I’ve started working on writing more articles & getting them submitted to various directories. This is a time consuming process, but appears to be one of the few effective methods of getting decent, quality links pointing to my sites.

Although this whole writing process doesn’t come naturally to me, it’s surprising how quickly I’m now reaching my 500+ word target each time. But 500+ words in themselves are not enough; ensuring that the article contains combinations of the keywords & keyphrases you want to target is vital, as this content then shows that your site is relevant to those searched for keyphrases.

But are article submissions worth the time & effort? Once registered with an article directory, manual submissions take around 10 to 15 minutes on average to login, format and submit properly. Obviously, the writing of the article is a separate issue & can take a couple of hours to research and write. However, once the article is written, it can be re-submitted to a number of directories, withi only minor adjustments.

The more directories you submit your articles to, the more exposure they will receive & more links will be detected by the search engines, but you will need to make at least 10 submissions to get a reasonable exposure for your articles, adding up to a couple of hours per article!

To make the most of my time I have to make sure that the article directories I am submitting to, are able to bring me as many visitors and backlinks as possible. I am going to try to do at least 10 manual submissions for each article, so it’s important to choose those directories wisely. The only two ratings easily available to web users to judge the quality of websites and web pages are its Alexa Rating and Google PageRank. Both are not conclusive and often do not reflect the true authority or traffic of a page. But since there is nothing better, I will stick to these two figures when deciding if a directory is worth submitting to. Of course, one must not forget the power of themed sites. If you have a choice between a general directory and a directory focusing on the article topic; it’s better to choose the latter.

The current Top 10 article directories (by Alexa Ranking and with a Page Rank of around 5/6) are shown below & these are my starting point for any article submissions:

1. ezinearticles.com
2. ArticlesBase.com
3. buzzle.com
4. helium.com
5. webpronews.com
6. goarticles.com
7. searchwarp.com
8. articledashboard.com
9. articlealley.com
10. articlesnatch.com

However, there are some restrictions placed on articles by these directories; for example, buzzle.com insists that their articles are unique & not reproduced on any other directory, so you will have to write a different article just for this site. Some, such as ArticlesBase.com may apply “nofollow” to the article links, so you won’t benefit from an inbound link.

EzineArticles.com and Buzzle.com can bring you a lot of traffic, GoArticles.com brings you backlinks, and ArticlesFactory.com PageRank. You can even earn money from your articles by publishing them on Helium!

If you don’t have the time, or are not able to write articles by yourself, there are many content providers and ghost writers who can provide articles & then other services that submit them to the directories for you. I have used some of these services myself in the past, but I think the old adage of “you get what you pay for” applies, as I have not been impressed with the cheaper offerings I have seen so far!

I am considering using some more expensive services in the near future, but the cost does vary wildly; from $5 per article (for very poor offerings), to the most recent quote I had of £100 per article!! I think something inbetween will be more in my league & will blog about any that I find particularly useful/value for money.

In the never ending search to increase the number of links into my sites, I have been searching for other companies that provide link building opportunities.

I’ve been using Directory Maximizer for some time now & am pleased with the service that they have provided. However, I have submitted Cashback Shopper to all the directories that they have had available (nearly 1500) & it’s still not enough (

A recent comparison found that my cashback site competitors main advantage over me is the number of links they have pointing to their sites. Whilst quality of links is also important, the fact that many of the top sites have 10 times the number of links is highly relevant, as is the number of links they have from social networks:

So, it seems I still have some way to go to make Cashback Shopper a top 10 site!! My SEO partner offers a top 10 Google guarantee for their SEO package, but because the amount of on page SEO I can do is limited on this site, their link building option may be a better bet – it certainly worked for “cashback sites”, but at a cost of £10 per link, it’s not the cheapest option out there!

Searching through Google results for directory submission service brought me to Submit2Please which despite sounding like some dodgy fetish club (lol), is actually a One Way Link Building Services Provider. They offer:

Directory Submission
Article Submission
Social Bookmarking
Monthly Submissions
Press Release Distribution
Combo Package
Local Search Optimization
Niche Directory Submission
Link Building
Featured Listing Program

I’m initially planning to use the Social Bookmarking package, which will hopefully get me some more links from these well respected authority sites. At $49.95 for social bookmarks on 150 PR 4 and above sites, they certainly seem worth the money rather than me spend 3 days doing it myself!

If this goes well, I shall then consider the directory submission service, which tops out at with submission to 700 Various PR Directories for $124.95. Following my last experience of an article writing service, I’m not sure about this, but article submission would certainly provide useful links!

Of course, this focus is on Cashback Shopper, but should the results prove tangible, I will consider using these services for some of my other sites too. But hey, there’s only so much money to throw around O