I posted this thread in the General Business section by mistake, so I apologise for the double posting. If there is a moderator out there feel free to delete my post in the business section. Any way I have a question regarding article and directory submissions. When submitting to various directories am I better off stopping after submitting to the top few directories, or should I spend extra time and submit to a larger group of them? My issue is that I don't want to be spending my time submitting to a large group when I get better value for time just submitting more articles to the top sites. Please note that I am not expecting to get a large amount of traffic from the submissions, but would expect to gain a lot of back links.
Unique original content is always king with Google at least...Your best bet would be to post as many unique articles as you can to only the top directories, such as Ezine Articles (PR6)... If an article is not approved, then use that one as your link builder and use an article submitter service to have that article posted 'pretty much everywhere!" Do not use your unique articles with Ezine as mass submission articles as well! Use the good articles "once" for a quality PR6 link from Ezine, and then use your "ok" article for mass submission - link building.
So I do one or the other? What are the top directories that I should/can get away with submitting to? i.e. are there five or six 'top' sites that I can submit my top articles to?
Trade secret! JK...#1 Ezine Articles, #2 Go Articles, #3 Scribd (powerful site now being used by bum marketers with great success!).. ** I would personally only use #1, moving down the line only if the article is not approved (go in order)...#1 is your 1st choice because of their hefty Page Rank - You Want To Leverage Their Page Rank! For your junk, or average, or spam articles, whatever you want to call them (the link builders), use whatever service works best for you, does not really matter so long as they get the job done.
Excuse my ignorance, but can you explain to me why I would use only one of them and not all three, and why I would just submit to one good directory and not the hundreds of lesser directories?
No problem. #1. There are not that many "good" directories with Ezine Articles Page Rank of 6...Period...Do you want Google to see your articles as being important content??? If yes, than Ezine's PR6 will transfer to "your articles" as well....Go Articles is PR3 - Google sees its content (and your articles through them) as less "important" than those from Ezine - follow the logic? Scribd is also PR6 just like Ezine - but Ezine tends to get more natural traffic (at the moment). Keep this in mind, your site is only as important as other sites tell Google it is...Follow... Therefore an inbound link from Ezine Articles (PR6) will must likely help pull your site up in the organic rankings, with time and quantity of course. However this works in reverse too! An inbound link, (or many inbound links) from PR1 or God forbid PR0 sites (sites that Google sees as having NO or Little Authority) will transfer their mediocrity to YOU! This is why you really want quality links from Authority sites. If a site is really new, an inbound link from a PR0 site can actually do more harm then good..It just tells Google your site has no real importance! Which is why other sites of no real importance are linking to it....Make sense? Go for unique Quality first...Once you have the heavy weight PR6 links coming in, then use you article submitter service to get a short term boost in traffic, and to build link count (it will not be quality) but your have more links, more traffic, and a "slight" boost in your PR rank over time. Does this make sense?
One more question. How does this relate to plain directories? Also I have a list of directories in Excel. Is there anywhere I can input this data in bulk to get the page rank of all the sites?
Just as described...Plain directories work the same why, the overwhelming majority of plain directories will still not be able to touch the PR authority of a Ezine or Scribd...You'll be settling for less 'important' links, thats all. Quality will nearly always trump quantity over the long haul...As far as finding out PR's in bulk, I can't answer that...I read not to long ago such info is no longer compiled , but I don't know if that correct or not...I have not been able to find a bulk listing though. Personally I do it the old way, pull up the directories one by one and check the PR...You will come to find, as I said, only a handful of directories are currently useful for your purposes (if you factor in PR)...This is why the article directories mentioned are the prime choices for article marketers, such as myself.