Article Directories – Are They Wasting YOUR Time?

It’s no secret that I cut my teeth in the affiliate marketing world by writing probably five or so long-tail optimized articles per day, and then submitting them to EzineArticles, Articles Base, and Go Articles. I did this for about 2.5 years, starting in 2008. Basically, I was a poster child for Travis Sago’s old Bum Marketing Method.

Now back in the day, before the Google Penguin and Panda updates that really mucked things up for a lot of us, article directories were pretty bomb. In fact, you could make a healthy income armed with nothing more than a few Clickbank affiliate redirects and a bit of long-tail keyword research.

But these days, article directories just don’t work quite so well as they used to. You would need to submit dozens of articles to see any noticeable traffic. And what about the backlinks?

Unfortunately, the backlinks you receive from article directory marketing are fairly poor as well. Everyone harks on about the high PageRank of article directories. However, the truth is that the high PR of article directories is just their homepage. Your article itself will only carry a PR of 0 or 1 (in most cases).

So they aren’t much use for driving traffic any more. Nor are they very good for building links. What’s the purpose of article directories then, and are they wasting your time?

If you’re just using article directories in the traditional manner (trying to get traffic and backlinks) then you are wasting your time,

However, if you’re submitting high-quality articles that are being syndicated by other bloggers, webmasters, and list owners, then you’re using article directories in the correct manner.

The difference really is that simple 🙂

So basically, you need to be writing high-quality articles that are loaded with awesome value and content, and then submitting them to as many article directories as possible. Aim for longer articles (700 words plus) as these have a far greater chance of being syndicated by content-hungry bloggers and webmasters. Remember to teach something of value in your articles as well.

One good article that is syndicated to a decent sized list or blog will give you more links and traffic than 100 “average” articles submitted to every directory in existence.

However, if you like the thought of article marketing and want to try and use it to build links and traffic, then I really recommend that you either look at getting a good article spinnner (such as the Affilorama Premium Spinner) or hiring an outsource worker on a site such as Elance or EasyOutsource.com to do the work for you.

You would be much better served to put your effort into creating fresh content for your blog, researching profitable keywords, and building a big list of leads.

 

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  1. By Tyler

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