To Write or Not Write Articles

[ikgrauke]

In an attempt to get more backlinks, I posted a few articles on goarticles.com a while back pertaining to my industry. I checked back recently and saw that they had each been downloaded around 50 times. I searched for the articles and found that most of them had been picked up by free content sites.

What are these links worth?
Are there other benefits that I haven't seen?
What do you all think are the best ways to attain good backlinks?

Okay, I'm sure these questions have been answered elsewhere, so if someone could just point me in the right direction, that's be great.

[aaron2005]

I do not feed article sites because when you do you are feeding spammers, scrapers and articleboters and other lamers who need to die!

I know that all the so called "experts" say that spamming with articles is good but I do not think so.

I legit article is one you offer someone in a related field that offers people something new, in that article the reward is a backlink. The backlink is also a friendship between you and someone who also has the same passion as you.

I am no expert but in my perfect world this is the way it is and this is the way it will be! ;)

[ADAM Web Design]

aaron2005 is partly correct...writing an article and submitting it to the article sites does pose a potential spam issue.

However, this has a workaround that's easy enough to implement. Simply create an email address for the sole purpose of wubmitting and promoting articles on the various article sites, and check it/dump it every so often. (Check more frequently when you're submitting, as some sites require confirmation via a link sent in the email.)

And at this point, my opinion diverges from Aaron's.

As far as the benefit goes, there's no harm that can come from doing this. You can't control what other people will post/link to on their sites, so if your article is on some spammy site, an SE won't penalize you.

To expand on something Aaron alluded to, authors are usually allowed self-promoting short bios in exchange for the right to freely distribute their articles. This short bio can and usually does include a backlink to the author's site.

And therein lies the SE gain. Once the SEs pick up on the various locations of the article, the number of inbound links to your site that the SEs know about increases and thus, so does your ranking.

There are also those who would claim a "duplicate content" penalty exists in terms of being able to promote the article. However, I haven't seen such an animal, and in fact I've seen the opposite:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...q=ikobo+review

If you look at the SERPs, you will see a series of "iKobo review" articles written by yours truly. On the first page, I see my article in positions #1, #4, #5, #6, #8, and #10. It took me approx. 21 hours to reach the #1 spot, and while iKobo offered "service", it was an article that generated a TON of interest and traffic to my site.

Side note: the problem with the traffic is that it wasn't web design customer traffic. So be careful with that. It's a mistake I learned the hard way, but it's one that overall didn't affect me too much.

So I say go for it!

[ikgrauke]

Where are the best places to submit articles?

[ADAM Web Design]

I find the best places are places that offer RSS feeds and syndication of articles to other publishers/e-zine owners and do a good job of it.

www.goarticles.com
www.articlecity.com (that's a good one for syndication)
www.ezinearticles.com (watch your formatting on this one, though)
www.ideamarketers.com

That's about all I can come up with off the top of my head.

[ikgrauke]

I've noticed a lot of these article directories don't allow static urls in the body of your article. They do allow one in your "about the author" or in a separate "authors website" section, but this makes it much easier for others to steal your article without giving credit. I guess this was mentioned earlier, but I wanted to confirm- do you still post articles in directories that don't allow static urls in the body of your article?

[ADAM Web Design]

No. One of the reasons I create the articles is to promote my clients' websites, at least one of which is in the body of any article I write.

As far as stealing an article and not giving credit, that's an issue but not as much of one as people make it out to be. For the most part, the people that take your article and reuse it will give you credit; they realize that, if you've done your homework and distributed it as much as possible, it will be more recognizable as your own work than as someone else's. Sure, there's the odd plagiarizer, but it's like every other crime in the world; most people don't commit it.

[aaron2005]

If someone visits my website then asks me to write an article for them (it has happened a few times) I will do so if the persons site is similar in content. Even though it is just one unique article that will be on their site with a link to the author "me" I believe it is of more value than duplicate articles all over the place.

Would a good search engine simply find who is at the end of the article backlink trail and give them a credit of 1 and not count the hundreds of unique IP's?