Do you use free article directories for backlinking?

[Beverly]

Free article directories let you publish an article along with a backlink to your site or blog. They're really useful as some sites are actually high page rank and offer do follow links. I love using Goarticles to publish articles for backlinking.

Do you use this backlinking method? And, if so which is your favorite article site for publication?

 

[NeoGills]

I just use backlinking method rarely....not at all time!

 

[ViperDove]

I used a lot of them but my favorite is Ezinearticles. Rewriting the article and submiting them to different article directories will also help. The next one I'm considering is blog networks where you can submit and spin just one article. Unique versions of the article you submitted will be published on different blog networks. With this, you can get up to 60 backlinks from one article.

 

[BigBigFan]

I stopped giving away articles to free directories when Google announced their content farm penalty. My concern is that free directories are the target of scrapers and spammers and that the content the have isn't always of the best quality. You've got to associate your site with the best quality you can, imo.

 

[Jessi]

Not any more.

It used to be a really good SEO technique. Unfortunately, most directories took a hit and they no longer provide the same kind of link juice any more. I don't bother.

 

[difrancprod]

Not my favorite part of the whole SEO job and I'm talking about back-linking. It's pretty easy but definitely tedious! But I really also do it because it does help with the traffic and most of the time article directories are really doing a great job on it.

 

[BigBigFan]

It used to be a really good SEO technique. Unfortunately, most directories took a hit and they no longer provide the same kind of link juice any more.

Is there ANY type of site that is NOT big brand that didn't take a hit? Look at a metrics site like compete.com and look up even the most well known sites and they all seem to have been hurt by recent Google changes. Sites like eBay and Amazon on the other hand have been handed millions and millions of new visitors from search, it's nuts.

example: look up problogger.net who is a standup whitehat authority and even he had his traffic cut by Google. Forums like webmasterworld.com have also been decimated during the past year. I think Google has a big brand agenda, and very closely protects "buy" keywords.

 

[tommymaczoidberg]

I think Google has a big brand agenda, and very closely protects "buy" keywords.

Oh, I don't doubt this at all. It's a pretty obvious way to make some guaranteed money.

Even if there isn't a buy going on, it's pretty clear that social mentions affecting rankings is going to favor the bigger brands right out of the box.

 

[BigBigFan]

Google released their quarterly report this week and the results are in of their changes via Panda/Penguin etc. They broke the 50B in earnings per year mark for the first time and their earnings from adwords/adsense increased by 36% last quarter when compared to the same quarter last year.

I don't know about you but I'm happy for them, they didn't lose traffic like the rest of us. Oh, wait...

 

[Dmarcotte]

When I first started out I did a lot of backlinking with these types of article directories. I was never able to identify any leads or traffic from them so I stopped. I know that some people are very successful using them, but I think it depends on your niche.

 

[bauss]

No I don't.

I never seen the value in article directories, because when I could just post my articles on my site instead it would help me more by getting search engine traffic.

 

[deansaliba]

I have but not very often, mostly down to me being lazy. I have used Ezine Articles the most and a few smaller ones like Article Cube and Hubpages.

I was looking at some articles on Ezine Articles today and I noticed that some of the articles had comments left and the commenter's names were linking to their respective sites. Would this work in a similar way to blog commenting?

 

[invisibled]

I have ezinearticles and goarticles for that kind of back-linking. Recently, i have noticed that they don't provide enough juice anymore. So now, i'm focusing more on other methods to build backlinks.

rticles today and I noticed that some of the articles had comments left and the commenter's names were linking to their respective sites. Would this work in a similar way to blog commenting?

I'm not sure if those links in the comments section are do-follow.

 

[deansaliba]

I'm not sure if those links in the comments section are do-follow.

Ah right, I know that links in the middle of the article are no-follow (only the links in the resource box are do-follow. )

 

[BigBigFan]

ezinearticles.com still gets over 4 million visitors a month. That's down 10% from this time last year but still an impressive number. I wonder how many of those visitors are actually people wanting to put articles on their own sites and not readers wanting the article information?

Once posted on a site an article is near worthless to other sites unless a redirect is used, I wonder why people use them on their sites...

 

[deansaliba]

ezinearticles.com still gets over 4 million visitors a month. That's down 10% from this time last year but still an impressive number. I wonder how many of those visitors are actually people wanting to put articles on their own sites and not readers wanting the article information?

Once posted on a site an article is near worthless to other sites unless a redirect is used, I wonder why people use them on their sites...

I have just noticed something, when was the last time you did a search for something on Google and a link to an Ezine Article came up? I don't think I've ever seen one!

 

[BigBigFan]

I've never seen one either but that's usually what happens when you look for specific keywords. They get traffic when people search for longtail keyword phrases, the kind that return really crappy results.

It's the scattergun approach, if you can't rank well for popular keywords then publish tons of pages so you rank for the less popular keywords. 4M visits a month is a lot.

 

[tommymaczoidberg]

I have just noticed something, when was the last time you did a search for something on Google and a link to an Ezine Article came up? I don't think I've ever seen one!

Try searching for SEO tactics. You'll pull tons of ezine articles.

 

[tweety23]

So does this method work anymore? I've never tried it before but by what most of you all are saying I probably shouldn't bother with it. Also, I'm an online writer for a shared revenue website. Could I use this method to link my profile page for the particular site that I write for? If any of you all could answer this question I'd really appreciate it .

 

[semaphore.v]

Article submission is really good to get quality backlinks.