Over the past 24 months the number of article submission sites has exploded. And with it, so have the services and programs that will submit articles to hundreds of places. More and more Web site owners are using this method and most are doing it wrong. It’s going to cost them.

Quick Recap

If you’re not familiar with this style of article marketing, here’s how it works. After writing an article, you attach your bio—also called a signature—with a couple links to your site(s). You then take this article and submit it to an article submission website, such as Goarticles.com and Ezinearticles.com.

The idea is that other site owners will need your content, will use it and will give you free links in return.

Time Tested

I’ve been using content as a marketing vehicle since the mid-90s—well before the current article submission craziness.

Over the past few years, I’ve tested many methods. I’ve tracked all sorts of data.

I felt that it was important to tell you this, so you don’t think I’m just some guy who submitted a couple articles one day some summer on a whim.

Complete Junk

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Most article submission Web sites are complete garbage. They aren’t worth the time of day.

Most of them are nothing more than database collections. Sure, you can get your article listed there, but if there’s no real traffic, no webmaster traffic, no link value, and no owner promotion, what’s the point?

Wasting Money

If you want to waste money, go out and buy software to submit to hundreds of these places or pay someone to do it.

Those links are almost all worthless. Since most of these sites have no real site owner activity—and by that I mean site owners coming to get free content—your article just sits there. Do you think having a link on a site full of duplicate content that’s not registering with big G (Google) is worth it?

Misguided

Often I’ll see webmasters claim that article submissions helped get their site from PR 0 to PR 4/5—Page Rank is a Google term.

However, it doesn’t take much work to achieve those results and I’ve done it on sites without article submission and without working much.

The Funny Reality

Maybe it’s a bit ironic, but in the pursuit of building a better site, you’re knocking it down by submitting the same article to hundreds of article submission places.

Duplicate content aside, do you think it looks natural for your site to get linked to by hundreds of sites overnight? Unless you have a well-aged, well-known site, no it doesn’t. And anything that’s not natural hurts you.

Smart and Successful Article Marketing

I’ve got a much better way to do things, and I will share it with you. Using article submissions can work, but it needs to be done right.

Stay tuned to the Content Tycoon blog. I’ll be back with my quick, easy and inexpensive article marketing strategy.