I spent the better part of a couple days looking for article “engines”, places where I could submit articles. They had to meet one critical criteria. The publisher’s site must have a backlink from the article site. In other words, my sole purpose for article submission on this round is link honey. I want the links.
This was a tedious process. First, I went through this list of article directories. For each directory I picked a 2-3 month old article. I then checked the backlink of the site listed in the resource box. If the article directory was not listed in the backlinks, it did not make my list. Once I had the backlinks, I found other article directories in the list. I went to those directories, checked to see the submission criteria and ease of submission. I also checked an additional article from the new directory for backlinks. From this process I found these directories.
Of course, there are other reasons to do article submissions. For example, article sites often rank high for a given term given the content of the site. The articles get spidered faster giving you quicker visibility and higher traffic. Other webmasters and webnovices, look for information on article directories and either link to the article or reprint it with the live links in tact (more link honey). As a result I will also submit to Ezine Articles, perhaps the most popular article directory, and iSnare, a popular directory amongst affiliate marketers.
I want to do the first round of article submissions myself so that I learn firsthand what it entails. Next round I’ll use one of the submission services. Does anyone have any suggestions for those? What is your criteria for article submission? If you use a service, how do you verify that your criteria was met?