getting all confused about article submission

In some of the websites/posts i read that writing a fresh article on a subject for which you already have an article on your website, and then submitting the new article to various article directories will be helpful, while in some other posts i have read that using the same article for article submission will be good...i am really confused...which one is right?

 

Paraphrase your original article and then post to directories.

 

thanks..

 

Neither is correct. What you want to do is write an original compelling article with quality content that other people will want to link to. You can submit to directories as a start, but don't rely on them as your primary source of promoting your work. As for submitting to article directories, I'd just write a summary of the aritcle and then submit the summary along with a link back to the original article to the directories instead of submitting copies of the article itself.

 

Excellent! This was what I was looking for, Dan

 

I didn't even know you could do that.

I mean submit a summary and link back to your site for the complete article.

Would ezinearticles let you do that?

 

Wouldn't know. I don't do article submissions because they're not worth the time or effort - especially when looking at the ROI (return on investment).

 

I want to discuss this in detail. I assume if you have a good article it will get approved by 500-1000 article directories.

This means you will get 500-1000 backlinks from PR0 (sometimes more) pages with duplicate content Is that really bad? I am thinking the ROI is almost same with article submission as it is with directory submission. In directory submission as well you get 500-1000 backlinks from PR0 (sometimes more) webpages with LOTS of other links.

With article submission you can actually build backlinks to internal pages too while there are not too many free deep link directories.

Would love to hear from you about this.

 

I could not agree more. Rather then writing content and submitting it to the various article directories, I'd rather create content for my website. Not only would I be providing my visitors updated content, but the search engines would index it and send me the traffic - not some article directory.

 

I would still want Dan to justify his ROI comment. I would also write articles and get visitors to my own website but I think there are parallels between directory submission and article submission where are you just building 'backlinks'. What is the harm in writing two (unique) articles where one would be used for article submission and another will be posted on my mail site?

 

I suspect Dan uses more traditional and effective backlink building methods for his client's Websites. Article marketing falls into the "bum marketing" category, and its SEO value is limited in comparison to some other methods.

There's certainly no harm in writing two articles and keeping the best copy posted on your site. The problem arises when the articles are mass submitted. Once you get around five to ten indexed copies out there, it starts pushing the duplicate content envelope. If Google identifies some of the article listings as duplicate content, the duplicates may not appear in the index. If they are not in the index, then the backlinks they contain are also lost as well.

Web and article directory submissions are actually similar for backlink building purposes. The problem is that articles tend to consume a much larger percentage of the page, thus making them easier to identify as duplicate content. Web directory listings, on the other hand, tend to be brief and consume a small percentage of the page. That's why one can submit to web directories with the same anchor text, description, etc and still see them show up as backlinks.

I'd like to see Dan's input on this issue as well. But I know for the time it takes to write and submit an article, he can probably comes up with five + high quality links for his clients.

 

Thanks snowbird. That sounds like a good explanation The duplicate content penalty for articles is more likely then for directory submission.

If it's the same traditional approach that I know, I think it takes a lot of time and backlinks are not 'guaranteed' ROI is not 'that' bad if you spin the article?

 

Just watch www.search-this.com then. I'm writing an article on using conditional comments that'll be published as soon as I finish re-writing it (trying to lower the word count and make it read better) - why would I want to bother having the same article on multiple article directories when I can have one location to point links to myself?

(And for the record, I do not own Search-This - Mark Angeletti does; I used to contribute before real life and health problems got in the way, causing me to leave two mini-series unfinished.)

 

IMO a good strategy is to write an article about something broad (so it's longer, better and more detailed) and put it on your website then write an article about a sub category of that broad subject and post it on respectable high traffic authority article directories. This establishes your original article as a source for the second article.

In most cases, article directories allow you to put 3 links in your resource box so you can link back to your article and to two other related pages on your website. If you submit an article to more than 1 article directory, you'll have more success getting more than one article submission indexed if you -

1. Change the title
2. Change the summary
3. Change the text in the resource box
4. Reword a sentence or three

These are four quick things you can do to help get more copies of the same article indexed.

Most of the time, I'll write articles for the website and then hire a cheap article writer to write an article using my article, and others, as resources. Then I'll edit the cheap article for quality control