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One of the most universal pieces of advice you will hear about driving traffic to your site is to write an article and submit it to one of the big repository sites like Ezine. There are a handful of submission sites that are the biggest publishers, but a lot of smaller ones as well. Depending on the advice, you should submit to one or submit to all. You put a link to your website at the bottom of your article and wait for the traffic to flow in.

The purpose of these sites is to offer reprint articles that other websites can pick up and republish. In theory, this outlet for promotion is a good thing. Ezine, for instance, requires that any active link in your article or bio remains an active link if republished. So, in fact, you could begin at no cost to you to build one way links to your website in order to beef up your pagerank. Also, if someone comes across your article on another site, you are still receiving credit, and possibly targeted traffic.

It does work, if in smaller doses than you might be led to believe, but like anything in the affiliate marketing business, it comes with some considerations.

1) Where does the article go?

The problem, of course, is that Ezine's terms of service (which mandate the article is republished intact with active links) are virtually unenforceable. So sites can republish your article without active links, change a few words around so that the article is nonsense, or omit your byline altogether. And it happens a lot. Sites whose sole purpose is to drive traffic to its own advertising aren't as worried about quality control as they are about keyword density and SEO. Over time, your article will end up plastered on some of very strange, unappealing websites. Sites that are seemingly beyond any real purpose. Sometimes, your article is just the lead, and an active link points to the Ezine article page instead of your own website. Sometimes, the live links are removed but the article itself is intact. (Either of these are preferable because they don't mangle your article at least.) And other times, a bot lifts the article, republishes it with words changed or missing and it reads like a foreign language.

That other publishers seemingly can't, or are unwilling to follow the rules is frustrating. By posting the article on Ezine, you are giving them permission to republish the article anywhere on the web. All they have to do is leave the article completely intact.

Upon further consideration, it makes even less sense for them than that. Google and other major search engines take into account the quality and originality of a site in its pagerank, and furthermore, give you higher credit for a link from a quality site than one that is unranked or low ranking. Put those two rules together, and that means that almost no one will ever find these rip-off sites that steal and mutilate your article (and thus, no harm to you) and furthermore, the fact that these sites exist and are linking to you shouldn't make a dent in your traffic one way or another.

2) Is it better to publish the article yourself?

This is a question of leverage. Does you get more benefit from the exposure of posting elsewhere than you do on your own site?

Take our example again, posting to Ezine. You get wide exposure on a popular site, links back to your own site (Ezine, at least, lets you have three live links in your bio.) And Ezine's high pagerank can have a positive impact on your own pagerank.

But the other component is the amount of original content on your site. Content that is both high quality and only exists on your site. Forget about how much original content you need in order to satisfy Google's ranking system. Think about it this way: without original content, what exactly is the draw of your website? If the basis of your website is product driven, then the focal point of your site is the products themselves. However, if your site is article driven, like a professional blog, then it is the unique content that drives traffic to your site, and brings them a second and third time.

There is no ideal formula for how many sites to submit to these websites, and how many to keep exclusively on your own site. The best way to find a good balance is to conceptualize the reason you submitting your site. Is it for exposure? Backlinks? Or to blanket the web with a certain article of yours? Once you know why you're doing it, it will be easier to decide how often.

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Comments to date: 1. Page 1 of 1.

mike	Posted at 10:42pm on Friday, March 14th, 2008
thanks, good ideas displayed

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