Is Article Submission worth it in 2012?

Article marketing does still work but not for the purpose of backlinking, because the backlinks won't give much if any SEO boost. The main purpose for using article directories these days is to syndicate your content -- to provide a means for other bloggers/webmasters to reprint your articles on their sites.

Agree with you there...guest blogging can be a good way to drive traffic to your site, and may provide some SEO benefit.

Content should never have been submitted to EZA previously by you or another person. however they do not require exclusive rights to it, nor do they require that you have never published it yourself or submitted it elsewhere.

Content should be unique "to you," meaning it should be unique content you own and have the right to publish. In fact, you should always publish content on your own sites first to get indexed by Google, and then submit to EZA and other article directories for the main purpose of getting them syndicated.

Spinning articles is (in my opinion) a complete waste of time and totally unnecessary. Backlinks from most of these directories are completely worthless, and in fact, may be looked upon by Google as spamming, which could dramatically affect your SEO and ranking efforts.

Duplicate content occurs when you have substantially the same content on multiple pages on your own domain. It is not having the article reprinted by directories, blogs, and other websites, which is actually syndication

Just submit your article "unspun" to Ezines Articles, and maybe a couple of other directories for the sake of getting them syndicated; this will be far more effective than spewing out a bunch of poorly re-written (spun) articles all over the internet.

Yes, agreed article submission does work, but in the way I suggested. If you want a comprehensive education on article marketing, check out posts by Alexa Smith, here on Warrior Forum.

No problem, newbie questions always welcome!

Syndicated means you are putting your articles on article directories so other bloggers and webmasters can reprint these articles on their sites. Think of the Associated Press (AP) which is a news service that "syndicates" articles to countless news media outlets.

Online, you may find hundreds or thousands of these syndicated articles reprinted on news blogs, especially if it is a trending news story or hot topic. Yet you will also see that they are indexed by the search engines, even though the articles are essentially identical to each other. This is what some would mistakenly call "duplicate content," but it is not duplicate content. It is in fact, "syndicated content."

Syndication is good for getting your articles published by many other websites and blogs who desperately need new content for their readers, but may not have the time or resources to continually write their own unique content.

By getting others to republish your articles on their blogs, you will get:

• Readers to click through to your website from the link(s) in your resource box,
• Gain backlinks for possible improved rankings, and
• Establish your credibility as an expert author in your niche.

Hope this explanation helps, Jesse

First, let me be clear that I'm not knocking article directories, as I still use them myself, and I have several hundred articles published by Ezine Articles alone. However, I use article directories for their main intended purpose, which is for syndication, not for SEO.

Using article directories for SEO/backlinks is known as "article directory marketing," which is not the real purpose of these directories anyway. In fact, using article directories for SEO and backlinks won't help you a lot these days because these links have been devalued greatly by Google in recent algo updates.

The best use of article directories is to get your articles syndicated, i.e. reprinted by other websites, which will get you diverse backlinks pointing back to your site. The links themselves can be a source of increased traffic from those who read your articles, can help improve off-page SEO and rankings, and enhance your stature as an expert in your field.

In addition to syndicating your articles through article directories, and guest blogging, there are other ways you can repurpose your content that cost you little to nothing, such as:

• Turn your articles into PDFs and upload them to document sharing sites such as scribd or docstoc.
• Make simple videos and upload to YouTube, Vemeo etc.
• Turn articles into slideshows and upload to Slideshare.
• Make the article into an mp3 file, and upload to podcasting sites such as Podcast Alley, IPodder, Itunes, and others.
• Bundle a few articles (5-10 articles each containing a different tip) into an ebook and upload to CreateSpace, and KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

Hope this answered your questions.

Jesse

Let me respond to this one by one:

1. No, that is incorrect. It's true that each article must be unique in that it is "unique to you," but it does not have to be unique to the article directories -- in fact it should not be. Nor do Ezine Articles and most other directories require exclusivity of your articles.

Why would you want to give an article directory or any website for that matter "exclusive rights" to your original work? First publish the article on your site, get it indexed by Google (for first indexation rights), then submit it to article directories, and other niche related blogs, etc.

I agree with you there. Article marketing should be but just one facet of your SEO and content marketing mix.

Yes, as much as possible.

Completely disagree with you on this one. The more your article is syndicated and published by other websites, the more backlinks you have pointing back to your site, and the more traffic you will get from the actual links themselves in the resource box.

Not to mention the additional exposure you will get as an expert in your niche. Read my comments previously in this thread that explains why syndicating your articles through article directories is a very good idea indeed.