Why do you submit articles to article directories?

I keep reading about how you are supposed to submit articles to directories.

Why would you do this, it only increases the SEO value of the site you are submitting them too. Why not post the articles on your own website as unique content so you can grow the SEO value and size of your own site?

I don't get it. Please explain.

 

You get a link back to your site in your Author's Bio section. More links=better SERP's.

 

yeah but couldn't you just go ask/buy links on blogs and other websites and such and concentrate on building your own site up with content? Those articles are like perfectly good content going to waste to help another website, when it could be used to build up your own site. You could get links from anywhere.

 

Then go get links from anywhere. Once you've done that, come back here and find some places to submit your articles. A 500 word article takes 20 minutes to write. then submissions to the top 3 sites takes 10 minutes.

After 30 minutes I bet I have more backlinks than you do...

 

Wouldn't you just get 3 backlinks and that's it? I do not understand how this works.

If your article gets published on multiple article sites, wouldn't this also be considered duplicate content and those extra links would be null?

 

its to get back links mate which are good for serps

 

Well I'll have to try this out myself and see if it works, I think I did this and actually got penalized because of all the duplicate content linking to me but I'm not 100% sure if this was the articles (I later asked them to remove the articles to be safe)

AfterHim.com, what are your top article submission places that you use? Which ones are free?

 

you get links back and you can put links in the articles that are optimized for your keywords you are intersted in. Anyone who uses your article for any reason will be giving you additional back links.

Duplicate content may or may not be an issue, but most of the time it's not. You have no control over other people going to your site and grabbing/duplicating your content. Search engines know that and that's why duplicate offsite articles arent penalized for the most part...unless you get involved with sites that are known by the search engines to only exist for pay per post stuff.