Article submission is a great way to increase traffic to your site as well as to improve page rank due to the built up backlinks. There are hundreds of article submission sites and directories around and hence one would naturally wonder which one to go for. In this post, I am picking ten such sites based on the criteria on page and traffic ranks.

Though article submission is a very generic marketing strategy, something that you should know is how your submitted article is used by these sites. One time article submission with a single instance linking back to your website is the cleanest and safest approach. The next level is where the article submission site use the same article to be submitted to multiple sites, content unchanged.

This is something that not many prefers and if done so, it can attract penalty from search engines such as Google in terms of page rank downgrades. Then there is article spinning that reshuffles or rewrites the same article and posts at multiple sites. This can affect your reputation though it might increase traffic ranks and/or page ranks (if gone undetected, that is).

The Ten Sites

Here, I have picked five article sites each in two categories - Submission without sign up or registration and the sites where a registration is required before you can submit. In either case, the submission services are free and these sites have a minimum Google Page Rank of 3 and an Alexa traffic rank below 100,000

Sites that don’t need sign-up
http://www.webpronews.com/, Page Rank: 7, Alexa Rank: 14,536
http://www.qarchive.org/, Page Rank: 6, Alexa Rank: 1,786
http://www.articlecity.com/, Page Rank: 5, Alexa Rank: 41,377
http://www.articlebiz.com/, Page Rank: 3, Alexa Rank: 92,151
http://www.selfseo.com/, Page Rank: 3, Alexa Rank: 49,086

Register and submit sites
http://www.ezinearticles.com/, Page Rank: 6, Alexa Rank: 333
http://www.articledashboard.com/, Page Rank: 6, Alexa Rank: 42,902
http://www.articleclick.com/, Page Rank: 4, Alexa Rank: 42,147
http://www.articlemarketer.com/, Page Rank: 4, Alexa Rank: 41,411
http://www.goarticles.com/, Page Rank: 3, Alexa Rank: 18,786

Which one to go for?

Where to submit your articles really depends on your need. If you are looking at building healthy backlinks and reputation you should go for those high PR article submission sites. Again, you need to remember that the articles submitted does not necessarily get listed on the front page (with the PR mentioned above). So another important thing is to understand how the rating of your articles happen and how can it get on to the top list. A listing on the front page of those sites will also get you more traffic.

If you are looking at traffic alone probably you should go for article spinning or multiple submission options. Again, read the FAQs on those sites carefully on how things work in each case.

Of late, Google downgraded the PR of many article submission and spinnig sites. So it is always advisable to go for reputed article sites with very high traffic and more or less consistent page rank over the years. My personal pick would be http://www.ezinearticles.com/ which has the possibility of a number of articles appearing on their front page. They also market authors very well by providing their profiles on the home page.

Other Tips

  • Some of the above sites also offer premium or paid services that can get you more visibility. You may consider them if you have some money to spend
  • Pick the right categories and subjects and post your article under them. You should be ideally posting an article along the lines of your own site’s main theme or subject matter
  • Try to create trackbacks and counter traffic from your own site to those submitted articles to engage your current readers even better with the topic
  • Keep track of your backlinks and analyze traffic originated from the article submission exercise to pick the right submission site for your needs
  • Once the submission is approved, you must keep track of the comments received and reply them promptly just like you would do at your own sites. This would give better traffic prospects and ratings
  • Reserve your best articles for your own site or blog as articles submitted elsewhere are only short term triggers for your long term plans
  • Guest blogging on reputed sites with high page rank and reader base is still the best way to get traffic, visibility and recognition!

Good luck with your article submission spree and please provide your comments on this post…