Do It Properly And Article Submission Can Put Your Site Onto Page One Of The Search Engine Results
The goal for all website owners is to get a flow of free traffic and that means getting your website listed on page one of the natural search results for the main search engines, including the big three of Google, MSN and Yahoo.
A few years ago this was reasonably easy even in quite competitive markets but now it has become very much harder as the Internet has grown rapidly and the search engines are now far more sophisticated at assessing websites and determining just which websites ought to be given high.
SEO is a complex business nowadays and entire books have been, and are still being, written on this subject. One thing, however, which virtually all of the experts agree on is the importance of steadily and slowly building links to your website and one of the most effective ways to do this is by writing articles and then submitting these to a range of article directory websites. However, there is a right way and a wrong way of doing this.
The starting point is to write several articles focusing on a variety of topics related to the theme of your website, with each article being accompanied by an 'about the author' box which provides links back to your website. In this short article we will assume that you are familiar with article writing and so we do not intend to look at this particular subject. Here, our attention is focused upon how you go about submitting your articles to the article directory sites.
Opinions are mixed here and, as with anything else in the world of search engine optimization, you will be well advised to try out various different approaches and to carefully document what you do and the results you get. Once you have accumulated sufficient statistics you will find that it is a quite simple matter to see precisely what works and what does not. An alternative is just to listen to what other people are saying on the subject although the difficulty here is that there is a mass of misinformation floating around either from people who have little or no real experience and are just trying to sell you something or from individuals who want to deliberately mislead you because they see you as a possible competitor.
Your first route is to submit your articles by hand. With literally hundreds of article directories at your disposal this really is not a workable route, unless you are going to limit yourself to submitting only to the main, well established and high traffic directories. This is possible and indeed there are a lot of people who believe that this is the best route as they would argue that the majority of article directories have little if any standing as far as the search engines are concerned and so few visitors that they will attract little traffic to your articles and not do much to get your articles picked up and distributed by other webmasters.
Your second route is to submit your articles to a large number of directories which means either making use of a submission service or some type of submission software.
There are several submission services, but only a small number will provide you with a good service and give you the confidence that your articles has been submitted to a specified list of sites within a reasonable time frame. The problem with these services is that you have to commit yourself to a monthly payment and they are often extremely expensive.
TurningWhen it comes to submission software, there are again various choices available from the very costly to the extremely reasonable. If you feel that this is an option which appeals to you then you need to check out a number of options and to look carefully at precisely what each product will and will not do. For instance, does the software fully automate or semi-automate the process? How many article directories can you submit to? Are you able to add your own list of directories to the program? Does the software provide you with a submission log so that you are able to see at a glance just how successful each submission has been?
One final consideration is whether or not you ought to submit the same article to the directory sites, or ought to create a number of 'unique' articles from your base article so that each directory gets a different version of your article? Many people will tell you that it really does not matter and that the current debate about duplicate content is considerably overblown. Others however will tell you that, while it might not appear to be important in the short term, in the longer term the search engines will discount many of your links as they find them to be from identical articles. Once again the answer is to test for yourself and see just what sort of results you get.
If you do feel that submitting unique articles is the best way to go then you will have to investigate the wide range of article rewriting software available. Once more take the time to look at each program very carefully. Most software programs are extremely fast and easy to use, but also create very poor quality articles. There are however some software programs which, although they do require a little more work on your part, create some first class results. You can also get some software programs which will not only generate unique articles but also output them ready for import directly into some of the article submission programs.
There is no doubt that submitting articles really does work in terms of building links for your website and will bring in free search engine traffic. You do however need to setup a submission process which suits your work routine and budget and this means testing the system until you get the results you want.
A few years ago this was reasonably easy even in quite competitive markets but now it has become very much harder as the Internet has grown rapidly and the search engines are now far more sophisticated at assessing websites and determining just which websites ought to be given high.
SEO is a complex business nowadays and entire books have been, and are still being, written on this subject. One thing, however, which virtually all of the experts agree on is the importance of steadily and slowly building links to your website and one of the most effective ways to do this is by writing articles and then submitting these to a range of article directory websites. However, there is a right way and a wrong way of doing this.
The starting point is to write several articles focusing on a variety of topics related to the theme of your website, with each article being accompanied by an 'about the author' box which provides links back to your website. In this short article we will assume that you are familiar with article writing and so we do not intend to look at this particular subject. Here, our attention is focused upon how you go about submitting your articles to the article directory sites.
Opinions are mixed here and, as with anything else in the world of search engine optimization, you will be well advised to try out various different approaches and to carefully document what you do and the results you get. Once you have accumulated sufficient statistics you will find that it is a quite simple matter to see precisely what works and what does not. An alternative is just to listen to what other people are saying on the subject although the difficulty here is that there is a mass of misinformation floating around either from people who have little or no real experience and are just trying to sell you something or from individuals who want to deliberately mislead you because they see you as a possible competitor.
Your first route is to submit your articles by hand. With literally hundreds of article directories at your disposal this really is not a workable route, unless you are going to limit yourself to submitting only to the main, well established and high traffic directories. This is possible and indeed there are a lot of people who believe that this is the best route as they would argue that the majority of article directories have little if any standing as far as the search engines are concerned and so few visitors that they will attract little traffic to your articles and not do much to get your articles picked up and distributed by other webmasters.
Your second route is to submit your articles to a large number of directories which means either making use of a submission service or some type of submission software.
There are several submission services, but only a small number will provide you with a good service and give you the confidence that your articles has been submitted to a specified list of sites within a reasonable time frame. The problem with these services is that you have to commit yourself to a monthly payment and they are often extremely expensive.
TurningWhen it comes to submission software, there are again various choices available from the very costly to the extremely reasonable. If you feel that this is an option which appeals to you then you need to check out a number of options and to look carefully at precisely what each product will and will not do. For instance, does the software fully automate or semi-automate the process? How many article directories can you submit to? Are you able to add your own list of directories to the program? Does the software provide you with a submission log so that you are able to see at a glance just how successful each submission has been?
One final consideration is whether or not you ought to submit the same article to the directory sites, or ought to create a number of 'unique' articles from your base article so that each directory gets a different version of your article? Many people will tell you that it really does not matter and that the current debate about duplicate content is considerably overblown. Others however will tell you that, while it might not appear to be important in the short term, in the longer term the search engines will discount many of your links as they find them to be from identical articles. Once again the answer is to test for yourself and see just what sort of results you get.
If you do feel that submitting unique articles is the best way to go then you will have to investigate the wide range of article rewriting software available. Once more take the time to look at each program very carefully. Most software programs are extremely fast and easy to use, but also create very poor quality articles. There are however some software programs which, although they do require a little more work on your part, create some first class results. You can also get some software programs which will not only generate unique articles but also output them ready for import directly into some of the article submission programs.
There is no doubt that submitting articles really does work in terms of building links for your website and will bring in free search engine traffic. You do however need to setup a submission process which suits your work routine and budget and this means testing the system until you get the results you want.