Review of Article Submission Sites and Policies

Anyone into internet marketing, especially when talking about traffic generation and affiliate marketing will know the importance of article writing and article submission. After all, this is how you propagate product reviews, garner back-links to your site and get your name and reputation on the web.

But if you do a search for 'article submission directory' or something similar on the web you will get hundreds and hundreds of them returned (many are catalogued here) or you can get an exhaustive list from the Celtnet Forum. Of these, which ones do you actually submit to?

I've been submitting articles for many years now and I've seen article sites come and articles sites go. In the end I've become quite choosy as to where I submit my articles to.

Many authors will tell you not to submit articles to article sites with PR (PageRank) less than 6. This can be a good rule of thumb if all you want is to get page rank to your site. But it can also be misleading. Having an article site can be a very lucrative means of getting money. Many of the less scrupulous sites are sites with high page rank actually bought by someone and then turned into an article site. They start off with good page rank and then their page rank plummets and they vanish from the web. I would rather submit my articles to a new and up-and coming website, one that wants good content and is picky about the articles that get in rather than submit willy-nilly to any site with good page rank.

I also only submit to about a dozen sites in all and all my articles are unique. I never use auto-submitters and I never have machine-written articles.

I also look for article sites that make an effort to get the word out about the articles submitted to them. These are article sites that submit their RSS feeds to news aggregators and article sites that integrate social bookmarketing into their articles and sites. If these site creators are willing to go to this effort to help publicise the ads they have then this is a site worth sticking with. I also look for sites that help eZine and site owners get content for their site. This means that the articles must be easy for others to publish and must have at least plain text and HTML publishing facilities.

But my main criterion as to which sites I submit to has to do more with how quickly the article is approved than anything else. I need a quick turn around as some of my articles only have a short useful lifespan. I will not wait more than three, at the most four, days for my article to be approved and incorporated. Many of the article directories out there take two weeks or more for approval. Some never even get back to you.

As a result here are my top five submission sites:

ezinearticles.com

celtnet articles

buzzle.com

articledashboard.com

goarticles.com


These sites all only allow self-serving (ie links to your sites/products) in the 'About the Author' resource box. Though GoArticles will allow some URLs in the main text of the article. With Buzzle it's an either/or case. Either you have URLs in the main body of the text or you have self-serving URLs in the resource box. Each site is different and you need to read the guidelines or terms and conditions before submitting.

For more information on why you need to write articles read this article: Why you Need to Write Articles and for a guide to the basics of article writing read: Article Writing 101.

I also submit to six or seven other sites, but these are far more subjective than objective, so I suggest you play around with article submission sites to find out which ones you prefer (the list given above will help you here).