Article Directories

There are many article directories. The way they work is that you write something that’s, say, 300 to 500 words in length and you post it on the directory, including a link back to your site. Your article is then available for others to download and post on their own sites, either for free or by paying a fee. Users agree that if they post your article, they’ll include the link to your site.

Article directories are promoted as a good way to get additional links to your site. Indeed, at one time this was a good way to get links to your site and boost your position in search engine results.

Google’s Warning

Matt Cutts of Google’s search engine team has recently posted a video about article directories. He says that increasingly, Google is finding that a lot of the material in article directories is of low quality, and replicating to other Web sites results in low quality in lots of places.

He adds that Google has “algorithmic features” so that this practice would not be recommended as a way to improve your position in search engine results.