submitting to article directories or keeping articles on site?

What is the best way to use articles?
Do you write them and keep them on your site, preventing duplication and allowing search engines to crawl them. Or do you submit to directories benefiting from In bound links but potentially be seen as having duplicate content?

Saw a post on dp that said max 3 directory submissions per article. Is that a guesstimate or a rule of thumb?

How much do articles help in seo?

Thanks

Fuzz

 

I'm no expert but links from article submission sites are generally fairly low value. Better to keep your best articles either for your own site (to build value for the readers you do have/those that find your site) or if possible submit some for guest blogging spots which are far better at generating traffic/quality links.

 

I asked this same question here on DP a few weeks back. The responses mainly said it was more valuable to use unique content on your own site.

Take a look: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=880276

 

Hmmm, well I believe you should do both That is the safest and easiest way. Make sure you are not submitting an article from your site becuase that's plain stupid (duplicate content).

Write the BEST for your site and then spin it off to make a low grade version of the same article and post it on article directories. You get backlinks and you get to keep unique content for your own site - a win win situation that Zee likes

 

As a follow up I have an e-commerce site and I have 10-12 articles on an article page. Is it best to keep all your articles on one page or spread them out somehow. I agree that you write your best stuff for you site and link to pages on your site. I just wonder how google looks at the articles being on the "article" page which is kind of artificial, or spread them around the site.

 

Depends on how you look at it.

Both are necessary. First create articles for your own site, and then get articles on the www to help promote your site and get more exposure.

The article has to be of quality too. If your making garbage articles then you wont have any success. but if you give quality content then other web masters might be more inclined to use and promote your article, which in turn will provide back links and give you a SEM edge.

 

hi all,

Thanks for the replies. Really good responses there.

The approach of keeping quality on site, and lower grade quality out on the web, seems a good way forward.

By the way what is the ideal article length and how many links to your site should it have?

Thanks again

Fuzz

 

I write one version for my own site and a totally different version to go on article sites. It avoids content duplication for my site

 

Most of the article submission sites have limits of how few words, usually around 400 and how many usually 2500 or so. Try to keep them closer to 400 as one article is a lot like a grain of sand on the beach, it requires quantity unless you have the cure for cancer and one article is all it is going to take. Sadly the cure as well as articles of that quality are extremely hard come by. As well most sites will state what their link policy is. Many will only allow 2-3 links in the bio portion of the article while others will allow 3-4 in the body of the article or a combination of the two.

 

The advice to put lower grade quality articles out to directories is flawed. Each article is an advert for your site and so should be of as good a quality as the articles on your site. Poor quality articles will do you no favours in the long run. People will not follow your link because they will believe that the article is indicative of the site content and webmasters will not reprint your article for their own site as it's sub-standard and you'll get no backlinks from it.
Take a look at an article I wrote on this subject some time ago.

 

Article promotion is just for having a link back, but if you are smart then plese use it as the content page of your website, i think it;s more value then having othe link backs

it's gr8 way to publish your article in your own site or some popular ezines only, please also take care of the category of article where you are publishing your article.

 

Article directories can be very good sources of baclinks and traffic if "written well" they will be published all over the place.

Once written, it should not take much to recreate it as unique content

 

Thanks all for the replies.

Its been a big insight.

 

600+ words for article length is good, and you should always maximize the resource links, so put 3 in there. Never just put one backlink to your domain; always deep link it or include 2 links to other sites of yours.

Keep your site content original and create articles for submission to directories.

 

I actually use the same article written 3 different ways for uniqueness. One of the articles goes on my site, one to isnare and then the other to ezinearticles. It seems to be well worth my time doing this. At least from what I can tell concerning my rankings for the keywords that I have been targeting.

 

article helps a lot if it has unique contents..

 

If your distributed your articles to article directories, you can simply wait to see if they help drive traffic to your site or link popularity for the site. Here are the benefits you can expect from article submission. Article submission create one-way links to your site, which increases your page rank better than any other kind of link. Once your article is click it can be your potential customers. Article submission can also build your credibility as a source of information, because you are showing the readers, through your articles, that you are knowledgeable about the particular topic discussed.

 

Google loves and appreciates fresh and relevant content, therefore a non related site hosting your article can get good ranking for the keyword terms that are explicit within the article, Google has the technology to pinpoint what your main keywords are, however this of course needs to be assisted since Google is a machine; and you the write can do that. If it is going to an ezine/article directory make sure the main keywords are at the top and the keywords density is the right proportion. The love from Google will go to that particular article and from my experience a) The amount of traffic or popularity a particular site has b) The ratio of fresh content that is submitted regards to the targeted keywords. This is however short-term.

Long-term is the linkage to your article submitted to the ezine/article directory or to the page that is linked from the article (i.e. the one in the resource box). Bottom-line if no one is linking to any of the articles, then they must not be worth talking about! Google is smart enough to recognise articles for the sake of serp, again it will ride the wave with you for a short period 1/2 weeks and then start dropping you.

To stay ahead of the game then you need to cross link articles. Those who can do this effectively are using squidoo, hub pages, etc are achieving this