Free Article Submission, does it work?

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Free Article Submission has been advertised as SEO method to increase your website visitors and Search Engine rankings. I tested it past two weeks, how it works and what kind effect I can get to my blog visibility.

I found the huge list of free article submission and directories sites, so started from there. To my surprise, half of those sites where just some affiliate “Get Quickly Rich” sales sites and another half was already out of business. After spending over twenty hours, I found only thirty from that list suitable to publish my article. I spent another five-six hours to write an article, which I published with the link my original article idea in my blog. Usually you are able to publish 3-5 links with your article using Article Publishing sites. Some of those sites had nice feature to ad my picture which I hoped to increase the interest to read my article.

After two weeks, Google have indexed the article headline from Feedster, Article Feeder, PlugIM, Rosenthal Media,  Internet Marketing Ultimate Article Directory, Web Marketing Magazine and Feed 2 Podcast though Articler.Com.  MSN have indexed article headings from Webmarketmagazine’s Free Articles Directory and eBusiness Articles. Yahoo was much faster to index and results where appearing within few days. Yahoo have so far indexed Feedster, Expert Articles, Article Feeder, Web Marketing Magazine, Free Article Submission and Big Article. All of those search engines had so far indexed only my article headline in catalogs but not yet my article or it’s URL.

small-business.nzpcs.co.nz seems to be publishing my article without any link to my site and contacting with me.

I didn’t got any visitors to my blog from the link published with my article within mentioned two weeks period. 

Conclusion: I had spent over 50 hours to the process without any result. Publishing a comment to some story related newsgroups or open threads will usually produce me ten to twenty interested visitors and shows in search engines results within a week or two also improving my Search Engine Ranking. Depending to the interest to the topic, I’m usually starting to get even hundreds of search engine visitor’s afterwards who are using related keywords. Meanwhile, I joined to the MyBlogLog and have published short descriptions from my blog content to TechnoRati WTF, both sending me ten to twenty visitors per day and at least something in TechnoRati seems to be indexed very quickly by search engines (within days).

50 thoughts on “Free Article Submission, does it work?”

  1. I have great success with aticle marketing (or bum marketing as it is know now thanks to Travis Sago) I find its best to stick with the high pr sites like enzinearticles and searchwarp etc. Also, try getting the distibuted via a site like isnare.

  2. Nice post. We run an article directory as well as do article marketing ourselves for several other sites. We’ve had success with it. But it’s true to say that not all directories are equal.

    But I’d say in general, depending on the variables – that article marketing does work. Sad to hear it wasn’t a great success for you, but keep at it.

  3. Veiko,

    Having read your last entry I was worried about my meeting with an SEO “expert”. I must be mad but I enjoy searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow However, he has suggested a number of improvements to our site, one of which is a blog. Is this a useless exercise if I don’t then submit my entries to atricle directories?

  4. Wow what an experience you have out there. Thanks for siting the article directories that work. At least it would save the time of the article writers out here.

    Goodluck and more blessings

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  7. hey,

    thanks for the interesting info.
    article marketing work effectively with good articles and catchy bio. most of white hat seo will work but it takes time.

    so don’t exclude it from your methods of advertising. and only send your articles to articles directory with PR 3 above and with high alexa ranking. let the directory work first to get their PR high before we even send our articles.

    they set some guideline for us to follow so why not we put some guideline too. by doing that we at least know which article directory really want to provide the real services.

  9. Hey,
    Just try a number of reputable publishers:
    1 Isnare.com
    2 Ideamarketers.com
    3.Goarticles.com
    4.1888articles.com
    5.ezinearticles.com

    These are very professionale. publish quickly and list quickly in the search engines.

    Regards
    Peter

  11. I believe that working with the bigger article submission sites works the best. Keeping each article unique is important and I like to make sure each of my submissions are. I guess working with article submission sites willg et your article out to more places but will the quality of your article be compromised if they are not unique from each other? I think that the time spent sending it ‘by hand’ to the top directory sites works best for me.

  12. I’m kind of with you on this as it mirrors our experience to a degree, but I think that the key with being successful with this marketing is to write a lot of articles. We write articles that we post on our site, blog and submit to article directories. I don’t know where that critical mass point is but obviously the more the better I think.

  13. Hi Mate,

    I’ve had some great success
    with posting free articles.

    I actually use Article Post
    Robot to do the hard work for
    me and it workd every time.

    It just sucks that you have to
    register at every single article
    site on-by-one. It take ages
    but it’s vell worth it!

    Take Care,

    Michael Silvester

  14. I don’t think you did too bad for just 2 weeks. As you found some of the directories take longer to approve articles, so results can vary.

    I usually submit 2 or 3 articles at a time. I have them on one of my sites for a few days until they get indexed and then I submit them to isnare who get them out to diverse places. I also hand submit to my own list of directories that don’t accept automatic submission. Some high PR, some low or none. Some of the high PR directories often take longer to approve articles and I want them live as soon as possible. Also this months low PR directory could be much higher the next time Google sorts ranks so I am edging my bets.

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  19. I am sorry to hear about your story on the article marketing venture. Well, first off you should have started posting to article submission wites with high PR, like ezinearticles, isnare, goarticles, ideamarketers to name a few. This activity will not instantaneously yield traffic but in the long run it will.

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  23. Article marketing isn’t great for traffic, even when using the top directories. In my opinion it is much better used as an SEO thing and consider any traffic as incidental.

    Blog marketing tactics such as pinging, social bookmarking, joining blog communities, and strategic commenting are WAY better for traffic – plus they have SEO benefits as well. There’s no comparison.

  24. Pingback: Reccomended article submission sites - Page 2 - Earners Forum

  26. Thanks for your comprehensive insights. I have had really good success with article directories. Of course the ones I like are searchwarp and ezinearticles and a small Christian directory called narrowisthepath. We started our own directory also, articlesforboomers.com so it is good because I create my own categories and approve and reject the articles that are not the best fit. I am careful to do it in a reasonable time frame.
    I do find that submitting articles is a great testing ground for titles. If there is a lot of response to the article then I am encouraged to work deeper on an ebook or other product idea.
    So much is trial and error.
    Thanks again

  27. I submit my aticles to GoArticles,StumbleUpon, Delicious, PostOnFire, Diggs, to get backlicks for my Post and hopefully to get traffic.. I really think it so much waste of time to submit articles to too many Article Submission site..

    If you want to get traffic Mybloglog, Blogcatalog is the best site that I can consider.. Try to read this if you have the time http://www.teyonlinejournal.com/2008/02/articlesubmission-that-dont-allow-html.html

  28. I have used a program for posting articles called Article Posting Robot,and it works pretty darn well. Basically you have to login into a bunch of sites, record your username and password, create a pen name, and the program is able to automatically able to post your site to around 400+ sites automatically.

    Once you’ve posted a few articles and know how time consuming it is, it’s a no brainer IMO.

  29. We’re just starting out publishing articles using article submitter and distributor and this list and comments are a very good resource for which ones to submit to. thanks.

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  32. I had a similar experience but also had some great results, it all depends of the niche and the article submitted, you really need to get the readers want more and click your link or they will just read another article.

  33. There are article directories and article directories. Article extreme is one of the best for the following reasons.
    1, All submissions are checked for relevancy. Cut ‘n pasted gibberish will not be admitted.
    2, As part of the weeding process, articles not submitted to the correct sub-categories will be declined for re-submission. This is because…
    3, This article site is as niche concentrated as possible, with new sub-categories being added all the time. After all, who wants to find articles about tropical fish fungus cures in a section of articles about debt consolidation?
    4, This tight acceptance control has made this one of the fastest growing article directories around. We now can boast over 1,300 members since we launched in October last year.
    5, Our growth is about as organically viral as you can get. A bit of word of mouth, a bit of a Digg now and then, and absolutely no paid advertising. Already our Alexa ranking is under the 300,000 mark, and the associated blog has a totally unexpected Google page rank. It’s low, but it’s quick even for Google!
    So, pop over and join the family at http://articleextreme.com
    Best wishes, Bruce Earl Andrews, CEO

  35. Hey,

    Article marketing does work if you do it right. However, most of you focus on article directories — which are the sites listed in this blog posting. That will basically get you links — and that’s it. Now links are good as the more links you get, the higher you will rank in the search engines.

    But, you should also submit articles to targeted websites where your prospects go to every day for information and solutions you can provide.

    For more information, get my special report — How to Choose an Article Submission Service at http://www.iwantmoreprospects.com/10questions.

    Then email me at eric@PRLeads.com for a free article that will define the difference between article directories and targeted websites.

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  38. Hi. I am the admin for articleszoom.com. I know a lot of other article publishing sites has gone out of business because their motive was way-off from the beginning. I have been running my site for 2 years now and approves article manually. It is very clean, not cluttered with ads.

    I hope you’d consider testing my site out and if your experience is good, then maybe you can let your readers know.

    Thank you very much!

  40. Personally, we have good experiences with articles submissions but that’s on the long term. The results doesn’t come directly from the directories themselves but from the people who does pick up the articles to publish them on their sites..

    Dave

  41. same was the case with us as an SEO Company.
    I also spent many hours to prepare the list of free article submission sites but once i started submission I could not get more than 5 sites having potential for submission.

    Then i Tried another way to increase traffic, and got social networking and forum the best source of traffic increase.

  42. I belive it does. Article submission is a great way to get your oppnions and thoughts out. It also allows you to get the needed feedback and comments you need for your work when you are a new or even an established writer to better yourself. Recently I discovered this new site einformationsource, it’s great. It even allows you to leave links and promote products.

  44. Perhaps it depends on what you’re promoting? I am interested in using any and every form of marketing I can to push my search engine out to the massess… I’d like to know what you were marketing when you failed… maybe the answer is not in the tools but what they were used for… one thing’s true: press releases have a function that goes far beyond “seo” aspects of marketing, and there are lots of very rich people who put press marketing right at the top of their list of ways to get free exposure.

  45. Submitting to article directories is a good way to get a new website or blog indexed quickly.

    Articles need to be written with the correct keyword density and have a search engine friendly title. There are sometimes ways to make your article appear to be more popular than it actually is!

    Make sure (if allowed by the directories T&C) that you add a link to your website in the first line. This is because some websites only post the title and the fist few lines followed by “read more” or similar. Avoid putting your free articles on your own website. it will be deemed dual content when someone else with higher PR publishes it. It will also be you who gets slapped by the search engines. Read the most popular articles and the least popular articles and see if you can spot the difference between them!

    The most annoying thing about submitting free articles is when “bumholes” publish your articles but take out the links back to your website.

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  48. I used iSnare.com for a couple articles – months later no major traffic from them. I didn’t like how the articles were re-submitted to every lame auto-generated blog site on the net (eg. ones with the original wordpress theme).

    Also, does it go without saying that you shouldnt post the article on your actual blog as well?

    -HKS

  50. I’ve found the blogging directories get me more hits than the articles personally but I did most of my submitting only a week ago so maybe there’s more of a long term benefit from articles

    UK Free Stuff

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