Are Articles Or Directory Submissions Better For Building Links?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 Comments (4)

A reader asked me a question in a recent blog comment, so I decided to write a blog post about this topic. The question was: When it comes to link building, which is better: Articles or directory submissions?

Before we answer that question, let’s answer a more fundamental question: Why do you need links in the first place?

Links are important for a couple of reasons. First, they are a method of driving traffic to your website and to build and increase your online trust factor. In fact, place enough links in all the right places and you can drive targeted traffic to your most important web pages. Secondly, links are good for offsite search engine optimization purposes. All the major search engines base their ranking algorithms in part on link analysis. The most sophisticated of the link analysis algorithms is Google’s. The largest search engine on the Web judge link quality on factors such as anchor text relevance, PageRank of the linking page, link age, page relevance, diversity of link sources, and several other factors. Get the right mix of links and you can watch your page rankings go from mediocre to good or good to great in a short time.

So what is better for building links? Directory submissions or articles?

One way to think about this is to ask yourself which of these is better equipped to deliver you links that meet one or more of the above-mentioned criteria. Directory submissions, if done correctly, can deliver great link juice based on domain age, page age, and link age, relevance factors, and several other factors important to link analysis. But it’s only one link. One article, however, has the potential to do all of the above more than once. In fact, one article has the potential to build more solid links over time than 100 directory submissions. And if you multiply the potential by 100 articles at 100 directories, well, you can see the potential multiply exponentially. Either way, I normally recommend submitting your website to the top online directories and even industry/association specific directories. For article submission, eZine is great and also writing for industry specific websites/blogs is another great way to place your articles, increase visitors and highly relevant link popularity.

Directory submissions is a one-time thing. You submit and your done. The only real numbers aspect of it to think about it how many directory submissions you want to make. The more you do the better your chances of building solid links. Articles, on the other hand, are more effective is you maintain a consistent submission pace over a period of time. But because one article has more potential long-term in building the right links in the right places than a hundred, or a thousand, directory submissions, I’m going to have to fall down on the article side on this one.

Comments (4)                      Category: Link Building                      

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