What Makes An Article Directory A Great Place To Submit

Seems like every where you turn, someone is creating yet another article directory begging you to submit your articles to them. The only person you are helping by submitting your content to newbie article directories are the article directory owners themselves - because they are too new to have any traffic yet to give back to you in exchange for your valuable time.

Here's a checklist to help you determine if an article directory is worth your time to submit to or not:

[ ] Have they been in business for more than a year? Bonus points for those that have been in business for 5 or more years. Directories that are less than 6 months old are often still in the sandbox yet, meaning they don't have any traffic traction.

[ ] Can you figure out within 10 seconds of surfing their site who actually owns or is in charge of the site? Article directory owners that hide themselves from the public should be a sign that they don't want to be found.

[ ] Do they respond within 24-48 hours of your email requests? Did your email to them bounce back undeliverable?

[ ] Does the article directory have more than 1,000-5,000 authors listed? Sites with less than 1,000 authors are still cutting their teeth on being a directory owner.

[ ] Does it appear that the article directory was built with article bot scraped content? You can easily tell by looking for the unconverted MS word smartquotes within articles that are listed on the site. There is no honor in having your articles side by side of scraped content.

[ ] Is the article directory human powered vs. fully automated? Any article directory that is fully automated is usually a sign that the owner doesn't intend to police the quality of the content.

[ ] Do they provide RSS feeds, email alerts, forward to a friend function and other strategies to increase the distribution of your articles? Do they have thousands of members of their own double opt-in mailing lists to promote your articles?

[ ] Are they responsible with the advertising clients they have on their site? ie: No popups, no exit pops, no ?punch the monkey' ads?

[ ] Do they provide article reports to help you see which articles are getting traction or not?

[ ] Service based mentality: Do they have it or not?

[ ] Bottom line: After you've submitted to the article directory, does it generate traffic back to your site or not? Do you find your article distributed to other niche websites or do your articles get picked up by email newsletter publishers?

The reason you make your articles available for syndication is because you want to improve your targeted web traffic, enhance your credibility, drive leads to your products, grow your email list and more!

Unfortunately, you don't have unlimited time in your day to submit your articles to every newbie article directory that begs for your attention. Prioritize the best article sites that meet or exceed the above criteria to help determine which ones should get your valuable attention. It is better to submit 100 articles to a top quality article directory or niche site than it is to submit (1) article to 100 directories.