Ant writes:

Thanks for that Chris, it’s really helpful!

[Reply]

Bill Haynes writes:

After submitting to ezinearticle.com, I submit to other sites but the list is shrinking. And, frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if the additional submissions are worth the effort. One site, regardless of the number of articles, yields me one lilnk.

[Reply]

Audrey Okaneko writes:

I’ll share my own “strategy”. I submit my articles to EzineArticles.com first. If/when time allows I’ll submit them to a few other directories. My goal is to have them picked up by ezine publishers. So, I only submit them to places that publishers are looking for articles.

Audrey :)

[Reply]

Online copywriting blog - Ron writes:

Please list down the article directories where you get the most traffic from – Ron

August 4, 2011 at 12:18 AM

[Reply]

Edward Weiss writes:

I would submit my articles to more sites but it’s just so damn tedious! Much easier to choose the best one on the web and build up a reputation there. EzineArticles of course.

That’s my strategy anyway.

[Reply]

Jonathan Farrington writes:

When I first began writing and submitting my work in May this year, I chose a small number of sites and then I built on that select few: However, that ‚¬“select few‚¬ grew to more than 150 which was clearly far too many and a poor investment of my time.

Then I picked up on a snippet of advice from Chris: He suggested that authors should submit to one or two popular directories only but also consider a handful of specialist “communities” too.

The reality is that whilst there may well be an abundance of sites claiming to specialise in my field, sadly, very few meet my criteria which Ezine most certainly does. From my perspective they work to “win-win” principles and that is refreshing.

I can also confirm that submitting work regularly has the most impact on visitor numbers to my site -a fact that will be obvious to “seasoned authors” to whom I aplogise – but it is rewarding to discover that a new piece of work convinces the reader that it may also be worthwhile to view my previous submissions; hence the encouragement to submit as often as possible and my advice to all new authors would be to do precisely that.

[Reply]

kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

This is exactly what I have been concerned about lately.

I redid my website and had waited to post articles on other ezines besides EzineArticles, to create a buzz. Now I am wondering if that is a good idea. Maybe I should NOT take those articles already posted on EzineArticles (and 2 others) and post them other places.

Maybe use my energy to write new ones and move forward. ??

Also, some ezines are just so stinkin’ tedious to post on, I agree. I LOVE the ease of EzineArticles.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

I have found that I only post on EzineArticles.com unless the another website is willing to pay me $2.00 per article to post on theirs and in that case they must post them, not me. And as far as traffic at 3,510,000 article views and the syndication where my articles have 90,000 publisher pick-ups, well that is the same as posting each article 9-other places.

So, in reality posting on only one website makes sense to me. The extra money if someone wants to pay me, has provided fuel for my Motorhome and Restaurant money, it is kind of a kick for me, but the money is not why I do that. My thoughts are I am loyal to the company that helps me win. If the others want a couple thousand articles now and again? Fine, send me a check. I am busy creating, thinking and producing, thank you very much.

My experience with EzineArticles.com is simple. It works and they have syndicated partners who play by the same ethical standards and levels of integrity I prefer. And that is that folks. Any comments, I am listening.

[Reply]

Jonathan Farrington writes:

Kathy,

In response to your post on my blog, I visited your site – naturally – and my advice would be to forget more “general” article “communities” (yes, I have taken on board Chris’s comments and feel I am now more “PC”!!)

EA gives you a wide “general” audience that probably cannot be bettered, however the excellence of your work deserves exposure to a wider audience – an audience that appreciates the nuance and subtlety of what you and your work are about.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Jonathan,

Actually, those other guys… they are DIRECTORIES.

We are the “community” thing. :-)

blah blah blah, insert group hug, etc.

[Reply]

Edward Weiss writes:

Is all this noice about “community” part of what Web 2.0 is? Everyone says Web 2.0 is the future of the internet.

[Reply]

Jonathan Farrington writes:

Chris,

I know, I know!! I actually instructed, well asked politely my guys to re-frame the article recommendations on http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk to place you in a different section!! However due to a flu epidemic that is affecting 50% of my team (the other one is OK) – it may take a couple of days.

Hopefully within 24 hours, you will find that I recommend 25 article directories and just one “community” thing!!

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

It seems to me that if someone is Very Industry Specific in their articles, that they might also post their articles eslewhere with the specialty directory as well as here. This way the most people on the Internet get the benefit. Although with the Search Engine love that EzineArticles.com gets due to their massive size, it seems kind of silly to think that even the industry specific article authors would not do well here too.

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Jonathan, what a lovely thing to write. Thank you.

I hate to say it but I am just a tad confused … EzineArticles and what?

Humm, maybe this is too self serving. I don’t mean to make this a question that would be to my advantage alone.

I think though that there are a tremendous amount of artists who do not understand just how to fly. I have some 300 paintings stored and it continues to grow. I write articles and post them because my webmaster told me to. I follow the rules and try to figure out their effectiveness within the parameters of what I do. I do this while trying to maintain a schedule to create; to paint and sculpt. I guess that is what everyone does in a sense. I am sure I am not unique in that balancing endeavor.

So Lance? Just one? I am confused. I know why people would pay for your articles but is that the same advise for all? For me?

[Reply]

Jonathan Farrington writes:

Kathy,

When it comes to the promotion of your articles, if Lance is achieving those revenue levels from his work, then clearly he is in a far better position than I am to advise you.

I have always promoted the idea of challenging paradigms and looking “outside the square”

I feel we are all on a steep learning curve – success after all is a journey! (And yes, I really do wish I had said that first!)

[Reply]

Steve Hill writes:

EzineArticles is always the first site I submit my article to, if I get a chance I do sometimes try to submit to other sites for added exposure.

This has worked well for me thus far.

[Reply]

Ayelet writes:

Thank You for this advice Chris!

With the quality of service and integrity EzineArticles offers, your advice makes much sense.

I agree 100% – EzineArticles is an expert author community and Thank You for that!

[Reply]

Ed Howes writes:

I had not been on line very long when I found an invitation from EzineArticles to submit there. I had been using two popular directories prior to going on line with the help of a friend. I was drawn to many sites after seeing I was on websites on which I had not submitted.

Yet my policy was set. Always submit to an invitation from someone who took the trouble to invite you. It’s a message from the universe. Your work is desired here. Nearly a year ago I was submitting to a dozen article directories. Yet here at EzineArticles, I felt a sense of community, shortly after I began submitting and months before I discovered this blog.

However corny and New Agey the word community may sound, when the sense of community to a newcomer is palpable, that is cyber home and it spells growth and excitement. Have you not heard how rare physical community is? Yes Gary, we touch people we never see, never meet and are all of us the better for it. Scripturally speaking, we are to do our charity so the beneficiaries do not know the benefactor. Here, we do the opposite. The giver is known. The beneficiaries are not. Somehow this makes more sense to me than the other way round. Do the people not recognize their princes?

None of the other directories please me so and I now use a few which have good view counts, only because I care not where I am read. I care that I am read. I am more than pleased with what my stats say about article marketing at EzineArticles. This is my cyber home, first cyber love. Surely you can relate.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Kathy in item #13 you ask should you sell your articles to directories. My initial response is no. I think new directories who are serious are willing to buy my articles for $2.00 each to post because they want to get their ball rolling and if Lance Winslow posts there then it must be a worthy site. I guess they are thinking, so I allow my name to be used as an author in trade for them buying some of my articles which generally I change the titles on, as to track and not conflict.

Your articles seem to be of a specific set of topics and there indeed maybe a place willing to pay you for them? Althoug at $2.00 each is it worthy of your time to seek them out? The thing with me is that I get emails every day offering for me to post at new directory sites.

Well first I am loyal to this site and second it takes time to post and that is aggravating and such. I would rather post here as my distribution point, not anywhere else. Of course if someone wishes to send me a check, well then it makes sense for me to make a deal. Either trade for a tangible; Segway Scooter, 10-Speed Bicycle, GPS system, Solar Panels, etc. or money. I have made many deals like this actually.

Of course being retired, I have a different set of needs I suppose and so what I do is less likely to appeal to others. But it makes sense for me. And if I can create a win/win then why not? And in saying all this I must tell you posting my articles here with loyalty has been a bigger reward in getting my thoughts out into the world than all the money in the World. So, like I said I have a different reason for my efforts you see?

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Lance, your are such a generous person. Thank you for your response to me.

I write articles to drive traffic to my website, only. I don’t see myself selling them. If I can make that work by only posting on EzineArticles and one or two others that would be fantastic. I started posting on several others a couple of weeks ago, but wow, what a pain some of them are, as others have already written. I need to paint not post.

I was thinking about quantity over quality, remember that subject? Chris posted a list of the top viewed over history and we felt that it seemed to be a sad commentary on society.

After that whole blog I found this great keyword having to do with Lap Dancing, KEI 1250., so I wrote an article in three parts, using it in.

I know, I know… after my saying I was distraught over people’s taste I prostitute myself practically and write what they seem to be groping for…. pathetic!

Part three is at the top of the list, it must be. Too funny! That article, Part 3 has 900+ reads now. They did not read part 1 or 2 because it must have been clear in part three that I was talking about art really. Ahh me too funny huh? 900+ hits in a pretty short period of time though… hummm. Lets not all start at once, it might be too obvious! ha ha

[Reply]

Andy Beard writes:

Google have recently clarified the way they detect duplicate content. If there is a link to the original article in syndicated content, then they are likely to display the original.

The best way to handle article submission is to post the original article on one of your own sites first, wait a couple of days (so Google indexes it) and then post the article on other sites with a link to your original article as one of your links in the resource box.

The key is not to spend a huge amount of time on submitting to other sites. Use a method that is time efficient.
Remember Pareto’s Principle – The 80-20 Rule

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Kathy, you are writing articles to drive traffic, which is what I started to do to bring people to my online think tank. It worked very well. Too well, I had too many hits to my website, often crashing my site during peak periods.

Now remember with all my articles having been syndicated and my average of 351 article views per article here and an average of 9 other places for each article and perhaps 350 average article views there. Then you could estimate that if I have 3.5 million article views times 9 or 31,500,000 article views. So, imagine an intellectual article propelling thought and a reader interested in reading it?

The click thru rate would be unbelievable. Just like your articles, highly targeted to the viewers interest when they come in thru a search engine. And since I have articles on nearly every subject, imagine the diversity of interest? Good, yes too good. So, I removed many of my bylines from most of my articles.

Now then Kathy, I think your strategy is sound. And would recommend that you only post on high-traffic article sites. How can you know? Well a good rule of thumb is to only post on sites, which have been around since or before 2000. New sites unless HUGE, usually do not pull, meaning the number of article views maybe somewhat irrelevant for your goals.

I know what you mean about Key Words that the average Internet Surfer looks for and have practiced writing articles about Hair Style and one got 50,000 article views. Others I did for fun were ‚¬“Sex in a Cessna‚¬ and ‚¬“Girls Gone Wild; Wilma Shows All‚¬ almost 35,000 article views?

http://ezinearticles.com/?Cancun-Girls-Gone-Wild,-Wilma-Shows-All&id=85073

I was shocked actually, as the Article was about Hurricane Wilma hitting the shores of Cancun? But, it shows the issues with the Internet users these days. I got them back by tricking the pornography seekers into reading something clean for a change? Ha Ha Ha.

I do not see a problem with testing your theories or trying new things to get traffic as bad, at least now you can speak from experience and not sound like a complainer who has no clue. And then again, you have to realize who your audience is? If these people might be one and the same, fine. If not maybe it is not so wise. I think we agree on all these points and it is an interesting study in human psychology and what is really on people’s minds?

[Reply]

Heather Picken writes:

Great article and I was wondering the same thing.
It makes a lot of sense to just focus on one site (this one of course).

This is a great place to be!

Heather

[Reply]

Dina at Web Content Awareness Day writes:

When I first began article marketing, I was submitting to a long list of sites. But it was really clear after studying my Google vanity search and noticing lots of junk popping up, that something had to change.

Google changed it with their new algorithm (I feel like I talk about that a lot but it’s so smack-me-in-the-face obvious to me).

(When I say “vanity search” I mean it’d be a search of YOUR NAME “in quotes”)

I developed a new strategy several months ago, which was to submit to just a handful of very high quality sites (EzineArticles.com tops the list). The next time I did that article check on Google, I was pleasantly surprised to see myself being represented well.

Your article marketing effort, as I see it, should reflect you back on the following:

Your Site
EzineArticles.com
2 or 3 other NICHE RELEVANT sites

There’s one site out there that keeps picking up my stuff and I get to look at it on Google every day – and it looks like a slapdash site, to me.

But who knows? Maybe people don’t surf there anyway so it doesn’t matter.

In the past 2 weeks alone, I’ve had like five people tell me “I originally found you on EzineArticles.com.”
Yeahh! Got to get some time to write more articles.

[Reply]

Jonathan Farrington writes:

Chris,

Think we have managed to sort out the “community” thing and illustrated the distinction appropriately?

Check out: http://www.jonathanfarringtonsblog.com

Jonathan

[Reply]

Jan Verhoeff writes:

I post on EzineArticles first. If I have time, I post to three other sites. All of them are niche specific and my posts are almost instantly picked up and republished.

I rarely post the same articles to all sites – but ALL articles are posted on EzineArticles first.

I have set a goal of 25 articles a month this year — ummmm Gotta get busy, busy, busy!!!

Jan

[Reply]

kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

I just read “Wilma Shows All” …so clever of you Lance! Makes me laugh.

All of these blogs have helped me so much. I could not figure out what to write about before… gads how many fairy and mermaid stories can I write? I feel at times I am one!

It isn’t that I have ever been into fairies and mermaids, it is that they have some good KEI’s. It is that New Age crowd I seek, huh Ed? OMG I am so shallow, forgive me N A crowd.

I have thus written about whatever has come into my day. The drug lab down the street burning to the ground… YAY; Koke Frogs and their invasion of Hawaii; Tony the Gecko that I thought I had killed but alas seems to be alive and well. (I must write a sequel to my Tony story… who knew he was just taking a vacation?)

I worried that by going all over the place in my writing that I was wasting my time. I was not drawing people to my site to buy art, merely writing a journal in a way. But! I feel like that is OK now after gleaning all that I have experienced on these blogs recently.

My target is better defined. I am not trying to find an art collector per-say, I am trying to find Joe Shmoe who maybe plans a visit to Hawaii and happens upon my story about Tony the gecko. Maybe.. he just decides to buy some art as well.

Right? am I right? I am still trying to define who my collectors are but maybe they are every-man?

So as I write articles now, after this blog, I am blessed with the fact that I don’t have to post on 20 other ezines, what a relief! I can write about what moves me or good KEI’s. Gads! I feel a huge weight is off my shoulders. I have better direction and I can focus on what I need to. HUGE!

Learning, what a lovely flower.

[Reply]

Ed Howes writes:

Hey Kathy,

Thanks so much for this feedback. My artist friend who convinced me to write and publish on line four years ago, told me to just put it out to the universe and those who need to find me will do so. Very anti marketing philosophy. Yet I am comfortable with it until I decide to market something I am excited about, whether or not I am the creator of it.

I found a political writer I admire who writes very long articles. Sometimes five or more in one. After the Dense Writing post, I wrote him personally to share what I had learned in the course of that thread.

He seemed appreciative in his response. So when I found the new White Space post, I forwarded the notice with a short personal note, explaining if he posted here, he could get Email notices of subsequent posts and just read the Emails. I do not believe this is a common feature. Should he like this blog, he is one who could add much and might take the time to do so. Ask me if I’m bullish on the profitability and potential of this blog. Yes my friend, real learning is exciting and inspirational, even to the observer.

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Ed, isn’t that quantum physics? The law of attraction?

I know for me it seems to work. When I focus on my lack boy I sure have it. When i write a ‘good list’ about me and what I have accomplished I feel so much better and see that I CAN get there from here. Da Kathy, I always say to myself.

Maybe your friend will arrive here just because we are so attractive.

[Reply]

Ed Howes writes:

Kathy,

Good observation. Within that law of attraction lies attention, intention and expectation. Combine such attributes in our day to day and the powers of darkness, personal and collective, cannot prevail.

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

We must read some of the same stuff. Gary Zukaov’s “Seat of the Soul” changed my life. He helped me realize that the RULES (still within the subject here.. ha ha) ..the rules I had set in place for myself before were not really good for me.

Attention, Intention and Expectations… I am going to print that out and put it on my bulletin board. Thank you Ed.

[Reply]

Ed Howes writes:

Kathy,

Yes we have Gary Zukov in common. Add desire to the front of your list. Without desire, the rest serves little purpose.

[Reply]

Edward Weiss writes:

Ed, I thought desire was the root cause of all suffering. :)

[Reply]

Ed Howes writes:

Edward,

Without a doubt. Without desire, who would get out of bed except to avoid the mess, which is another desire? :-)

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Ed, Philosophically speaking that has always been and almost impossible truth to argue. Indeed you are correct. Although something tells me, I would get up anyway out of curiosity or potential discovery awaiting eventhough I desire sleeping. I think my Cat was a perfect example of a life well lived.

[Reply]

Carl Pruitt writes:

I am new to article submission. Only a few articles submitted in a competitive category for building traffic. The only articles I ever see in my referrer log on the website are those published to EzineArticles. The only links I ever see show up in searches are EzineArticles submissions and press releases.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Isn’t it interesting that you can never seem to get enough of what you don’t want?

It’s a style of thinking that I’ve come to identify and eliminate whenever I see it in myself because I want to focus the majority of my thinking on creating the experience that I want or intend for my life rather than focusing any thought energy on things that I don’t want to come true.

Around 1am in the morning in a warm Hawaiin night, Tony Robbins was telling us a story about how he learned to drive a stock car around a race track… with the point being to focus on where you want the car to go rather than focusing on what it will feel like to impact the wall at 170+ MPH. You can imagine what the difference would be and how important it is to not become fascinated with focusing on bad things happening when you’re behind 500+ horses of power.

And of course, the focus here is on raising the quality bar continually so that our members/experts find new strategies to continually create compelling original quality content in a volume high enough to reach their goals of traffic and exposure levels.

[Reply]

rk writes:

Thanks Chris. That certainly makes sense

[Reply]

Anonymous writes:

I think it helps much more to submit in authority sites then to submit in bulk.
Being a Content Writer Myself I have provided more than 5000 articles to my clients and when it comes to Ezine Marketing their first choice is EzineArticles too.
I advice my clients to choose specific directories rather then wasting time on 100+ directories.
Many of our ghost written articles are on top of serps thanks to the authoritive sites.. These helps to boost site traffic too.
So I agree that it should be selected fews but with great authority.

[Reply]

Adrian Watt writes:

I started submitting to, like, 20 different article sites. As others have said this list has diminished to only a few. I ALWAYS publish on EzineArticles, it has become my default library of articles I have written.

The expection to this is my niche market sites, i.e. for me saltwater fishing and game fishing. There are some very targeted sites out there and I am happy to say that these work for me as well. These are strong authority sites in my niche.

[Reply]

Sandra writes:

I have been posting to multiple article dierctories and found that it yields excellent results. I get a large variety of visitors from different article directories. Also my back links have increased tremendously. I disagree that EzineArticles is the most effective. I had better response with Article Orange, Articles Factory, Associated Content and Go Articles.

[Reply]

BJock writes:

Traffic is what it is all abut, EzineArticles accomplishes this for us. End of story! Everyone will soon find out 2008 will be all about traffic I am sure.

So Ant whatever you can prove gets you the most traffic , that is where you should be placing your articles.

[Reply]

shawn writes:

I say stick with EzineArticles, because not only are they an online leader in article syndication, but on Alexa, Chrisa Knight is beating Bloomberg.com, And PRWeb.com in search engine traffic rank. Mind you, Chris is also a hard working man, and you also get personal customer service too when you submit your tickets, versus another article directory that started up by some cheap article ezine site software they bought online. Chris also cares about his expert authors too..:-)

Shawn

http://www.Drewryonline.net

[Reply]

E. Lee Reid writes:

I have only published a few online articles thus far and all on EzineArticles. I am fairly widely published in print as a paid writer/author, but this was a long time ago. I am now posting to EzineArticles for increased targeted traffic that I plan to achieve through higher organic search placement on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN by backlinks. I need help please.

When writing articles on subjects across the interest spectrum, or based on high WordTracker KEI numbers, how do you get targeted traffic that will actually buy from your site? I understand a think-tank site wanting sheer numbers, but my niches are narrow and rather dry: Capital reserve studies for condo associations; Disney Vacation Club timeshare resales; timeshare escrow and closings; Green building; Orlando condo hotels; Florida commercial real estate etc.

Should I stick with my strategy of only writing and submitting articles that relate to my targeted, narrow niches or go for mass readership? Greatly appreciate comments and help. THANKS

[Reply]

Matthew Green writes:

I agree to what chris pointed out to an extent to what you are saying but when it comes down to ranking and what Google algorithms suggest we will need to concentrate on getting back links and that can be achieved when you do submission on multiple article directories. Traffic yes it is important but well when it comes to ranking of keyword all these factors do hold true

[Reply]

sachin writes:

Well i am not convinced with the idea pf submitting 200 articles in a directory only. if you are owner of any article directory, then you always want maximum copyright submission to your directory only, but still this is helpful submitting article in other article submission directory also.

[Reply]

shawn writes:

I am guessing it’s ok if you wanna target your traffic. What I like to do is , just write natural and forget all of the intensely concentrated stuff & just add my link to the footer of the article. I figure if I can get my personal algorithm up to writing 2 articles a day for 6 days a week for an entire year, I’ll have a few million backlinks in the longrun…:-)

http://www.Drewryonline.net

[Reply]

Jan Verhoeff writes:

E. Lee Reid, just off the top of my head, I can think of thirty or forty titles in at least that many areas of interest that would apply to your niche. Recently my business partner landed in Florida intending to purchase investment property and brought back a new business. I haven’t jumped on board, but I’ve been writing for his business, referring readers to his site, and I haven’t yet run out of topics.

After the first 30 or so, I realized I was limiting his audience. By expanding to vacation interests of families from various income levels, I gained renters for his land purchase, as well as travelers for his new travel business.

Targeting your traffic is a great way to promote specific business, but don’t be so specifically targeted that you miss driving traffic for multiple income streams that would all benefit your primary business.

[Reply]

Quality Tale writes:

Yeah, you are right….and keeping into mind that What is more required? Quality or Quantity…

Thanx for good and precious suggestion to all bloggers, freshers and writers…

Regards,

Aniruddha

[Reply]

shawn writes:

It’s all gravy baby. Just keep the computers putin’ and get the click clacking on the keyboards’ keys and press them articles out..:-)

[Reply]

Nick writes:

Here are my two cents that I have earned with a lot of labour and hard work.

I submitted my 3 articles to over 320 directories. Here are the article details, each 750+ words, only 1 legitimate backlink in resource box, and each of them had three variation, one variation of article was accepted and published at ezinearticle without objection. I had done it over a period of a week including registration. I hope you understand the effort it takes. What followed up was surely a big lesson.

Out of 320 directories, 123 were not indexed by google. You can check that by putting this in the search box – site:articledirectoryname. If you don’t get any articles from that directory, it is not being indexed. I wished I had checked this earlier. You can think of them as bad directories/software not working/ spam. They were not indexed by google which means if you are doing it for backlinks then you are better away from those. If you are doing it for visitors its not worth the pain since people will have a hard time reaching them.

That still left me with good 197 directories with a good Page rank and indexed by google. I checked my account into each of them after a period of 33 days ( I created 320 accounts with my email address for submission and I warn you its not worth it at all). Here is the summary of it.

69 Directories – Article Approved
108 Directories – The article was still waiting for review (if they can’t review the article in 33 days then I don’t think they are worth submission).
Rest – Most had their software corrupted and you can’t reach your article or search for it. I tried searching that site with google for my article but it won’t show which meant that Google was not able to reach it either. I seriously doubt if user can reach it, since I couldn’t. I think these directories have no manual component, they simple pick up the articles from other directories through software. So again spam!

So this is my strategy now, I submit my article first to EzineArticle, get it approved and published, then submit to the rest good 69 directories. Fun thing, they are all powered by same software so I wrote a small piece of software myself to help me with it. Its not an automation tool but it helps me with logging in, passwords and those things. I post to those 69 directories in roughly 2-3 hours and its done.

So if you are looking for backlinks then for sure one single directory model is not that good. Some of my articles on ezinearticle have now a page rank of three which is real good but it might be just luck and it might not last. Hence submit to more directories, atleast 5-10 if not 50. If you are looking for a good audience, then submit to ezinearticle plus find FEW niche article directories and submit there.

Sorry to differ from you Chris, but I don’t think one should put all apples in one basket. Btw, I also think this is worth an article so might format it like an article and post it there too. :)

Nick

[Reply]

Joe writes:

“I’ve always said that it’s better to submit 200 articles to (1) directory than it is to submit (1) article to 200 directories.”

I agree, however, I’ve found the articles I submit here on other article directories. As the other article directories scrape EzineArticles, our articles end up everywhere anyway! :o(

[Reply]

Jan Verhoeff writes:

“our articles end up everywhere”

Isn’t that the reason we post?

[Reply]

Joe writes:

Yes, that’s why we post, but it’s the crappy directories our articles end up on that’s an issue! The type of directories that strip the articles of links when they scrape ezine.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

It’s true Joe, the crappy blog folks are taking our articles 5:1 of the good reputable sites. We all lose when this happens, everyone loses, including EzineArticles. And they are so pervasive no one can do anything to stop them, and google won’t.

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

~~*~~
Oh man… Jan
I do so agree
I have seen my articles
picked up
by every fleeting site I see.
I must admit
they flock quite a bit
to keywords spoken in reverie.
Or is it in fact
a well spent joke
that men go right to sex that is spoke?
I must concur that on certain sites
til true that men and women do delight.
in certain facts of things wrong or right
I continue this song in spite or flight.

I wrote an article about an x rated thing
and OMG did that article sing.
I saw it everywhere
no sites to spare
and ‘blushed’ myself as I took care
of every part of me
you see
that meant it to be
full of keyword glee.

I spat and i sputtered
what was I thinking?
Was this the keyword
that would drive me to drinking?!
Sex and hot women
I’m an artist you see
I meant only, yes solely
to drive beautiful SEO traffic to me!

I spit and I spattered
I spoke it all alone
and now when I google
I sing and bemoan.
OK I’m an SEO hoar
my tangents alive
its cost me my coyness
its cost me my pride.
OK I have done it
yet please light a candle
I’m most certainly deserving
since all of this scandal.

Ohh EzineArticles
who caused me to do it
I most humbly applaud
despite all my blew its.
I knew all the while
my decisions of haste
and thank the heaven and sky…

My articles…

my beloved articles

despite their fault as times
were not sent to waste.

He he.. he he he

[Reply]

Jan Verhoeff writes:

I’m not saying I agree with the spam sites picking up the articles. If there were a way to ban spam sites from picking up articles, I too would be out there fighting them. I do report them whenever I realize one has picked up my info. However, most people are smart enought to recognize a spam site, and understand that I didn’t write that article for them, I wrote it for my readers.

I can either waste my time complaining and making an issue out of the spam sites or I can report them and move on to write more quality articles and get them posted on quality sites. The choice is mine. So, I choose to write more articles and simply report the spam sites and let it go.

Cute song Kathy.

Jan

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Ahh and yeah, too funny huh Jan, and perhaps SPAM.

Actually.. I really don’t care about spam snatchers of anything I write, I figure it’s the nature of the beast. If someone decides to copy me? Yay.. that means I am worth copying.

So now… on a lighter note…

I have an idea!

From now on, on this blog? Everyone must write to rhyme… otherwise you will be considered a party pooper by me.

la de da

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

It woulldn’t be a crime if you don’t rhyme all the time, but it is definitely something to contemplate in 2008.

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Ummm Lance… always a man after my own heart.

Where oh where does this EZ start?
From the beginning of creativity
and from our hearts.

[Reply]

Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

Hey Lance
my man
friend of Ayn Rand
just imagine the possibilities
oh so close at hand.

This new year brings
a magnificent host of things!
So onward EzineArticles
to news we uncover and pontificate
songs we do indeed sing
and find winsome verse to articulate.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

Kathy’s Motto

The Sploggers come along,
Steal Kathy’s rhyme and song.

This of no concern, she doesn’t care,
Words flow from her mind with more to spare

The thieves go on,
Knowing no right from wrong.

As Kathy works from her Arts Lair
She writes, paints and sculpts from their.

From Hawaii across the Globe,
Kathy’s art is known,

No kelpto’s online,
Will affect her next line.

She takes it in stride,
Her anger she shall hide.

For imitation is a compliment,
So, she holds no discontent.

Tomorrow the sun will rise and set,
Kathy’s mind will produce new content.

[Reply]

Jan Verhoeff writes:

In rhyme
so sublime

we ring out the time
hauntingly writing our next line

the moments pass one article mine
one content, doing just fine

after the sunrise
the keyboard cries

for my fingers to ring out
another article shout

I write in the morning
words right and warming

I write in the noon
words that feed lilke a spoon

I write at night
the words that feel right

Kathy’s idea is quite funny
keeps our faces smiling and sunny

But I can’t write rhyme worth a darn
and spin any intense yarn

Cuz I get stuck in the rhyme
and matching my time.

LOL too funny Kathy

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

In the “I bet you didn’t know this department”, we spent more than a handful of people earn this past year to further deploy our anti-crawl and anti-search abuse tools.

We’ve deflected millions of scraper bots and declared war on them more than a year ago.

Next year, the budget to defend our network is, uhm, significant.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

OMG, just read some of your poems…

I think the temperature just went up a few degrees.

Nicely done.

Lance,

Google did something very significant in 2007 to stop the scrapers and content thieves: They terminated a huge giagantanormous number of MFA’s (Made For Adsense) sites. I was told the number of publishers in confidence who got the terminated and my jaw dropped. They really cleaned house and it’s better for their advertisers now… They have also made it clear that they will terminate untrusted publishers who use ripped content.

I’ve noticed the drop in MFA sites in the last 5 months that are coming up in search results, so they definitely made an impact.

[Reply]

Marg Hamp writes:

I have always submitted articles to EzineArticles first because of its premier position on the internet. If time permits, I will submit to 4 other directories. I have done this in conjunction with a dog behaviorist friend (for whom I edit and collaborate, over 70 articles so far), and now with the caregiver and health care articles I will be unleashing. (Pun intended.)

I agree that it’s best to focus on quality, publishing where ezine publishers themselves search. Chris has done a fabulous job! It’s hard to imagine starting anywhere else but here.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Marg,

Thanks for your kind comments… but I can’t take all of the credit. EzineArticles is a serious team effort with more than (2) dozen team members behind the scenes managing operations.

Happy New Year to all!
-Chris

[Reply]

Willi D writes:

I have always submitted to EzineArticles first. Having tried others with rather dismal results I think I’ll continue to make the EzineArticles Community my first port of call.

Willi D

[Reply]

Michael Kortekaas writes:

I usually submit to EzineArticles first however I also submit to article sites that are targetted to the category of articles I write – relationship enrichment and sexuality. For other sites, wading through all the different guidelines and formatting rules is just not an effective use of my time vs the traffic pay back. I do try to link to different pages of my website for each article to enhance SEO but the obscure guidelines wrt adult content is causing some frustration.

[Reply]

Robert writes:

I’ve been at EzineArticles for about a month, writing about 65 articles.

It’s not like I have no experience in writing. Over the last 15 years I’ve written nine books that have sold an aggregate of about a million copies, and I’ve done other media. My books, incidentally, sold mostly by literal word of mouth, although I did radio and TV for the last one. I really know the old style promotion. I’m learning the new.

Here’s the thing.

I’ve been using Copyscape Sentinel to see where my EzineArticles wind up.

Three times as many appear on the net without any attribution of authorship at all as with attribution and backlinks. There are also more copies “out there” with attribution but no backlinks as backlink to my site, and there are about equal numbers of copies out there that backlink to the original EzineArticles page as backlink to my site.

Could I follow up on each and every one of the copy snatchers? You betcha. Thanks to EzineArticles for showing me how to do that (elsewhere in this forum).

But I’m not sure that’s a profitable use of my time, either in terms of maintaining my own readership or even just in making sure my articles have their life in the world.

And the EzineArticles version of my pages ranks higher on Google than my own original. That’s because a lot of publishers take the teaser and backlink to the EzineArticles page they copied.

I’m fine with EzineArticles getting traffic to my page on their site. After all, I write to be read and why shouldn’t EzineArticles benefit for providing the infrastructure?

But does EzineArticles really sanction use of these articles more or less as an EzineArticles RSS feed, if I’m understanding this correctly? I mean, readers have to get through the article on EzineArticles and click a second time to get my site and all the other content I have waiting for them.

But what I really find galling is to see my EzineArticles plagiarized without any backlinks or attribution, either to EzineArticles or to me, and then ranking higher on Google than my pages published earlier.

What I’m thinking now is that EzineArticles is run just fine, and I really appreciate Christopher Knight’s getting back to me on a specific issue very quicly recently, but the way to get an audience is possibly more literal than what EzineArticles provides. Buy air time, start communicating that way. (Not that your radio and TV programs aren’t also sometimes ripped off.) It’s not cheap, but you can do, say, a radio program for less than the price of a new car. You just can’t do radio and TV and print to get your message out to the world for free (well, you can, if you put in lots and lots of hours making the connections).

I had a long talk this morning with a publisher friend. He happens to be the president of a prominent New York publishing house, and he’s someone who’s lost money to publish a book he thought was important, but it’s what he said that counts. “You never know the good your words do.” So there’s one vote for just writing to enlighten and uplift and thanking the plagiarizers for stealing from you.

But the plagiarizers are really active.

Sorry to be a downer in a thread that’s waxed poetic, but I welcome your insights. Thanks.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Robert,

The RSS feeds issue: We only provide partial RSS feeds and that means only the article title, summary and a link to the full article is given in order to attract traffic back to the full article.

I can’t share all of the road blocks we put up to fight the plagiarizers but I can tell you that our efforts that go un-discussed are huge.

One solution to this issue is to throw a fork in the grinder by giving our members the ability to deny syndication.

There was a time when I wanted to deny all syndication by default, but members protested very loudly that the POSITIVE BENEFITS they receive due to syndication outweigh the NEGATIVES you just mentioned.

So, watch later this year when we roll out the ability for members to choose whether they want to allow publishers to syndicate their content or not. I can guarantee it won’t stop thieves from syndicating content, but it’ll put up another roadblock in their face to make it more difficult to scrape our EzinePublisher tool that we already aggressively protect against abuse.

[Reply]

Margaret Hampton writes:

Hi Robert,

I am aware of thieves, who will always be among us. I am of the opinion that for the most part, they aren’t worth your time – only perhaps a couple who rank high in Google on YOUR work. And I appreciate all Chris is doing to try to thwart this.

My personal opinion is that our articles out there generate traffic and visibility for us, so that’s a plus.

Articles that link back to EzineArticles link to our pages – and on our pages we have links to our websites – so that gives:

(1) a higher chance of getting the article on page 1 of Google than if it was on our own sites, so WE get the visibility we might otherwise not have, and

(2) great link juice from a high PR site (EzineArticles) linking to our websites. The better our pages do on EzineArticles, the better boost we have to our own site PR!

So publishing here is still a great tool in your long term marketing strategy – links that continue working over months and years – in spite of a few bad apples.

Now, if we could just put ONE link to the website – or one mention of the author name or site name – in the text body itself, then it might be harder to get the article out there without some form of attribution.

But I leave that discussion up to Chris – He knows all the pro’s and con’s far, far better than I. I have full confidence in him!

Margaret Hampton

[Reply]

Robert writes:

Thanks, Christopher and Margaret, for sharing your thoughts on this. Margaret, I’m with you on the suggestion we get to mention our name or site just once in an article.

I am really more rankled about that particular “bad apple” who’s getting higher rankings in Google than I am from plagiarizing my content, but no system (referring to Google here) is perfect. And it is better to go after what you want than what you don’t.

Some of the plagiarism, by the way, gets a little silly. One site has appropriated a number of my articles and changed about 10 per cent of the words in each article–but the “editor” apparently speaks a language other than English.

Where I mentioned “type II diabetes,” for example, this site changed the phrase to “type eleven diabetes.” Unfortunately, even though they did attribute the article on “type eleven diabetes” to me, they did not provide any backlinks.

I am beginning to think that net promotion in general is best just one part of a larger plan, that the older ways of reaching people still count for a whole lot, and that a mix of everything you can do is going to work best. Writing about a topic that a guest on Oprah mentions, for instance, makes traffic zoom (for me, about 10 times the traffic of any other topic). If I ever get all figured out….well, don’t worry about waiting for that:)

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

It would be nice to expire all the people who steal my articles, but I would need all the serial killers in the world to do it. With 13,000 articles now (by the end of next week sometime), and the average artcile stolen many many times, but the articles used with credit and links about 18 times each on average, I am still winning over the thieves. But it irks me too, and yet in reality I know there is nothing I can do.

I have tried modifying titles to see which websites get ripped off more. EzineArticles has a far less rip off rate for some reason, I am not sure how Chris does it, but he stops most of it. I can tell you the more cheesy the website looks the more confident the thieves feel they can get away with it. Do you know any serial killers? Just kidding, because I’d need an army of them.

[Reply]

Alex writes:

So in conclusion it`s always better to submit to the top article directories and EzineArticles which is first on my list.. then go ahead and submit to the rest of the article directories..

Alex

[Reply]

Jan Verhoeff writes:

I used to submit at several directories. Now I only submit to EzineArticles and post similar (sometimes the same) articles on my blogs. I figure my time is probably worth more than the postings on directories.

Besides, they don’t give me free backlinks for posting on their blogs :p

It’s time for lunch…

[Reply]

Usha Murugeshan writes:

Both the ways, it is very nice. 1-200 means, one could get more observer. 200-1 means..how nice to get weight age of articles or honour of that ezine.
Both are good.

[Reply]