Should You Still Use Article Directories to Drive Traffic to Your Site?

Guest Post by : Sarah Clare

Article directories used to be a preferred strategy for webmasters to drive traffic to their site. All you had to do was write an article, submit it to a directory, and watch it be sent out to thousands of sites, all with a link pointing back to your site. However, after Google's Penguin update, which penalized sites with too many spam links (such as those on low-quality article directories),many site owners started to rethink the strategy. Post-Penguin, article directories are not totally devoid of value. You can still use them to drive traffic to your site, you just have to be more careful in your strategy. Here are a few ways you can make article directories work for you to get more traffic to your site:

Choose Only High-Quality Sites

There are dozens of articles directories online, but they are not all high-quality. You should look for article directories with a high page rank if you want to get a high-quality link from the site. Check page rank in Google or on Alexa. You should choose directories that have a PR2 or higher.

Do Not Submit Duplicate Content

Many site owners used to submit the same article to dozens of directory sites, which then sent that article out to hundreds or thousands of other websites. Unfortunately, Google penalizes sites that are affiliated with duplicate content. Make sure that any article you submit is original content, and submit a different post for each directory.

Submit Quality Content

The better the content, the better the link. Make sure you submit quality content to each and every article directory that you use. Not only will your link be more valuable, but you will also increase the chances that the link will be shared on other sites, giving you even more leverage.Submitting to article directories is not a dead SEO technique. However, post-Penguin, you do have to be much more conscientious about the strategy. Use these tips and you should be able to get high-quality links through article directory submissions.

Do you still use article directories to build links to your sites? Share your tips for success in thecomments!

About The Author

Sarah Clare is a writer and oversees the site projectmanagementsoftware.com, where she has recently been researching project risk assessment. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys cooking and scrap booking.