictures on my own sites, but I don't normally offer them with articles. I'm not saying you shouldn't - just that I don't often do it, myself).

[QUOTE=gillw254;7629830 (BTW, having good images and bit more, will it works? since having bit more Images creates an impression anyone i feel..)[/QUOTE]
Since Alexa has already said pretty much the same thing I would have said, I'm only going to touch on this last point.

Some publishers will welcome images with articles, others (like myself) prefer not to get them. Why?

You may have a license or permission to use an image on your site (or not), but that doesn't mean you have a license to distribute that image to others. Keeping track of licensing is hard enough when I source the image from my own trusted sources that I don't need the uncertainty that comes with blindly accepting images from contributors.

Yes, you can include one of your very best articles (you only get one chance to make a good impression).

As for a template, look through the various threads Alexa has linked to - I've posted suggestions in many of them. You want to create your own basic template, in your own voice, that you can customize for each publisher you contact.

As long as the English in your article itself is good, a sincere, humble proposal in less than perfect English isn't a deal killer.


You do not want to be overly promotional, as that will hinder your chances of being accepted. As one of my newspaper friends puts it, "if you want run an article, write an article - if you want to run an ad, buy an ad."


They may not directly profit from any single piece of content they publish. The objective is to provide content that strengthems their relationship with their readers, provides information and insights from an outside persepctive, and entertains them.

Some of them will also use them as a framework on which to hang their own ads (opt-in boxes, banners, etc.).

You don't want to start your article marketing career in the major leagues. Learning the process without burning bridges to more important sites is not a waste of time. Besides, not all low traffic sites stay that way, nor do high traffic sites.

Having content on other sites already can give your credibility a bit of a boost when you do approach those higher traffic publishers.

Obviously, you don't want to waste time approaching a blog with three articles written five years ago, but you don't want to neglect the downstream potential of a smaller site with a loyal fan base, one which 'likes', tweets, and otherwise shares the content beyond the site itself.

If cash really is that tight, my opinion is that you are better off investing limited funds in the best content you can buy and relying on your own research to find partners in the beginning.

If the image is good enough, and you can provide proof of ownership (and thus the right to distribute), I'll certainly consider such images.

If/when you submit the article, mention that you own the image(s) and can provide proof. You don't need to send the proof until asked for it.

Exactly.