Publishing articles is a tremendous way to generate links to your site. There are now thousands of article directories, so which should you submit your articles to?

Which Article Directories Should You Submit To?

Just so we are clear, an article directory is a site that accepts articles on a wide variety of subjects. Webmasters, bloggers and so on then go to these directories to find content for their sites. When they republish your article, they are supposed to include your byline. You should have a link to your site in the byline. This process increases the link count for your site for search engine optimization purposes and also can generate traffic directly if people click on your link to visit your site.

In the old days [two years ago], there were relatively few article directories. You could pick out five to ten and pretty much hit a large audience of webmasters. Alas, people started noticing the directories were getting a lot of traffic and making a lot of money off of the advertisements on the sites. Suddenly, new directories started appearing and the choice of sites to publish your articles on grew dramatically.

For better or worse, one site was directly responsible for this exponential growth. The folks at Article Dashboard started giving away their site platform for free. Anyone could start an article directory by following some basic steps. Suddenly, the number of article directory sites went from a relatively small number to thousands upon thousands. There is nothing wrong with this, but it created a problem.

Once you have written articles, you must submit them. This takes time. As the number of directories increased dramatically, submitting became a much bigger pain in the butt. I actually hired someone to do it for me. Eventually, programmers realized this problem was actually an opportunity. Sites started popping up where you could pay for a program that would automatically submit to thousands of sites for you or you could pay a monthly fee and they would do it for you. The quality of these various services and programs is mixed. Some love them, some don't.

I write articles to promote a ton of sites. Some articles are written for my search engine optimization clients and some are written for my own sites. Submitting is a big problem for me. After trying to hit every article directory for a year or so, I started rethinking the process. Personally, I have decided to stick with a few big directories and leave it at that. Why? Well, I just don't think most directories get a lot of traffic. People are creatures of habit. If they find what they want at a site, they tend to stick with it. Since most of the bigger directories are put together well, I tend to stick with them. I think most people looking for content do as well.

So, what directories do I use? Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Article City, Article Dashboard, Idea Marketers for certain niche subjects and that is about it. I used to use Isnare, but they are really slow now. I also loved Article Alley, but it seems to have gone in the crapper as well. In sticking with these major directories, I have saved time and still accomplish what I need to do.

Before you get all riled up, I realize there are other major directories. Everyone has sites they like and I am no different. This article is not intended to promote certain directories. It is written to convey the idea that you do not need to publish articles in EVERY article directory on the face of the web.