I was reading this forum and I saw a lot of writers submit their articles into these directories such ezinearticles and isnare. So I submitted 2 of my articles into the ezinearticles.com and it's been accepted. In the articles, there were references to my website. One of my article on my website already comes back as #1 in google search result(and I wrote it less than a week ago). What is the advantage in submitting articles if you already have your own website to host these articles?? Isn't it duplicating contents all over the web and lowering the chance of ppl hitting your own website instead? I rather ppl read my article at my website instead of at ezinearticles. Originally I thought it was a stretched way of having my articles being distributed all over the web and referencing back to me which would in turn build a *website recognition. I'm in this for the long term of building up a business. I just want to make sure from experienced writers and marketers that submitting original articles to these directories are a good idea. I'm new to this to this web 2.0 way of marketing.
Only real reason for doing it is so you have more links pointing to your site and then you increase what the search engines think the value of your site is due to you having links pointing to your sit. The best thing about article submission for getting more links is they are 1 way and you can even have multiple links deep linking to your site. Only down side is that article submission has out of control due to all these automated submitters the search engines are now devaluing them type links anyway, this is why now the latest way most people are doing it is putting the article on their own site and submitting to social bookmark websites. Which again considering its still quite a new way of doing things is getting way out of hand also with social bookmark websites just being spammed by useless websites with no content just buy you viagra here adverts.
Having the duplicated article would be a negative but having the link back to your site is a positive. I rather have our articles remain on our articles then. Doesn't seem like a good way to "market" if you do publish articles of your own and have a website to host them. Just my thought unless I'm missing something
It would be better to write separate/new articles for article directories than using the same exactly ones as from your own site(s). This will help you avoid being penalized by search engines for having duplicate contents on your site(s). People usually submit articles to article directories to gain traffic to their personal sites.