I have recently tried to get some links by writing articles and submitting them to article sites like ezinearticles. I've check and the links don't have nofollow's on them so they should be passing link juice. Do you guys have any experience with article sites that pass a lot of link juice? Is this practice a waste of time since the articles likely will never gain a pagerank or have enough juice to pass on to be worthwhile? Would throwing a couple links at the article combine with the sites authority to help pass some juice through your links?
I'd say it can help to a degree. If you do it enough, on quality article sites. But it's a strain of a way to squeeze traffic and the odd search results. There's no substitute for a quality backlink. Anyone can submit articles. Try and write content that people want to link to and talk about.
Article marketing is a cumulative effort. If you want fast links do something viral geared towards a particular vertical and then email blast that vertical or find another vehicle for distribution. Article marketing is great but isn't an instant bang...it does pay off though.
my problem is that this particular niche doesnt have many sites, but the few that do exist dominate the serps. i need some link juice to catch up, but there arent many blogs or other related sites willing to link out to others.
Sure, you'll get a few links from article directories, but you shouldn't expect something spectacular in terms of numbers and link value. Alan Johnson