Done Properly And Submitting Articles Will Get Your Site On Page One Of The Search Engines

By: Donald Saunders

The target for most site operators is to achieve a flow of free traffic and that means having your site listed on the first page of the natural search results for the main search engines, including the big three of Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Some years ago that was not too difficult even in quite competitive markets however nowadays it has become very much harder as the Internet has grown rapidly and the search engines have become increasingly sophisticated at assessing sites and determining just which sites should be given prominence in their listings.

Search engine optimization is a complex business today and entire books have been, and are still being, written on this subject. One thing, however, which almost all of the experts agree on is the importance of slowly and steadily gaining links to your site and one of the best ways to do this is by writing articles and then submitting these to a variety of article directories. But, there is a correct way and a wrong way of doing this.

Your starting point is to write a series of articles focusing on a variety of topics related to your site, with every article being accompanied by an 'about the author' box which provides anchor text links back to your site. In this short article we will assume that you are familiar with the ins and outs of article writing and so we do not intend to look at this particular subject. Our attention here is focused upon how you submit your articles to the article directories.

Here opinions are mixed and, as with anything else in the world of SEO, you would be well advised to try out various different approaches and carefully document both what you do and the results you get. Then, once you have accumulated enough statistics you will discover that it is a reasonably simple matter to see exactly what works and what does not work. The alternative approach is merely to listen to what other people are saying on the subject but 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 merely trying to sell you something or from people who would deliberately mislead you because they see you as their competition.

Your first option is to hand submit your articles. With many hundreds of article directories to choose from this really is not a sensible option, unless you limit yourself to submitting only to the main, established and highly trafficked article directories. This is certainly possible and indeed there are many people who feel that this is the best option as they would argue that most article directories have little if any standing in the eyes of the search engines and so few visitors that they will attract little traffic to your articles and not do a great deal to get your articles picked up and distributed to other websites.

Your second option is to submit your articles to a large number of article directories which means either making use of a submission service or some type of article submission software.

There are various submission services, however, only a handful will provide you with a good service and leave you happy that your articles will be submitted to a specific list of directory sites within a reasonable time frame. The main drawback to these services is that they require you to commit yourself to an ongoing monthly payment and they are very expensive.

TurningWhen it comes to article submission software, there are once again many choices open to you from the quite expensive to the extremely affordable. If this is a route which appeals to you then you need to check out various options and to look carefully at exactly what each product can and cannot do. For example, does the software fully automate or semi-automate the submission process? How many article directories can you submit to? Are you able to add your own article directories to the software? Are you provided with a submission record so that you are able to see quickly how successful every article submission has been?

A final consideration is whether you should submit the same article to the article directories, or should create a series of 'unique' articles from your base article so that every directory receives a different version of your article? A lot of people will tell you that it really does not matter and that the present debate over duplicate content is overblown. Other people however will tell you that, although it might not appear to be important in the short run, in the longer run the search engines will discount a lot of your article links as they find that they are from identical articles. Once again the secret is to test for yourself and see exactly what results you get.

If you do feel that creating unique articles is the best way to go then you will have to investigate the range of article rewriting software available. Once more take your time and examine each program very carefully. Most software programs are extremely fast and easy to use, but also generate very poor quality articles. There are however a few software programs available which, although they require a bit more work, produce some very good results. There are also some software programs which will not just create unique articles but also output them ready for import into some of the article submission programs.

There is no doubt that submitting articles really does work when it comes to building links to your site and will certainly bring you free search engine traffic. You do however need to setup an article submission process which fits in with your budget and work routine and that means testing the system until you get the results you want.

WebMarketingCentre.com provides information on article writing and article submission and is also an article directory where you can pick up a free online article for your website or ezine and to which you can submit articles on a wide variety of topics including articles on diabetes and much more.

Article Source: http://freewebcontents.com

Please Rate this Article

Not yet Rated