It seems each perosn in this thread has a different opinion. Mt experience is Hubpage is effective,but Squido is useless to me. Hubpage brings trafiic,but Squido NONE AT ALL to me. Also some months ago I changed description of summary of my hubpage article and instantly the traffic increased. So I suggest you experiment Header or summary description.
like everyone has said, backlinks are crucial for rankings so these directories can still be very useful. It is just important to remember that it takes work, you can't just write one article and hope that is all you need. Put in work and it will work for you
Right. Most of the time, it is the people manning these sites are rewarded rather than the publishers who had toiled. And with changes in google algo, time only will tell how far it will be effective in due course...
I'm not sure they're as effective as they used to be since this recent Google algorithm change. I rarely see web 2.0 sites on page 1 of Google these days, except for maybe the least competitive of keywords. I notice Hubpages more than Squidoo, but with all the ads on those 2 sites I think it would be difficult to get clicks back to your own site. I could be wrong though (haven't used either in about 2 years).
yes, the article in squidoo, is more benefit for quality backlink and link building and also to route traffic to you site
Instead of hoping that Squidoo and HubPages will be a good backlink, why not direct traffic to either/both of them? A lot of people make most of their money from the payouts and affiliate links on those sites.