Which Article Directories are still relevant?

[MasonInteractive]

Hi,

I know Article Directories are not valued as high as they once were and many took a hit from Google. But are there any Article Directories that are still worth posting content on?

Thanks!

[DesignbysoapLtd]

Hi Tony,

In my personal opinion, no. The benefit gained from article marketing directories are minimal anyway, and they just put you on potentially dodgy ground for the future. Instead of investing time and effort producing fairly low quality content for these kind of platforms, spend your time producing high quality, unique content and promoting it, and allow that to do the link-building for you.

The content marketing strategy will not only ensure that you have something of real value on your site, but it is a much more viable long-term strategy and far more secured against future algorithm updates.

I understand the temptation to opt for the easier link-building routes, but honestly you're far better served putting in the effort and producing something of real value and quality and using that as a conduit for link acquisition. I would always rather gain one strong, relevant and valuable link than gain a hundred low quality links with questionable relevancy.

If you need a hand getting started with content production, link-building and content promotion, I'd give these posts a read:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indepth-guide-to-content-creation-with-infographic

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-the-maximum-number-of-links-from-your-infographic

Hope that helps answer your question Tony - of course it's just my opinion, but it's the approach we use for our clients and we consistently see good results, so hopefully you can do the same for your website.

[DanDeceuster]

Finding relevant article directories is very easy. Simply go to Google and search your keyword + articles. For example, if your niche is widgets, search widget articles in Google and see what comes up.

What you will find are generally sites that contain articles related to your niche. Google obviously values these sites if they are ranking them so highly.

You will usually find a bunch of sites that don't accept just any author and that's fine. Some you will find you can apply or register to become an author. There you can produce an article to be published.

Just some tips though, always include internal links in your article. So few article directories do this and that's why articles get dinged. Find some relevant articles on the domain to link to. Also, link out externally to more than just your website. That makes for a good article with natural links, one of them being to you.

I wouldn't spend too much time on this, but if you could find a relevant article site each week and get a decent article posted on it, that's pretty good.