Do Article Directories Still Work?

Yes, very well indeed (at least "Ezine Articles" does), but only if you use them for their intended purpose.

These days, they're entirely unable to serve any other, additional purposes (which they actually could, a little bit, long ago).

For all the reasons explained in this post, no article marketer wants to get his potential customer traffic coming to his site from an article directory (we all lose most of that traffic, and all of it's traffic which we could easily have arranged to have coming directly to our own site in the first place).

And article directory backlinks are worthless (this was true even as far back as 2009/10, before all Google's Panda updates decimated the SEO potential of article directories).

Yes: they're a way to bring in new traffic from other sites to which the articles may be syndicated from the directory, if they're written for syndication in the first place.

But also no: they're not a viable way for marketer to bring in new traffic from the directory itself, and of course that isn't what they've ever been there for anyway - nor is it something an article marketer should want to do.

Yes - it can be, as long as you use it as a stepping-stone.

I think this thread will tell you all you need to know (and it's up-to-date): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

Anyone who has stopped using them in recent years (and that certainly applies to many people!) was trying to use them in ways other than for their intended purposes.

There's been a very long discussion of exactly this point, today, in another thread, Randall. Here it is: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...still-use.html