Once upon a time it was prudent to advise marketers to send their articles to the major article directories. However, this is now and now is different. A lot different. First of all, major article directories such as Ezinearticles can be really particular about the approval process for the content. It is easy to spend too much time trying to get an article approved. The process is even slower for free members. But hey, who is going to pay to send one article to one site in order to get it approved more quickly? Duh?
Then comes the issue of backlinks. When you submit your articles to Ezinearticles (EZA) you get backlinks from only one IP address. So after a while the backlinks are less effective than the first ones were. It is also evident that EZA has different policies in place for different level members relative to hyperlinks in resource boxes. That seems unfair to me and it results in a lot of aggravation for my apprentices who are just learning to use their service.
When WordPress became the default content management system and publishing platform for new sites, there was also a lot of ways this “new” technology could be used to syndicate articles easily. With WordPress you can create a user account with the ability to only publish articles. With that user account in hand you now have the ability to receive free articles and publish them on your site if you want.
In order for you to have free articles to receive, someone has to be writing them and sending them out. That is when special services like My Article Network come to the forefront. This gives you the freedom to syndicate your articles and some of them let you put your affiliate links in the articles. What makes this especially good for you is that you can write excellent articles and make money whenever someone reads them and buys a product from your affiliate link you have embedded within the article.
Many article directories including “EZA” you are not permitted to put your affiliate link in the article . In addition, “EZA” does not really assist you with syndicating your articles. I have noticed that the common practice among webmasters who are republishing your articles is to leave out your links, in spite of the fact that is against the policies. No one is stopping them from doing it unless you get involved. That is discouraging and unethical.
The major article directories are dying a slow death because they’re not offering much value in the way of syndicating your articles, and that’s the main reason why they’re becoming less of a trusted and valuable tool to use. However, since these major article directories have been around so long and their content approval procedures are so strict, they do really well in the search engines of ranking your articles well.
With article syndication you have the option of getting backlinks from hundreds, maybe even thousands of sites and IP addresses, not just from one site. Article syndication services like isnare are somewhat ineffective too, since all they do is post duplicate content to a whole bunch of places. When you post duplicate content to a lot of places at once, many of those links are discredited and worthless. Since there’s so much of this duplicate content getting propagated only a few of these content pieces will get indexed, and only a small minority of the links will be applied towards your sites.
A marketer who needs traffic needs excellent backlinks. To get them you need many good quality sites linking back to your site. There are link-building services like Linkvana which are able to give you tons of very good backlinks. The great part is that long articles are not needed and it does not take a long time to wait for the article to be approved. The way I see it, the situation here is changing significantly. I think it won’t be too long before the major directories have to either change with the situation or expect to be less important.
