Article directories: Still good for SEO?

Although I can’t confirm, I’ve read several articles saying that SEO importance of article marketing has decreased massively. Nowadays content sharing should be more effective.

In my opinion, linking your site into article submission site that has high pr and high traffic is a good way to improve your site ranking.

Maybe they not improve rankings like before but good articles sends a lot of traffic to your site.

What would you guys say would be the top 10 article directories.

Never actually submitted anything to any of them, but guess it cant hurt,

One thing that i am fully sure is Google does not like inorganic type of any activity. So my opinion is not to spend money on these services rather be active in social media.

@Nathan 229255 wrote:

Some marketers feel that the Google Panda crackdown on link farms has hurt the effectiveness of article marketing, as well.

Whether or not that’s true, Google’s Matt Cutt hasn’t been shy about his feelings on the topic: “Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of article marketing … Typically the sorts of sites that just republish these articles are not the highest quality sites.”

There’s more: Check out the full article here.

Article directories are so 2 years ago – most were hit by Panda 1, 2 & 2.1 updates and in my opinion are not worth going after for link equity … seriously, Panda wasn’t simply a move by Google to remove thin content from the SERPs, but another method in combating artificial link acquisition methods.

If you get traffic from this then go for it … but do not continue on with this for link equity … it will eventually all vanish IMO.

If you disagree, then go right ahead and keep going with these antiquated link acquisition methods … it simply makes my job much much easier in the long run

You’re all forgetting that google suffered a lot of criticism after panda 1.0, because several consensus high-quality sites (like eHow.co.uk and others) were badly damaged. I didn’t find the original reference I read on his blog, but Matt Cutts clearly indicated that future panda will be fine tuned to filter the valuable article-sites so they won’t be further affected.

After that comment, I made sure I would do an extensive research on any article-site I plan on submitting in. I not only check sites’ classic SEO parameters (SERP ranking, PR, longevity & many many more) but also carefully browse through users lists & published submissions.

If the site itself still ranks high, has a considerable proportion of certified users (official representative of a real brand), and most improtantly – no obvious spam is found, I think it’s still safe to submit an article. Let’s face it – those sites are some of the most accessible sources for link-building, and it would be hard to give up on them altogether.

On the practical perspective – I’ve been applying this method for a long time now and I can say it definitely works!

Sorry, but even the thought that any DemandMedia sites are considered high quality makes me laugh … eHow.com lost so much traffic its not even funny and now they are completely changing their SEO strategies to cope in a post-panda world

They have not regained the search visibility they used to enjoy and do NOT rank where they used to.
Panda Vol. II: Ehow.com got hit this time – SEO-Blog – SISTRIX Toolbox

If this is you link building strategy … have fun with it as long as it last, but IMO you should really consider changing it now

I don’t understand your point… I wrote exactly what you did – eHow got wrecked.

I didn’t know this site personally but practically EVERYONE who gave examples to why panda doesn’t work well mentioned eHow specifically, including Matt Cutts.

I will continue this strategy. Close inspection of the GOOD article-sites will show you what’s the difference between content-farming to added-value sites. No way are google going to allow themselves to damage consensus sites like that again.

If you don’t believe that you might as well give-up on link-building altogether. After all, there might be a “Zebra” update in the future that will eliminate all blogs, an “Iguana” update that will eliminate all forums, a “Kangaroo” update that will eliminate all sites including banners, and so on and so forth.

My point simply was eHow (UK,US, etc) is not a quality site … it is a site designed to game the rankings through thin content production …

.. then you decide to go after me personally … you simply missed the point altogether … article directories for link building are a thing of the past … yes, they may still pass some value but they do not pass the same equity as they used to and will continue to lose more and more equity over time – people need to learn to evolve their strategies

Again – this was a very effective strategy before – if you are still showing positive results, then stick with it. I haven’t used this method for a over 18 months as it just doesn’t work the way it used to.

I tell ya what … keep building links the way you want … I will build them the way I want … end of story