Article marketing is a great way to build backlinks to your site and can also help drive traffic. Submitting your content to hundreds of article directories, blogs and web 2.0 sites is very time consuming. Automated article submission tools let you submit your content to hundreds of different sites simultaneously or on a schedule you set.
Article Backlinks using anchor text embedded in unique content on the same topic as the page being linked to and ideally from a website or at least a section of the website on the same topic as the page being linked to are some of the best links you can get. An automated content distribution service is an essential part of any good article marketing strategy.
There are three basic types of content distribution tools based on where they submit articles to. Automated article distribution tools syndicate content to three basic places, in order of effectiveness of the backlinks:
- Blogs
- Web 2.0 sites
- Article directories
Link diversification is important so ideally you distribute content to all of the above sites. There are free tools to distribute content to the above sites and there are paid services. The free versions work just fine but the paid versions have more features and provide more links. An article distribution system is the best SEO investment you can make.You are better off witting and spinning your own articles (use a free article spinner) so you can afford a content distribution service.
Comments
- Take advantage of free trials and money back guarantees. They are basically offering you free backlinks. Have a bunch of spun articles ready before you sign up so you can use the trial period to distribute your articles.
- Different blog network distribution services work better for certain niches. One of the benefits of blog distribution networks is that your content gets posted to blogs that are related to your topic. However, if a network doesn’t have many blogs in your niche or their quality is not that great you may be better off using a different service.
- If you have been using a service for awhile you may want to switch services to add additional domain and IP diversity to your backlinks. Especially if you are in a very specialized niche with limited blogs in your niche.
- If you are just getting started and have limited money to invest use the free services and work up to the pay-as-you-go services until you can afford they pay services. They really are worth it. I recommend starting with Article Marketing Robot which has a one-time fee and is quite powerful.
Blog Network Distribution Tools
The best blog distribution networks consist of sites owned by the distribution service because they have a vested interest in maintaining the quality of the sites in their network. Other blog networks consist of user submitted blogs (the distribution service provides them with a constant flow of free, unique content). Blog owners generally have the ability to accept or reject content from the distribution service. This is good because it keeps the quality of the blogs high. Blogs in the networks are typically niche sites so you get relevent backlinks from sites on the same topic as your site.
PAID SERVICES
Unique Article Wizard EDITOR’S CHOICE
Unique Article Wizard (UAW) is the gold standard of blog distribution networks. It has close to 20,000 blogs in their network (it also has some article directories) and most are of good quality. The number of backlinks you can get from an article depends on the topic of your article and how tightly you want the blogs your articles are posted to be related to your niche (more relevant backlinks). It is not uncommon to get 800+ backlinks from a single article submission. You can control the pace that your articles are distributed so you can get a steady flow of backlinks.
If you can’t afford UAW now, earning enough to be able to afford it should be your goal. It will pay for itself if you use it.They use a unique system to generate unique content (i.e., they don’t use spin tax) and it works. UAW is the secret weapon of many internet marketers and article marketers. Submitting one article to UAW is often enough to dominate a long-tail keyword. It’s almost not fair.
They offer a 30 day, no questions asked money back guarantee so why not write a bunch of articles, then sign up for a month and submit your articles during the first month. At the end of the 30 days cancel if you want but all your backlinks (many thousands) will stay.
Build My Rank
A little different than other distribution networks in that they focus on quality over quantity. They will publish each article to only 1 site (PR 1 – PR7) – all sites are owned by Build My Rank. You can distribute up to 10 links per day. With fewer, high quality, links to manage you can easily build backlinks to these backlinks to really juice them up. In fact, Build My Rank does some of this for you automatically. They create RSS feeds with your articles in them and submit them to RSS directories and bookmark your articles of over 75 social bookmark sites and web 2.0 sites.
Minimum article length is 150 words and you can include one link for every 150 words in an article. I suggest writing more than 150 words per article to provide more content for Google to use to determine the theme of the article and to help it remain indexed. You cannot submit spun versions of the same article. This is actually a good thing because it preserves the quality of their sites. Because their sites continually have unique content added to them frequently and have decent page rank articles are indexed quickly and have a good chance of sticking. This is a great service, especially if you have a site with a lot of low quality backlinks that needs a boost.
You can get 10 free backlinks without giving them a credit card so give it a try, you have nothing to loose and the backlinks stay for ever.
LinkVana
Many top marketers swear by LinkVana. It lets you distribute snippets of content (shorter than articles) across its network of blogs. LinkVana controls the blogs in its network and is focused on quality sites with Page Rank, backlinks and domain age. In fact, they monitor their sites and stop posting snippets to them if their authority starts to slip. They add 50 to 100 sites each month so their is a constant flow of new blogs to post to.
This a high end blog network and they have taken a lot of precautions to maintain its integrity and the integrity of sites their customers are linking to. This is not a cheap service but if you need lots of quality automated backlinks this is the service for you.
Article Ranks
A very good blog network with fairly high content standards. Has a flexible pricing plan with 3 options: 1) Free — add a site (must be PR 1 or higher) and recieve credits for every article you accept on your blog. Credit can be used to distribute articles to the network. 2) Pay-as-you-go — pay $2 for every article you distribute. 3) Monthly fee – distribute unlimited articles and includes some upgraded features.
Sign up and use coupon code 77e30d280e11b2fc04c6951a5f371804 to receive 5 free credit – a $10 value good for up to 750 backlinks.
Blog BluePrint
Highly regarded blog distribution network from Tim Godfrey and Steven Clayton, two of the top internet marketers out there. I have used some of their products and they are always professional, well laid out and easy to use. Many article marketers are big fans of this article submitter. It is comparable to LinkVana in many of its features (it uses snippets and all blogs are PR3 – PR 5) but is probably a little less effective (possibly because it is newer) but it costs quite a bit less. A few hundred links, which could easily be achieved in a couple months, from PR 3 – PR 5 websites is more than enough to put a website to the top of the search engines for most low competition niches and basically any long-tail searches.
SEO LinkVine
A new and large blog network owned by Brad Callen. Brad is very well know and regarded in internet marketing circles (his other products include SEO Elite and Keyword Elite) so this was a much anticipated service when it launched. However, many users have complained about the quality of the blogs in the network and the lack of results they experienced. May be best to let this one mature for awhile.
1 Way Links
This blog network consists of about 7,000 blogs submitted by members (members must add a blog to the network). You can specify how many blogs each article you submit is posted to. Each article can have a maximum of 3 backlinks. You get 250 credits each month that lets you distribute your articles to up to 250 blogs. If you have 3 links in each article you can get 750 links per month. Articles are posted at a rate of 0-9 per day. It is only $7 for the first month so that is less than $.01 link which is a pretty good deal.
Content Crooner
Blog distribution network with some nice features that make this more of a long term link building tool. You can schedule it to distribute your articles up to a year in advance and when new blogs are added to the network your articles get posted to those. It also has some nice social media components. If you are not getting the results you want with other networks you might want to give this distribution system a try.
Submit Your Article
Actually distributes your content to blogs, article directories, ezines and announcement lists. It doesn’t submit articles to a huge number of article directories like some the tools in the article directory distribution tools section below but you sort of get 2 tools in 1 which is nice. You have to set up accounts at the article directories (the tools below will do this automatically) and enter the log in information into your account. It has some nice distribution scheduling features. For some niches the ezine distribution could be a great feature.
My Article Network
Big network of over 10,000 blogs but not as good as some of the others.
Article Marketing Automation
Popular blog network of user added blogs. Over 10,000 blogs in their network.
PAY-AS-YOU-GO SERVICES
Spin Distribute EDITOR’S CHOICE
Pay as you go blog distribution network. A great alternative to the expensive membership blog networks with a monthly fee. Submits unique versions of your articles to 800+ blogs for just a few dollars each.
Article Ranks
See comments above.
FREE SERVICES
EZ Article Link EDITOR’S CHOICE
Blog distribution network that has a really good free service. To use the free service you have to add a blog to their network. For every blog you add (a “Standard” blog) you can add a “Post Only” blog that does not get articles posted to it. You can only link to one of the domains you have added (Standard or Post Only) to the system (the pad version allows other links). They have a built in spinner that is decent and some rules that help ensure your anchor text is varied. Each free article submission get distributed to over 150 blogs with one link per blog. The service automatically builds backlinks to all your articles which adds link juice helps ensure they remain indexed.
Most networks post to a blog via the XML-RPC protocol in WordPress which is as simple as checking the “enable” box in your WordPress admin panel. Their network requires a little more setup but they have some videos to help. You have to provide a link on your home page to the directory that articles are posted in but once a blog has been approved (takes about a day) I have removed the link without any issues.
Articles are automatically posted to your Standard blog, you don’t get the option to accept or reject them link other networks. However, this hasn’t seemed to have much of an impact. I bought a .info domain to use as my Standard blog and just through some content on it that I had on a Blogger.com blog in the same niche. Within a few months this blog was ranking on page 1 or 2 for a moderate competition keyword without any promotion. I have posted 4 articles to EZ Article Link linked to this blog along with some other SEO work and it now has several #1 rankings and earns over $100 a month in Amazon and Adsense revenue combined. Hopefully a lot more once I get my page 2 ranking to page 1 for a keyword with 5 times the search volume (15K exact match, 98K broad match) as the terms it is ranked #1 for.
Free Traffic System
Free web based service that includes and article spinner and submits your articles to blogs in their network related to your content. The free version submits your content to 30 blogs. A really nice free service.
Article Ranks
See comments above
Article Directory Distribution Tools
PAID SERVICES
Article Marketing Robot EDITOR’S CHOICE
This distribution service features a one-time fee that is an absolute bargain for what it does. It automatically registers and verifies accounts for you and submits a unique version of your content to thousands of article directories. The directories are not of the highest quality (not the product’s fault – there aren’t that many high PR article directories out there) but what it lacks in quality it more than makes up for in quantity and speed.
Since the article directories are not the highest quality there is no guarantee your content will indexed but Article Marketing Robot provides a list of all the URL’s of you articles so you can backlink them or otherwise try to get them indexed (Backlink Energizer, Backlink Index Express, RSS feeds, etc.). With so many backlinks so easy to get this is a great way to get backlinks to your web 2.0 properties, videos, whatever. This thing is a monster and has tons of raving fans to prove it. They offer a 5 day free trial so spin a bunch of articles, sign up for the trial and submit a ton of articles over those 5 days and sit back and wait. If it worked buy it, if not you got a bunch of free backlinks.
Magic Article Submitter
Another great article directory distribution program. This was the king of the hill until Article Marketing Robot came out. Has over 700 article directories to post to and you can schedule distribution by day of the week and time. From the maker of Magic Article Re-Writer and you can often get a deal if you buy both. I use both of these and the are excellent. Not as many directories as Article Marketing Robot but its about half the price.
Mass Article Control
This program takes different approach than the two above. The two above syndicate content to massive quantities of primarily low quality article directories. Mass Article Control distributes your content to 10 high quality article directories. This is a nice complement to the products above to get some backlinks from some higher quality article directories. Comes with Mass Article Creator – a decent article spinner.
FREE SERVICES
Article Submitter
Free software submits your content to 100′s of article directories
Semi-Automated Distribution
See my semi-automated article distribution system post.
Web 2.0 Distribution
The following software programs do a lot more than just syndicate content to web 2.0 sites. These products are automated SEO programs at their finest. They are more like all in one link building and SEO machines. They aren’t cheap many people swear by their ability to dominate low competition with nothing more than one these software programs.They are tremendous time savers but the learning curve can be steep.
They are all slightly different in what they do but generally they include most of the following services: account creation (web 2.0, article directories, social bookmarking), posting to web 2.0 sites, posting to article directories, video distribution, WPMU subdomain creation and posting, social bookmarking, RSS feed creation and submission, pinging and forum profile creation and posting.
Many offer free trial periods so take advantage of that and give these a try. The trial period is perfect to see which interface you prefer and if they help your sites.
WordPress Plugins
The following Worpress plugins automatically syndicate your blog posts to web 2.0 sites.
Slick Social Pro
Automatically distributes your blog posts to web 2.0 sites. This is a paid plugin but if you value the ability to have your content syndicated to web 2.0 sites automatically the cost might be worth it. Web 2.0 sites change their log-in procedures regularly which means that any tool that automatically logs into these sites has to be modified. Don’t expect time updates to free tools.
WP Syndicator
Automatically distributes your blog posts to 15 web 2.0 sites. This is a paid plugin but if you value the ability to have your content syndicated to web 2.0 sites automatically the cost might be worth it. Web 2.0 sites change their log-in procedures regularly which means that any tool that automatically logs into these sites has to be modified. Don’t expect time updates to free tools.
Posterize
Posterize is a free WP plugin that will update your posterous account each time you update your blog. You can then have posterous syndicate the post or posts updates to other web 2.0 and social networking accounts such as: Statusphere, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Plurk, Identica, Blogs, Tumblr, Livejournal, Shopify, Typepad, Xanga, WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip.tv, Scribd, Squarespace
Cross Press
CrossPost is a free WP plugin that will automatically post your blog updates to other sites/blogs to that allow posting-via-email. Examples include: multiply.com, livejournal.com, blogspot.com or even other wordpress-based sites
| Posterize is a free WP plugin that will update you posterous account each time you update your blog. You can then tell posterous to update other social networking accounts such as: Statusphere, Facebook, Facebook Page, Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Plurk, Identica, Blogs, Blogger, Tumblr, Livejournal, Shopify, Typepad, Xanga, WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Other blog, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip.tv, Scribd, WordPress, Typepad , Movable Type, Xanga, Squarespace Xanga |
