Where to Submit Your Article – Introduction to Article Directories
If you are a web content writer, then you may be writing for your own blog or website or for other people, for the sake of their business or their website. One means of increasing the visibility of a website on the Internet is to submit your article, in which links towards that website will be included, to article directories. We will explain it in the following how article directories can help a business and its website.
What are article directories?
An article directory is a website that collects articles on diverse topics. Some popular article directories are ezine, ehow, technorati, buzzle, pubarticles and others. Such directories may accept articles from any willing contributor, but with certain rules to be followed.
The main rule is that an article is unique – not posted anywhere else online – and not obtained by means of article spinning. Articles will usually have around 400 to 500 words, and an author box may be available for mentioning personal information about the author. As an article writer, this box is useful for you to get known among Internet readers. Also, the author box usually permits the use of links, so you can promote your own blog and attract new readers to it. If you are a ghostwriter, meaning that you do not personally sign your articles, but write for someone else, then the author box will promote that person and business.
A business usually needs a SEO content writer to create articles in their benefit, and uses article directories to create backlinks for their website via the author box, thus work on increasing their SERP ranking. They also aim to raise their authority in their industry through shared knowledge. Popular directories are considered to have authority and search engine spiders frequently crawl them, returning many of their articles as search results.
Articles on directories can be organized through tags or categories, which is helpful for search engines to find information on a certain subject. Tags and categories are interpreted just like keywords by search spiders. Many article directories pay contributors for their participation, but a review of the submitted articles is also necessary so that the quality of what is eventually published is high and duplicates are eliminated.
Benefits you get when you submit your article to article directories
1. Indexing: Articles from article directories are indexed by existing search engines and returned on user queries as search results. As we have already said, search engines see directories as sites with authority.
2. Authority and credibility: If you write several articles in the industry of your business, readers will perceive you as an expert in your domain and trust your recommendations and the products or services you are offering. It is best that you post the articles in a category that is relevant to your field.
3. Recommendations: Your article can be reprinted by other online magazines and your author box will be republished: those reusing your article need to give you credits, along with your online identity – the link to your website. Other bloggers may pick up your article and publish it in full, along with giving you credentials, or simply link to your article.
4. Backlinks and page rank: The more articles you write and the more you practice article directory submission, the more backlinks you create for your website. To be clear about this aspect, backlinks are links leading to your website, which are present on other websites. These backlinks are taken into account by search engine spiders when your page rank is calculated. The higher your page rank and the more backlinks you have, the more chances there are for your website to be returned higher in SERPS, thus you get more Google web traffic (traffic to your website that is owned to Google searches, as opposed to online advertisements or social media marketing).
The links you post in the author box, which become backlinks for your website once the directory publishes your article, are hidden behind a link text or anchor text. This text is also important, as it should describe you and will be used by engines when searchers look for content that you might provide.
Whether you write for yourself or for other businesses, the benefits are the same: backlinks are built so more search engine authority is obtained. It must also be said that, when writing, SEO issues should be taken into account: content and keywords. Appropriate keywords for your article and ultimately for the represented business must be chosen and used throughout the article, usually with a density of up to 1 percent. One keyword per hundred words is usually enough, and related keywords are recommended to be used too, since repeating the same keyword too much may be considered a sign of spam.
5. RSS feed: When you submit your article to a directory, you should know that, at many times these directories offer RSS feeds for categories they contain, which is good for you. Someone in need of content for their own website may run that feed on their site and, thus, you have the chance at being further promoted.
All in all, you should see by know how important it is to submit quality content to article directories.
