I've used a few articles from GoArticles. I looked up some of the keywords that were listed on the pages from these articles. Many times GoArticles ranks the highest for the keyword. I've seen that with other article directory sites. It seems the article sites benefit "quite well" from the articles. Doesn't that defeat the purpose.
Yes, if you can get your link in your article it can be worth it. I used to do it and it worked alright but don't expect instant traffic.
That's the other issue... many times the site grabs the article and strips out the link. Much of the time it's the fault of the article site, which don't properly display the <a href info. Otherwise, article submitting is a good idea as it gives value for the sites who use the articles.
It is one of the best way to get backlink when you are short of fund. However, don't use it as the single source of link. If search engine algo change you will be screw big time
I've been using ezinearticles, goarticles, searchwarp and buzzle and find I am getting backlinks. I try to alter each article though which takes a little time (and change anchor text).
This is the post I was looking for. I am new to article submission, but it appears as if one of my theories have been affirmed. Initially the quality of backlinks that i have received from articles is fairly poor, but my thinking was that over time these poor links would improve to a PR 3 link or something like that. I hope that is how it always works!
The PR of the page your link is on is not a good quality indicator for links. There are other factors, such as relevance and # of outbound links that are more important. Two factors that make article links very high quality is: 1: The page they are on (your article) is related to your site 2: You generally get to set the anchor text The downside is that the pages are duplicate content. Overall, articles can give you some excellent links, in my experience.
Did anyone notice on eZinearticles.com how even freshly published articles immediately have PR7?? How to explain that?
Your all wasting your time if your posting the same article to hundreds of directories (I post to 500 BTW). See the search engines see the same article on hundreds of sites as duplicate content. You will see your links shoot up and then drop back down if you use the same article. Even the remaining liks may be of de valued. I submit 10 different articles for my clients that use our SEO services to the 500 directories. This usually nets them, after a few months, about 100-200 back links. And they are good links.
We submit articles every month for dozens of clients. Our experience is that you end up with a huge spike of article pick ups but the SERP, and then gradually many of them drop off. But for every article we send we end up holding on to a few good backlinks from Google and several from Yahoo. Well worth the investment. And for what it is worth, we have even better results from press releases. Same concept, but better link love.
Except when using article submission services, I always edit articles and change them in a way there are no duplicates.
Without any doubts articles will provide many backlinks. I have more than 15,000 of them but I don't think they are improving my websites' PR. Backlinks from blogs with high PR is another story. If you want to get the full story and tons of valuable free downloads please email me at
After reading through the whole thread I thought I would share my opinion as well. I use a software program to submit to article directories for my various sites, it is not "totally" automated as it does require a human to operate it. In other words, it is not a simple click and go type thing. It is probably very similar, if not the same as what Mad4 is using. As a result the submission process takes about 6 hours to send an article to about 300 sites. These sites do allow certain HTML in the article, such as <B> and <i>. They do NOT allow links in the body of the article though, this is saved for the author box and is typically limited to 2 or 3 links. Additionally I operate my own niche article submission site, so I get to see it from both sides of the spectrum. Many of the click and go type software programs submit articles to inappropriate categories and do not abide by the specific requirements of each individaul article site. The result of this is that I decline about 80% of all articles that are submitted. Remember that you must abide by the rules of each site because most of the article submissions are reviewed by human beings and I know that I simply delete all articles submitted by people/programs that do not follow the very simple guidelines. From what I have read on this thread it sounds like Mad4 and IMAutoPilot know what they are doing and are offering sound advice. Isnare is also a good and inexpensive option, I DO accept a lot of articles submitted by Isnare at my site. By submitting articles to article sites I expect to get the backlinks, but not PR or direct traffic. I think submitting articles is definately worth it, but of course I do it myself for free. The only alterations that I personally make to the articles between sites is that I change the anchor text about every 50 sites.
I prefer manual submission rather than going with article submission sites that submit your article to other sites. I tried articlesender.com but it didnt really work out for me. Their tag line 'We drop your article in over 30,000 webmasters faces!' didnt actually work.