Submitting articles to article directories was a long time established practice for gaining one-way inbound links, and here’s the way it used to work…
There are thousands of new webpages and websites being added every day to the Internet, and not everyone has the time to write their own content. Many sites are being put together merely for informational purposes, and to show advertising, and those websites need content.
Article directories provide information about targeted subjects, and they are filled with thousands of articles written by contributing authors. Licensing agreements with those directories allow for webmasters to reprint those articles in their entirety, as long as they provide a link back to the directory, and include the authors “resource box”.
An author resource box will include a little bit about the author, a little bit about the authors website, and a link back to the authors website. In the old days, the link back to the author’s website used to include “anchor text” for which the author wanted to be found.
As those articles were picked up for syndication and reprinted on other websites, the resource box for the author became another inbound link for the author’s website. This used to be one of the most effective ways of gaining inbound links, but like any effective practice for search engine marketing, webmasters abused the system.
By 2009, most of the directories were flooded with poorly written articles designed for no purpose other than building link. Inferior article directories sprang up that served absolutely no purpose other than to spread low quality content with the hopes of building inbound links, and we stopped even dabbling in this practice by the end of 2011.
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