I know that using companies to submit your website to 100's of search engines and directories is a bad idea. And I have read that it isn't even good to submit your URL to google. But building related backlinks can help a lot.

Is it a good idea to submit articles??

Absolutely! It helps on several levels -

As far as SEO, it is great because you are not trying to trick or spam the search engines. You are writing helpful content (hopefully), that people will actually read and use, and in return you get a backlink.

It helps out everyone.

Further you can get more traffic by people reading your articles, or reposting them.

I think it depends. I don't think a LOT of traffic will ever come from submitting your article to article directories. I think the main benifit is backlinks. You'll gain a backlink from the directory, and about 2/3's of the people downloading your article to put on their site (probably 1/3 of people take your aritcle and don't post backlinks...).

If you have a site that can hold articles, then it's probably best to keep 75% of your content on your site, and just put feeler articles out from time to time to gain some linkage. IMO.

Articles can definitely be a great way to get backlinks as Ross said. Though as Dustin mentioned not everyone who downloads your article will necessarily give you a link. Some probably won't ever add the article to their site.

If you write good artlicles and submit them to a few directories you should get plenty of backlinks which will help your site. I think if you write enough articles and they are good articles in time people who read a few will begin to recognize your name and get curious about you and click on the links in the articles directly.

Even if they don't it's still a good way to acquire backlinks for your site. Especially when you consider the time involved in getting those links. You could easily acquire a hundred or so links with just a few hours work.

The key though is going to be writing articles that other people will consider valuable enough to add to their site.

I am a firm believer that if you add value to the Internet it pays you back. So right as many articles as you can, as long as they are well written and value add.

We have a lot of people who write articles on our site for SEO purposes of their own sites.

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I think submitting articles is a really good Idea! Not that I have proof for im just a beginner but I got so many advices from good SEO's that its really gonna work. I think its even better than URL submission. The result is faster, and if the article is good you might get plenty of secondary links too.

Vangogh: You mentioned click on the links in the article? What exactly do you mean by that. If I write an article, what kind of links should I put in the article.

What is the best structure for an article. Is the idea to promote your site or give good information?

Thanks.

I just wanna add something... When submitting your articles, be sure to check your links. Some sneaky article directories change the URL's in your links. So when you click on your links, they go nowhere!!!

It's a great idea to get backlinks. You should post the articles on your site as well and link to them from a sitemap page so you get some free traffic to them.

The links I was mentioning will typically be in your bio for the articles. Most article sites will let you add a couple of sentences to let people know who you are and you should have a link or two back to your site.

You can also link part of the text of the article to your site if it's appropriate just like you would with any other web page. I wouldn't overdo the links in the body of the article though. Only if they're appropriate to something on your site. For example if the article is a review of a product you sell you could link the name of the product to the page on your site where you sell it.

Mostly though I was simply meaning links in your author bio. "zincoxide is the owner of yourdomain.com..."

People won't always click on those links, but if you consistently write on a given subject and people begin to see your name as the author of an article again and again then it's natural that they'll clcik on the link(s) in your bio out of curiosity. Assuming they liked the articles of course.

Thank you, very helpful and informative.

Glad to help.

Article submission is great idea if the article is really informative. In this case people will read your article, like it and may be they will go to your site.

True. The better the article(s) the more likely they will be downloaded and added to another site and also the more likely that someone will click on the links in the article or bio.

Submitting articles to Ezines and article directories is indeed a very good idea, these articles are picked up by webmasters looking to add content to their own web site, which will get you tons of one way backlinks.

What format should articles be created it?? HTML? PHP? Microsoft Word??

The sites you submit to will let you know how they want you to submit. All you should really need is a text version of the article.

thanks

Hi,

Submitting articles is always a very good idea to gain back links. But the articles you are submitting should be genuinely informative. In other words your article must have something new to offer. In the world of webmasters people are always on the look out for something they haven't yet tried out.

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