Image credit: ContactDubai.com
Back in 2007 I wrote a post about article submission being a poor SEO tactic. Since then the article has had about 5,000 visitors that mainly came from Google and it’s still getting good traffic now. Because it has been so popular I just gave it a bit of an update and added information about how to submit to article directories and which ones to use.
Over the years I have been screwed over in various ways by a few directories such as Article Alley, Articles Base and Isnare, the 1st two added nofollow to my author signature links and Isnare took a payment from me for a featured submission and then never published it or got back to me when I emailed.
Anyway, fortunately there are a handful of decent general article directories that you can rely on, here are my top 4:
1/ Ezine Articles is the best article directory on the web, it has good standards, a PageRank 6/10 and currently, according to Alexa it’s the 185th most popular site on the web. The site is very easy to use, just click onto submit articles and follow instructions to get started.
2/ My 2nd favourite article directory is Buzzle, I have been an author there for over a year now, my articles are usually published within 24 hours and indexed by Google in no time. The site has a PageRank score of 5/10 and it’s Alexa rank is in the top 2,000. You have to apply to get accepted as an author at Buzzle and it can take a few weeks, but IMO it’s worth the wait.
3/ Another great article site is Go Articles, it’s ran by the Jayde Online Network, it has a Google PageRank of 6/10 and its Alexa score is inside the top 3,500. Submitting is a piece of cake, click on submit articles and then fill in the register as a new member form to get started. Articles are published fast, usually in less then a week.
4/ Article Dashboard is a mother of an article directory with, according to siteexplorer nearly 4,000,000 links that have come from other article directories using their script. The site has a Google PageRank score of 4/10 and its Alexa traffic rank is about 5,000. Click on the sign up link in the top right hand corner, follow instructions and start submitting your content.
Make sure you read our article submission blog post before you start using these sites, if done correctly and in moderation article submission can be a good small part of your link building and SEO strategy.
FYI: I think the UK needs a really good article directory so I have just registered OriginalArticles.co.uk and I plan to launch that in the next month or so.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
July 26th, 2009
About two weeks ago I got a trackback or something and found this site called the WAHH Marketer’s Blog linking to me, I checked out the page and the reason it had linked to me was because of Zemanta, a content enhancement tool for bloggers.
Here is what the Zemanta website says about their product:
“Simple point & click enrichment of your blog posts (and emails). In real-time, while you type. We suggest tags, links, photos, and related articles. You save time and aspirin.
5M+ pictures, 5M+ articles. 10M+ possibilities.”
So the reason I got a free dofollow link on a relevant page is because my Altavista.com article was picked up by the Zemanta system and recognised as a relevant page.
How awesome is that, I haven’t paid Zemanta any money or even registered with them and they are hooking me up with free dofollow backlinks on good quality relevant blogs.
Here are a couple more links from Zemanta that I have found on Google:
So to the guys at Zemanta thanks very much for making an awesome product, I bet it is great for bloggers who use it as well, the ones that linked me just got a decent link out of it didn’t they? I reckon other bloggers will as well.
Update: I have just found out that the 3rd blog post I linked to was actually copied from Mashable, I probably should have checked before I linked to it, I remember thinking it was a decent post because it mentioned 4 of the celebrities who I follow and I don’t follow many. I have just placed a nofollow link to that post. I’m not complaining or anything it’s still a free link, but I won’t link out properly to copied content.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves, a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
July 12th, 2009
Altavista is my favourite tool for checking links and here’s why:
1. It shows more results then any other link checking tool (not including Google webmaster tools, but you can’t check competitors with that) – You can see a maximum of 1,000 separate domains linking to a URL or domain.
2. It only ever shows 2 results from one domain so the results you get don’t get swamped with a couple of site wide links.
3. If your IP address is based in the UK the results show the links with the most juice on Yahoo UK at the top so you can find out which links are helping you most on Yahoo. From the testing that I have done I have seen that generally Yahoo rates the same UK sites Google does – the links that rank high on Altavista’s link command will be from sites with good PageRank.
So there you have it, if you like checking on who’s linking to your site or blog go to Altavista.com and give it a shot.
You can check how many links a page has by searching for link: and then the page URL and you can check how many links a domain has by typing in linkdomain: and then the domain you want to check without the www. Just like on Yahoo site explorer but better.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
June 19th, 2009
I recently started working on a new design agency site called Kosh Creative, it’s ran by a guy called Ben Smith, he is doing some design work for me in exchange for help with SEO.
I’ve been doing the usual link building stuff, getting it listed in directories, giving it a bookmark here and there and because it is a nice looking site getting it featured in CSS galleries.
When I was searching for CSS galleries to submit to I came accross this site called The CSS Gallery List offering me a deal where for $20 they will submit you to 87 CSS directories. Now I never buy directory submission services from anywhere, I always do them myself by hand, mainly because they always submit you to crappy linkfarms, but this site was offering me submissions to quality well designed sites with good PageRank and unique features so I gave it a shot.
I have got to say that I am absolutely amazed at the results, less then 24 hours after I purchased the service CSS gallery listings were showing up on Google, many of them with labelled dofollow image links going directly to the Kosh Creative website. Plus because I submitted the website title as as Kosh Creative Design Agency instead of Kosh Creative many of the links had good anchor text.
The best part about this though is the traffic, before I bought the pack the Kosh site was only getting a few visitors, about 10-25 a day. I bought the package on Tuesday the 26th of May and immediately it started getting more visits, here are the site’s visitor traffic levels for the last 7 days according to Google analytics:
25/05 – 22
26/05 – 53
27/05 – 59
28/05 – 58
29/05 – 597
30/05 – 401
31/05 – 292
As you can see on Friday the traffic just exploded, this is because it got featured on CSS Mania and a couple of other biggish ones. Here are the 10 CSS galleries that have sent the most traffic to Kosh so far:
So let me break this down for you for $20 I got the Kosh Creative website about 30-40 links on separate high PageRank sites, most of the links pass juice, many of them even have good anchor text and to top it off the links have sent a shit load of targeted traffic (because the site is in the design industry), the traffic has already gained the site about 6-7 delicious bookmarks over the weekend and I am sure it will lead to Ben getting work.
I know some of you might say well linkbaiting can be even cheaper and it can, but most of the time it is hard god dam work, this isn’t, it took me like 30 seconds to fill in that form and look what I got out of it.
It probably won’t be anywhere near as successful if you have a plain looking site like this one because it won’t get accepted in most of them, but if you have a good looking site that you are trying to promote it is a great way to spend $20 on link building.
Get yourself over to The CSS Gallery List and give it a whirl, you will not be sorry.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
June 1st, 2009
I have been teased really badly twice recently on Yahoo site explorer. The 1st time was about a month or so ago now:
I typed in linkdomain:seoco.co.uk and up came this URL: http://www.w3.org/Mobile/planet. I got really excited and actually did a little jig thinking that I had been linked to by the W3. But I had not been linked to by them, this guy called Andrew Grill had linked and his feed is displayed on that page. The link from W3 was temporary and pretty worthless.
Today again I was teased whilst checking the links to this site. The URL I saw come up was from Harvard no less: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/planet/idtechtools/, the stuff link building dreams are made of. I really got my hopes up only to once again find that it was a temporary link. This time it was because a guy called Ethan Zuckerman had linked to me.
So there you have it, don’t get excited about the links you see in site explorer until you are sure that they are permanent. The links from Andrew and Ethan are also amazing of course.
On a much happier link building note: a mainstream media site did link to the article on the mainstream media linking out.
Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
August 1st, 2008
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