I have had a lot of questions fired at me about which is the best article directory ever made, so I thought it was necessary to set the record straight and reply to those questions here today. With hundreds of article websites around and so many different criteria to assess an article website by, it can be tricky choosing the perfect one to use.
Serious article marketers remember that the best option is to use more than one so your eggs are never all in one basket, but selecting your ideal article directory is critical to doing well in article marketing and internet marketing.
In order to identify the best ezine article directory there are several factors that should be weighed up. It would be impossible to categorically state which factor is the most critical and it would be easy to overlook one set of criteria when another looks so good on paper. Perhaps the best idea is to take a balanced approach and give each factor an even weighting or consideration, and assess each ezine article directory on a case by case basis.
First of all, it is important that an article website has good brand recognition. It should be well indexed and listed in some web directories, search engines and portal sites across the web. If you do a google search on the website name or domain name you should get a high number of results. This means the website has a good web presence and is well indexed.
The second important factor in choosing the ideal ezine article website is the amount of traffic the site receives. There is little point intaking the time to write great articles and then submit them to an ezine article directory that receives little or no traffic, as your articles may sit around unread and unloved. Choosing a directory with good traffic means your articles will be read over and over again, leading to more clicks on your links and better overall success with your campaigns. Even if you are not using your articles to generate sales leads you still want them to be read by as many people as possible, right?
So how do you judge the traffic ranking for any website? There are a number of simple ways but one of the simplest free ways is to check the Alexa ranking. Visit Alexa.com and enter the name or URL of the website you want to check. The resulting Alexa Traffic Rank will give you an fair indication of how much traffic the ezine article website receives when compared to all other websites on the web.
With the number of websites on the net approaching 500 million, you can be sure that any site in the top million is receiving more traffic than most of the rest. When choosing the most suitable article website, look for one that has an Alexa ranking in the top 100,000. Sites outside that figure can still have a good level of traffic, and are still likely to get lots of visitors per month, but you want to maximise the results from your efforts, so you should give yourself every advantage possible. A site ranking in the top 50,000 will be receiving even more traffic which again will result in a huge number of people reading your articles and clicking your links.
Another important factor to consider is that of cost. Some websites charge a monthly or annual fee for membership or for access to some of their services. The best article sites do not do that. All services and membership privileges should be totally free, with no hidden costs and no credit card required to sign up. How can they offer a totally free service? Well, the answer is by having low overheads and by making a modest income through selling advertising space. By keeping their service free they encourage authors to submit more articles so the overall result is better rankings, more traffic and more people reading your articles and clicking your links. This creates an absolute win-win situation.
It is also a good idea to think about global exposure. You want readers from all over the world to read your articles and click your links in order to get the best results from your campaigns. Great article websites will feature on search engines, web directories and portals right across the web and all around the world. In addition, the best article directories have translators hard coded into the website, so your articles can be read instantly in a number of other languages, making them the perfect choice when you want the maximum number of people reading your articles as possible.
Another vital factor in selecting the best article directory is the amount of time it takes for your articles to be approved once you submit them. Some article sites can take days or even weeks to approve your articles, which can set your campaigns back and even derail them completely. Your article directory should have a 24 hour approval policy. This is a vital feature and is one of the critical points when you need your articles live as soon as possible.
Once your articles have been approved, you obviously want them to be indexed quickly right across the web so people can start reading them and clicking your links. It is pointless to submit articles to article sites that do not get indexed effectively. A good article site uses a number of automated pinging techniques that guarantee the fastest and most effective possible indexing in the major search engines. In addition, the RSS feeds from those sites should be automatically fed to the major RSS feed aggregators, which will result in even more exposure for your articles.
Your article directory needs to be reliable. A lot of article sites suffer from being run on web servers that simply cannot cope with the volume of articles and traffic they receive. Ideally they should be run on high powered servers specifically designed and built to handle extraordinary loads.
There are so many other factors that determine the most suitable article website - we have only begun to scratch the surface. Look for one that covers all the bases, such as brand recognition, web traffic, return on investment, article exposure, article approval time, web indexing, longevity and reliability and server uptime. Then and only then will you have identified the best ezine article directory for your article marketing and internet marketing campaigns.
Author Resource:-
Michael Nunn writes for a number of blog columns and editorials for several syndicates and companies. You can read more of his articles at Ezine Pro Articles - the best article directory on the net.
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