Wed, 20 Aug 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 »