How Free Article Directories can Boost PageRank
Submitting to free article directories is one of the most popular and successful ways to acquire inbound links and improve website traffic stats. Not only that, but you also improve PageRank by building high quality inbound links naturally.
Building inbound links naturally is more important than it ever has been after Google's latest round of updates (Penguin and Panda). Most all article directories were penalized for publishing tons of questionable content ranging from duplicate to outright spam. The ending result was that the article directories that were once high PageRank sites, took a hit.
Even with all the negativity, submitting to free article directories is the best way to build links naturally and not risk being penalized by the search engines.
Article Distribution Service
At one point in time, submitting to an article distribution service was a great way to create thousands of inbound links at once. That has all changed, submitting articles to an article distribution service is no longer an acceptable practice in the eyes of the search engines.
The latest search engine updates make utilizing an article distribution service ineffective and rightfully so, you are just spamming out duplicate content. Maybe you will see a top ten search ranking for a small span of time, but this will be very short lived. It won't take Google long to figure out your article appears on thousands of article directories that accept spam. Google is not so tolerant of these manipulation practices.
I have listed some of the best free article directories below. Each allow "dofollow" links in the resource box, have an excellent PageRank and they do not mass distribute your article to other directories. It's the best way to build inbound links naturally.
Free Article Directories
EZineArticles.com is not an auto approve article directory. EZineArticles is one of the top article directories for many reasons and one of those being they take quality control seriously.
- Every article is human reviewed before it is approved.
- If an article is duplicate content, it will not be approved.
- It could take anywhere from 2 to 7 days for an article to be approved (depending on the backlog).
- PageRank 6
- 103,804 Sites Linking In
- Alexa Rank 507
- You can have a maximum of 2 DoFollow links in the resource box.
GoArticles.com has been around a long time so they are well established and one of the top free article directories.
- Typically an article is approved within minutes which would lead me to think they are an auto approve article directory. Again, I'm not certain but it's just a guess based on how fast an article is approved after submission.
- PageRank 6
- 44,501 Sites Linking In
- Alexa Rank 2,463
- You are allowed 2 DoFollow links
DigitalDivideNetwork.org features articles on a variety of subjects to earn exposure for your writing abilities as well as a natural inbound link to your site.
- PageRank 6
- 355 Sites Linking In
- Alexa Rank 33,529
- You are allowed 1 DoFollow link
- PageRank 4
- 9043 Sites Linking In
- Alexa Rank 9,465
- You are allowed a maximum of 3 DoFollow links
- PageRank 4
- 7,073 Sites Linking In
- Alexa Rank 11,824
- You are allowed 2 DoFollow links within the article body and/or profile box.
Becoming a partner of Article Alley means that you have an opportunity to share in their revenue. Any traffic you send to their site from yours, if profits are involved you get 30%. Not only that but as long as you partner with them, Article Alley will promote your site as a source of knowledgeable information.
Why DoFollow links Are Important
- A DoFollow link is one that tells a search engine to follow the link to the destination. To make a link DoFollow, you can add an attribute rel="dofollow" or leave the link as is and it is automatically DoFollow.
- I've read that both DoFollow and NoFollow are good for your website. However, from experience I can tell you that a NoFollow link does not provide the same "link juice" as does a DoFollow link.
- When an inbound link pointing to your site is a DoFollow link, it's a natural PageRank booster.
To summarize, an article distribution service can actually hurt you more than it can help you. Contributing articles to free article directories allows you to garner backlinks to your website naturally without raising red flags at the search engines.
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