Article Submission for Search Engine Rankings
October 3, 2006
It's not big news that submitting articles to free article sites is one of the best ways to get free one-way links into your sites. However, it's important that you think about your linking strategy when submitting articles, otherwise all of your efforts will be lost. Here's why.
Vary Your Anchor Text
The primary reason you want to submit articles is to get links back to your site, but how are you formatting that link in the resource box? You want to have the anchor text of the links to be the keywords you're wanting to rank for, yes, but it's important that you don't have the same anchor text in every link.
Why? Because if the search engines see that every link to your site contains the exact same anchor text, it's a red-flag that your links were not acquired naturally. People don't always behave the same, and search engines know that it's statistically impossible that every single person who links to your site will use the same link text.
So be sure to vary your link text. I like to reinforce my main keywords while also optimizing for related keywords. For instance, if your site's primary keywords are "kitchen remodeling", you could use a variation like "kitchen remodeling tips" or "kitchen remodeling advice" or "how to remodel your kitchen".
Those anchor texts still help reinforce your ranking for your primary keywords since they contain your primary keywords (or variations), but they also help you rank for lesser terms–and it's the lesser terms that are the easiest to rank for.
So when submitting to article sites, be sure and vary your anchor text, using your primary keywords about 70% of the time. This is simple enough to accomplish: just change your resource box for each site that you submit to.
Submit Slowly to Avoid the Sandbox
There is one school of thought that Google and Yahoo both penalize links that appear too fast. They basically wait for months before actually applying the value of those links to your ranking. This is referred to in the search engine optimization world as "sandboxing".
As of right now, MSN (under it's new name, Live) does not sandbox links. So if you're looking to rank and get some traffic going quickly, getting a lot of links fast will pay off with MSN. You'll just have to wait a while before seeing much results in Google and Yahoo.
If you're trying to rank in Google or Yahoo as quickly as possible, and if you're a believer in the sandbox theory, then you're best bet is to submit to the article sites a little more slowly. Maybe only submit to a few a week. This will cause your links to build more "naturally" from the search engines point of view.
If You're Not a Sandbox Believer…
There are other schools of SEO thought that claim sandboxing doesn't exist at all. Their theory is that it just takes a long time for the algorithm updates to hit Google and Yahoo so that your links are counted. If they are correct, then it's still best to get as many links as possible as quickly as possible, and then just wait for them to be applied.
What I Believe
I tend to lean away from the Sandbox theory myself, but not because I have a lot of emperical evidence that it doesn't exist. It just seems illogical to me for search engines to sandbox links just because they appear quickly.
For example, let's say there's some big news event that happens regarding some web site, and suddenly thousands of links appear from every news site covering that sector. Would it make sense for the search engines to ignore all of those links just because they appeared quickly? It was natural that they appear quickly, since the event was unexpected.
So I tend to believe that it just takes a while to update the rankings for billions of web pages, and therefore the links don't kick in immediately.
Summing it All Up
Whatever your Sandbox beliefs are, you can see that your linking strategy needs to be analyzed before you start submitting to article sites. Take a few minutes to come up with the list of keywords you want to rank for. Try to get at least five or six sets of keywords into your article resource boxes. Don't put all of your keywords into one basket, so to speak.
Taking a little time to plan out your submission strategy could save you from wasting all of that time only to find that the search engines have ignored your links because they think they're "not natural".
Comments
13 Responses to “Article Submission for Search Engine Rankings”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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Good advice Jonathan, I've been planning to add some of my articles to free article sites, which ones do you recommend?
Thanks,
Donny
EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and ArticleCity.com are three important ones.
Jonathan,
By submitting your articles to these article submission sites, are you going to be penalized due to the duplicate content?
Thanks,
Brian
Brian,
I always recommend submitting your articles -after- they have already been indexed on your site by the major engines. That way the engines already know that the authority article is on your site. Then it's safe to submit them to the article sites to get links.
Great. Thanks for the tip/follow up.
Lessons learnt from this article:
1) Varying anchor text is good.
2) There are different schools of thought regarding the sandbox theory.
3) MSN has a new name (Live)
For such a short article, I'd say it was quite alot, so good job Jon!
Hi Jon,
I think that the most important problem with submit articles to articles directory is the duplicate content.
The best way to pick one way link with articles is to do your research for directories and websites that can accept your articles with linkback or buy one of the software in the market to help you.
I have written a few aricles in my blog, however, I m still waiting for them to be indexed by search engines. I can't wait anymore and while waiting, I also submit these articles to article directory as well, is this a good idea?
Great article! Now one thing comes to mind, according to what I have read in your article, all those article submitter programs are almost useless since they submit articles with only one anchor link text…
Another nice article directory is at website-articles.net. Not only are they an article directory, but they will proofread your articles for you for free. They are really strict, but they give you as many chances as you need to make your article "perfect."
Jonathan, a great article. Thank you for your valued opinion. I tend to agree with you on the sandbox theory.
Search engines would be stupid to ignore a site with links coming in very fast. It could be a sure sign of a site being popular and having great news — and Search engines want to bring their users news A.S.A.P.
So it's not so much in the speed of links appearing but rather the anchor text they contain. If it's the same on all pages there's obviously something "fishy" going on and a sign that a site didn't acquire the links naturally.
Like you said, I always have great results from MSN if I submit an article to multiple sites at once (using software). With Google and Yahoo! it sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.
I would also recommend rewriting each article for each site you submit it to. It's a lot of work, I know, but it pays out very well.
Have a great day!
Blaz
Jonathan,
Great info for marketing through articles. I strongly agree with you on the "google sandbox theory" and believe that articles should be submitted to one directory at a time. I know of a great article directory that carries alot of articles.
The free article directory is called http://www.articlesup.com
Hi Jonathon. I have been submitting my clickable links with a different search term as the hype-link each time.
I can tell you it works unbelievably well and fast.
I keep hearing people telling me that Google is hard to get listed on quickly but that just hasn't been my experience.
Great post as usual Jonathon.