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10 Best Places to Showcase Your Articles on the Web

(and the Shocking Fact that Most Article Bank Owners WON'T Tell You About Page Rank)

by Dina Giolitto

You've heard the rumors: article marketing takes home first prize for Most Effective Method of pushing your website into the direct view of millions of hot prospects. But there's one small problem. The web is positively teeming with article banks; and every time you submit, trying to predict where your articles will end up is a lot like playing Russian Roulette with your web business.

Here are the 10 best places to add your original, high-quality articles and get your website noticed by human beings who are willing to PAY for your services.

1. Your own website.

What the article directory owners don't really talk about much is this: every time you add a page of fresh content to YOUR OWN website, you get indexed again by the search engines. The more you're indexed, the higher YOUR WEBSITE climbs on Google. So it makes sense to add articles to YOUR website first.

This is the sole reason why so many people are throwing up junk sites and scooping up articles from anywhere they can get them. They want the page rank and AdSense clicks; and they're using YOUR quality article content to get those.

But if THEIR SITES look sloppy and unprofessional, YOU are going to look equally sloppy and unprofessional when they showcase your articles. It's your job to elbow these guys out of the rank running - and the best way to do that is to PUT YOUR OWN WEBSITE on article marketing growth hormones.

Do this:

1. Write and publish many, many original articles on YOUR WEBSITE.

2. Have your site professionally designed to perfection and ready with an "article section" that you can easily add page after page containing fresh, original articles positioning you as the subject authority you are.

Just remember, your website must look absolutely professional and prove totally functional before you can start indexing major content. NEVER attempt to add a huge catalog of articles to an amateurly-designed website... or you will find that just like those junk sites, you REPEL instead of attract potential customers.

2. Article banks with a PR of 6 or better.

We discussed your own "article page" in the previous example. I realize (because I've lived it) that not every new web business owner is ready to have an articles page. It takes time to get your website up to speed. Every time you "do it over," you're looking at hours and hours of work. Let the top article banks to "carry" your content out to the right eyes until you're strong enough to carry that content on your own.

This is what every new web business owner should be doing as a way to get their brand noticed by the masses. This is why the FIRST thing I ever did to start building my brand as a copywriter was to submit to top ranking article directories.

About page rank: it takes a couple of years for any website owner to achieve a page rank (or PR) of 5 out of 10. If you run a page rank check on an article bank and come up with 6 or 7, that's how you know these guys are truly in the business of article marketing.

You want to affiliate yourself with article banks that are professionally designed and feature actual human beings on staff who will assist you with your article marketing effort. As most of my readers know by now, my article directory of choice is Christopher Knight's EzineArticles.com. Submit to Chris, and watch your articles show up FIRST in Google keyword searches.

3. Your ezine.

Again, page rank is the name of the game. It's not enough to have an ezine where you write the occasional article and mostly just toss in random content you discovered while rummaging around on the 'net. You MUST have your own, original content. Write articles that brand YOU - and make your customers want MORE of what you have.

The biggest mistake I made, and that you should NEVER make, is to waffle around with your ezine. A poorly organized ezine cache, a format that keeps changing, lack of a good shopping cart system for info product purchases... these are all major issues that will prevent your ezine from doing its job: working to get you better page rank and acting as your chief sales vehicle, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

So make it your business to get that ezine in tip-top shape. Then, start writing original articles, shipping them email-direct to your readers, and later indexing those ezine pages so they can build your page rank just like the article section of your website.

4. Article banks where big-name marketers submit (and where you actually know the owner personally).

Sure, it's a smart idea to branch out with your article syndication effort. Just be sure that you're not wasting all your hard work on flash-in-the-pan article sites. Lots of folks are building article banks on a whim using that free Article Dashboard software that's being mass-distributed right now. I think their purpose may have something to do with the old instant-content-quick-Google-rank phenomenon, but if you want my HONEST opinion (and who doesn't? ;)), they're wasting their time and yours.

Be wary of small article directories who accept sub-par content and rarely if ever have an honest face representing their company. The big-league web marketers do not affiliate with piddly little websites, and neither should you if you ever plan to grow a pristine reputation for your web business.

Rather, keep your eye out for trustworthy sites where prominent web business owners are proud to showcase their work, participate in live forums and sell their information products. If your online colleague is starting a web article directory and seems to be going about it the right way, submit there. The idea is to be choosy with your submissions and go with who you know.

5. The ezines of your favorite web marketers.

If you have a particular marketer buddy whom you admire for their talent or forsee future collaborations with, swap articles with him or her. Think about it this way: you yourself have an audience of, say 500 targeted prospects to market to; your marketing pal may have another, oh, 600 or so. Slap that article under the noses of both audiences (hers and yours) and now you've more than doubled your exposure. Do this with TEN of your most trusted colleagues and... are you feeling the exponential power of article marketing?

6. Your online network.

When you run a network where intelligent life forms regularly converge, folks can relax and zero in on the information a little better than when they're just surfing about the web in aimless confusion. Suggest that article submissions become a part of the regular weekly routine. Offer fellow members the incentive to read the articles and pick up the content to use in their own ezines and article pages of their websites. Got 50 top quality content producers living on your favorite network? That's 50 chances for ONE article to get noticed by an impressively sized audience of legitimate businessmen and women!

7. Top ranked, niche-based websites who pay for original articles.

Shocker of the year, there are still honorable content-seekers out there who not only want fresh articles to enlighten their website audiences, but they will pay cash to publish your original written works. If article marketing turns you into an instant original content machine, then put that skill of speed-writing articles to even better use - make money with your skill.

Freelance writer Jenna Glatzer puts out a terrific ezine for aspiring freelance writers; it's called Absolute Markets and shares the names and contact details of tons of paying content-seekers in an assortment of categories. Sign up for Jenna's mailings at AbsoluteMarkets.com and AbsoluteWrite.com and tap the power of the paying freelance writer's market.

8. A free, downloadable ebook that you share with your ezine subscribers.

People who enjoy wasting time will write their free ebooks from scratch and then give them away for free to their audiences. If you're smart, you won't do that. You'll save the really brilliant content that's floating around in your head for original ebooks that you actually SELL as information products; and you'll repackage your existing articles into instant ebook giveaways.

Wouldn't someone who regularly reads your website content recognize that the articles in the ebook are the sames ones that you submitted to an ezine directory? Well... maybe, but more likely your visitors are too preoccupied with their own web content to be searching the web high and low for duplicates of your articles. Your best bet: be honest with your visitors and TELL THEM exactly where this content came from (or is going). Regardless of whether it's new or recycled, visitors are far more likely to ACTUALLY READ content that you package especially for them as opposed to hunting down your articles on the web.

If you really want to leverage the power of your articles, then offer them to your priority readers FIRST before you go mass-submitting. In all likelihood they have NOT read your web aritcles and will be thrilled for the personal gift in their inbox.

9. Your blog.

Okay, so far we've talked about submitting articles to quite a few different places on the web. Is it okay to take the same articles and also add them to your blog? Or is this a duplicate content concern?

First and foremost, your website is NOT going to be struck from the record for duplicate ARTICLES. The duped content that people refer to as the cardinal sin of web marketing refers to MIRRORED content that includes both images, layout and text. What *may* happen if you mass-submit one article many times over is that Google will "block" this article from showing up in a keyword search and the editors at the websites where you submit to might lose interest in accepting your work.

I'm no duplicate content expert, so if you're really concerned then go and do some additional research. But it would seem to me that timing counts for a lot on the internet. If you submitted 10 articles to the major directories in December and it's now July of the following year, can you add those same articles to your blog with no adverse effects? Well, I'd say odds are that this is a pretty safe practice that won't get you penalized by the search engines. In all likelihood, the same folks who you were preaching marketing gospel to last year are probably not hounding around your blog this year. So YES, pull out those old articles and put it in front of a fresh crop of new eyes by way of your blog. Don't forget to TAG your entries by topic and ping the blog indexes for the most targeted exposure.

10. Authority hub sites where folks go to "learn more."

One of my online colleagues is an About.com advisor. It wasn't luck of the draw that landed him this prestigious title. He went out and earned that righteous label for himself by writing articles and then promoting them to the right people. You, too, can do this with your articles. If you're truly an expert in a particular field and have the confidence, experience and writing ability to teach others what you know, then make a concerted effort to jump out of the box. Go on, break out. This is your calling! Fill a spot where an authority may be needed and where you can build a name for yourself in your particular niche.

Okay, now I must make a sheepish confession. I may have misled you a bit with the title of this article. Yes, this article is about article marketing and submissions, but it's also much more. You thought I'd be spitting out a list of websites, didn't you. Sorry... the "list" is ever-evolving and I can't in good conscience give you the name of more than THREE article sites that are truly in it for the long haul. Those are: EzineArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com, and Article-Seek.com. I do have some article directories listed on my Wordfeeder.com blog, but as with anything else out there, use them at your own risk!

I wrote this article because I want much more for you than just mindless content submissions to thousands of little no-name sites. You deserve better than that, for all your years of hard work and experience. "Rank" on the web isn't just about the search engines. "Rank" is about targeted human business prospects for you. The hierarchy of knowledge and expertise on the internet is very real, and I want you to move up the ladder to the top of your category.

So, are you in it to win it? Then go forth and write articles.

Copyright 2006 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

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