Sat, 19 Jul 2008
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I tested hundreds of article directories back in the day when I fell for the hype of the effectiveness of article submitters. My belief back then was if I had more links pointing back to my web site, the better my site would rank. I was expecting an avalanche of traffic to come to my web sites but I was disappointed when the traffic was so pathetic.
Instead of submitting to hundreds of article directories, I only submit to about 9 article directories for my article marketing (bum marketing) campaigns. This saves me a lot of time, money and prevents my articles from competing against one another for rankings in the search engines.
My Top Article Directories by Alexa Rank
I ranked my list of article directories by Alexa traffic stats and this is the order of the article directories. I know there are article directories with better Alexa rankings than some of the ones listed above but these are my “approved list” of article directories.
I grouped my articles directories into a list of article directories worth submitting to and another list I consider worthless in terms of getting traffic.
My Condemned List of Article Directories
I compiled my findings with my tracking links at the end of each article’s signature. I usually use a tracking link to keep track of the number of people who clicked on my affiliate links of my articles. I also monitor the number of visitors coming from the articles directories. The condemned list above generated very little visitors and almost zero sales for me.
What About Squidoo?
I put Squidoo in my condemned list too because it has never managed to outrank my articles in my top list above. Seems like article directories like Buzzle, EzineArticles etc still outperform Squidoo for my articles. Maybe I am not using Squidoo correctly but I don’t really care since I have a bunch of article directories working brilliantly for me.
My Personal Favourite Article Directories
If I only had time to submit to one article directory, it would be Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com does not allow crappy writers into their directory. They take about a month before approving writers. Your articles will have to go through a strict reviewing process too. I personally get a lot of traffic and sales from them.
The remaining 5 article directories did give me some traffic and sales but not as much as the top 4 I mentioned above. If you do not have the time to submit to 9 article directories, simply submit to at least the 4 article directories above.
My Final Thoughts
Mass article submitters are a waste of time and money. I used to use Article Post Robot and it really does automatically submit to article directories unlike the other article submitting software. However, it takes a very long time for you to register at all the article directories and enter the login details into the software.
With the popularity of article rewriting software like Content Composer, many people falsely believe that they can spin hundreds of unique articles and submit them to hundreds of article directories again. I personally use Content Composer and I find that the greater the number of articles you try to generate, the more the generated articles will look like one another. Just because you can technically generate hundreds of copies of 1 article, doesn’t mean you should.
The biggest flaw of these article spinning software in my opinion is the inability to generate unique article titles! The less articles you generate, the easier it would be for you to brainstorm unique article titles to use with your articles. Since I submit to 9 or less article directories, by rewriting 1 article into 9 articles, I do not need to spend more than 15 minutes to create these unique article titles.
Free Article Directory Excel Spreadsheet Download
I organize my article directories in an Excel spreadsheet with additional information on each article directory. Download my article directory list and update it to suit your needs. Maybe some of the article directories I condemned could work out great for you or the ones I claim to be the best could be useless for you. The bottom line is you need to test them for yourself to decide which ones work for you.
Tagged As: Article Marketing, article-post-robot, article-rewriter, article-spinner, article-submitter, bum-marketing, content-composer, top-article-directories
Categories: Article Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 6 Comments »
I hate to write articles and autoresponders for my web sites. But I like to write in my blog once in a while. Kevin Brown has a free report on How to Outsource Your Article Writing on freelance web sites like Elance.com, ScriptLance.com and RentACoder.com.
I’ve been looking for a guide like this for a long time. Kevin has sample letters and a certain list of things he expects from his writers. I would be so lost without this report. Kevin’s also the author of EZ Article Publisher. I haven’t used the software yet so I can’t review it. I bet it would be useful if you’re into article writing for your content sites.
I think I need to hire someone to help me fix some layout issues on this blog. I always see this huge white space at the 1st post in my Firefox browser for some reason.
Categories: Article Marketing | No Comments »
I’ve been using a bunch of software to grab articles from free article directories. So far I have used Article Automator, Article Equalizer and now Article Fetcher.
Article Automator
My favourite of them all is Article Automator even though I had some issues with generating the index page of the articles. I hope the author has fixed those issues I had when I used that software some time ago. I like its ability to create RSS feeds from your list of articles and its search by keyword function that saves me a lot of time.
Article Equalizer
I don’t like Article Equalizer because I feel the logic of searching for articles is wrong with that software. You have to select the article category and the look through a long list of articles in that directory and select the ones you want. There is a search tool for you search for keywords in the articles but that is only AFTER you select your category. This is a big problem if you are trying to look for articles across multiple categories. Futhermore, the time it takes to retrieve the articles in each category is very slow even on my broadband connection. I am glad I got a refund for this.
Article Fetcher
This is a new one that I have tested out recently. Its only $37 while the rest will cost you $97. At first I thought I got a steal but after using the software I realised I get what I pay for. There is no template function in this software and that means you can only create plain articles without integrating into your web site design. You will have to do it manually with your html editor to make the articles look like your site layout. What a waste of time. Article Fetcher only grabs articles from 1 source only. I hope the author makes some changes quick because its just not good enough at the moment.
Article Directories
All the software above grab articles from some free article directory. So if you’ve got time on your hands to “do it yourself”. Visit these sites and grab the articles that relate to your site.
Some other great places to get free articles:
Wikipedia’s an amazing place to learn about anything. They let you use their articles as long as you include their copyright notice.
Categories: Article Marketing | No Comments »