by Tom McEwin on 24 July, 2010
EzineArticles is arguably the top article directory on the internet, and also one of the best places for people who are learning article marketing to get started. In this post I outline why, and link to some of the free resources that EzineArticles has to offer.
What makes EzineArticles the Top Article Directory for Beginners?
Recently I took a look at the top 10 article directories for affiliate marketers, and EzineArticles was the clear winner, for the following reasons:
- it gets high traffic – over 10 million unique visitor per month from the US alone;
- it has a pagerank of 6 – making it a high authority site in Google’s eyes; and
- because it allows 2 self serving links in resource box (which can be affiliate links if cloaked via a root domain).
But there are a few other things which make EzineArticles one of the top articles directories for learning about article marketing:
- the EzineArticles guidelines;
- the free training they provide;
- the fact that all articles are reviewed by a human prior to publication.
The EzineArticles Guidelines
The EzineArticles submission guidelines and terms of use are comprehensive and incredibly easy to understand. So much so that there is no point in me providing a detailed summary of them here. They cover what is and what is not allowed, the formatting requirements for articles, and outline several best practices when it comes to copywriting in general. Find them here.
Even for those wanting to submit articles to other article directories, chances are that if you comply with the writing style that EzineArticles sets out then you will probably comply with most of the requirements for the other article directories as well. Now this is something will need a bit of double checking, as the requirements vary. However, you can see a table summarising the terms of use for the top 10 article directories in my last post.
Free Training
On top of the handy editorial guidelines, EzineArticles also provide free training on article writing. This includes not only things to watch out for regarding particular topics, but also ways to make articles as valuable as possible for the reader. They also provide a number of article templates which can really help structure things and speed up article writing.
Did I mention that this training is free?
Human Review Prior to Publication
Some may view the fact that articles must pass human review before they are approved for publication on EzineArticles as a negative. I view it as a massive positive, for a couple of reasons.
First, it means a better quality of articles in the directory and that we won’t be competing for directory space against spammers. Also, if the quality is maintained, Google is less likely in the future to impose any sort of a negative filter on articles published via EzineArticles.
Second, having an expert review our articles enables them to give feedback on areas for improvement, either where articles are fine tuned prior to being published, or where they are partially rejected. I haven’t gone through this process myself (having paid fairly close attention to the detail in the editorial guidelines), but getting this sort of attention from someone who specialises in article writing could be quite beneficial in the long run.
Your Thoughts?
I’d be interested to hear what others have found when using EzineArticles – both good and bad. Please add a comment if you have any particular experiences you would like to share.
© Tom McEwin
AffiliatePlayground.net
by Tom McEwin on 11 July, 2010
In this post I finish my look at the top 10 article directories for affiliate marketers, summarising my investigation and outlining some of the things I noticed during this process.
The Top 10 Article Directories (for Affiliate Marketers)
My final list of the top 10 article directories for affiliate marketers is (in order):
- ezinearticles.com
- buzzle.com
- articlesbase.com (nofollow)
- thefreelibrary.com
- articlesnatch.com (temporary nofollow)
- ehow.com (subject to self serving links being permitted)
- searchwarp.com (nofollow)
- articlealley.com (nofollow)
- selfgrowth.com/articles
- goarticles.com
This list was compiled having reviewed the traffic stats, pagerank and terms of use for each directory, as discussed in my last post. For ease of reference, here is a summary of what the terms of use for the top article directories have to say:
- RB = Resource Box;
- Ezinearticles affiliate link cloaking must be via a root domain;
- This table is a summary only – for the full detail (and traffic info), see my last post.
Some Things I Noticed
1) Article Directories Want Unique Content
It is fairly obvious that article directories don’t want to become clogged with spam. All of the top article directories I looked at require original articles, or at least unique ownership of an article (such as exclusive rights to use a particular article). This means no re-badging of private label rights material, and no posting of public domain resources.
But it goes further than this. It seems that article directories don’t like articles which have been spun. This is where a percentage of an article is changed (such as the wording of a particular sentence or paragraph), but the structure of an article and the points covered remain largely intact.
It seems that directories particularly dislike articles which have been mechanically spun using an article spinner. This is completely understandable given they can turn out some real gibberish (notwithstanding what the sales pages for these spinners might claim).
I can see this being one particular area where article directories are really trying to clean things up. See, for example ezinearticles.com (@28). GoArticles is another directory which takes a strong stance against articles which have been spun – prohibiting them all together.
2) Article Directories Don’t Like Duplicate Content so Much
Article directories don’t like mass distribution of the same article (eg via an article submitter to 1001 directories), and some require that an article not have been published anywhere else before it is submitted to a particular article directory. If you want to submit the same article to multiple directories, then this is something which would need to be done with a little bit of care in order to not breach the terms of use for those directories. Not only do some directories prohibit duplicate content outright, but the terms of use vary in their requirements.
3) Effective Pagerank for Links
The pagerank of a particular directory will be different than the pagerank of a particular article on that directory. So the dofollow links which come from an article page will not get the pagerank of the overall directory. Often the actual article pages will have a pagerank of 0.
If we look at ezinearticles as an example:
- the front page has a pagerank of 6 and has links to a selection of articles from a given day;
- the Internet and Business Online category has a pagerank of 5 and includes links to the 30 most recent articles in this category;
- the Internet Marketing sub-category has a pagerank of 4 and includes links to the 30 most recent articles in this category (out of a total of >50,000); but
- most of the actual articles in this sub category will end up with a pagerank of 0 (unless there is some link building done to that article itself, or the article gets syndicated).
So What?
So now we have a list of the top 10 article directories and some observations about things they don’t like and the weight of the dofollow links which may eventuate. Now what?
Well, give the stance they take against spam, spun articles, and mass submitted articles, then not doing these things would seem to be a better way to keep the top article directories on side.
As noted by the guy who claims to have coined the phrase ‘linkwheel’, Google is after the most valuable content for their end users and this is what people themselves are more likely to share, subscribe to, and respect. To quote him directly (because I couldn’t think of a better way to express this):
Content is king?
Hell no.
Value is king, and always will be.
So there we have it – the top 10 article directories and a reason to create valuable content (and not all unique content will be valuable) for your articles. Not just because this is what the article directories want, and readers will get most benefit from, but also what Google is after and will reward in the long run.
© Tom McEwin
AffiliatePlayground.net
