Submitting to niche article sites : Is it worth it?

The key to success for your site on the internet is linkbuilding. Increasing the number of incoming links to your site will aid promotion through the Search Engine rankings and, hopefully, draw some traffic of it's own.

After directory submission, writing articles is probably the next best free solution. Some may even say it is a better proposition. Now, with all the article submission sites around (here's a list if you need it - Article Sites) why would you need to consider a niche article site?

The answer is very similar to the advantages of finding niche directories. Visitors to niche article sites are looking for the specific content found there and are more likely to follow the link in your article than if they found it a general article site.

Take a look at EgyptBc.com, for example. There's some interesting content there that is growing daily which attracts search engine visitors. A great many of these people are likely to look at the visitor submitted articles when they have finished with the site's main content.

If you have a history or travel related site it should be fairly easy to write an article related to the topic of this site. Enter your url at the end and you have a good chance of attracting some quality traffic.

Of course you don't have to stop there, a niche article will still fit in well at a general site too, such as Article Depot, my personal favoutite.

In conclusion, I would say submit your articles to the big, general sites to gain link popularity and some small traffic. For better quality traffic, try niche article sites that match your site's theme.

Promote your site through Niche Directories.

Maybe you are a Doctor or a lawyer. You've built an excellent web site that looks good, has the potential to make huge sales and is well optimised for the search engines. You have arranged a large number of reciprocal links, you have submitted to all the free directories you could find and submitted articles wherever you could. Now it's time to sit down, relax and wait for the traffic to come flooding in? NO.

As the internet expands it is becoming harder and harder for even the most excellent of web sites to rank well with the search engines. These days it would appear that getting a large number of quality backlinks, with good anchor text, is not a do once and forget operation. Your competitors are out there building links daily so you must keep up.

With the huge and growing number of people online looking for goods and services amongst the mass of related websites, niche directories are coming into play.

Niche directories are usually much smaller and have far fewer listings than regular paid directories and are almost without doubt a lot slimmer than the mass of free directories on the internet. As a webmaster, this is great news as it makes gaining a good, relevant and visible link to your site a lot easier. For visitors, your potential customers, a niche directory offers a handy way of finding what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Although there may be a small cost in submitting to niche directories, their benefit to your site can potentially be huge, offering far greater ROI than, say, a Yellow pages advert or more expensive advertising on a large web site in your genre.

If you feel it is time to gain a Niche Listing for your site then here is a handy categorised list of Niche Directories

DMOZ editors - Does absolute power corrupt absolutely?

DMOZ editors are supposed to be professionals in the category that they choose to edit and review. They are also supposed to have high standards when it comes to giving the general public quality websites with content that pertains to the category in which they are editing. But, is this really the case or does the absolute power given by DMOZ corrupt these editors into making decisions based on just what they like or as favors to the owners of the websites they are reviewing?

When you submit your website to the DMOZ directory it is then handed off to an editor to review your website, all of your website pages and to intelligently write the description of your site. Whether your website is included is in their hands, they have the power to include, delete, and even ignore your submission. How the power that DMOZ gives influences their overall behavior is another subject. You will find that the thought of having absolute power does affect each editor and reviewer in various ways.

If the editor is honest and upholds the standards that are set by DMOZ then power has not gone to their head and they understand that working as a team member to create the largest directory with quality websites is the main goal then your website will reviewed on its own merit. This is the type of editor you hope will review your website. Your website will have a much better chance of being included and at a much faster rate.

But, remember, the editors and reviewers at DMOZ are also human. No matter where you go you will find people that are not honest in their dealings. DMOZ gives them power and many do not know how to handle this responsibility in a business like manner and have unscrupulous behavior, as with any group. When one of these editors, reviews a website, it may not be gone over with the DMOZ standards in mind. The “God Syndrome” as I like to call it takes over, and they will make their decision from their own standards and ignore quality websites.

This is kind of like putting a child in a room full of chocolate and asking him to only choose the best ones out of the bunch and leave the others alone. In his mind, all chocolate is good, no matter the size, the manufacturer, or the ingredients. He will of course not pay much attention to what he is really choosing and will probably choose the flashy and colorful packaging. As a DMOZ editor looks over a website, do they really look for quality content that is useful or do they just say “This one looks fine” and goes no farther than the front page. I believe this does happen quite often as many of the websites in DMOZ only have one page and no other content. As an example, you can check out under Home, Cooking, under Chili and you will see what I mean. Many of these only have one webpage, only one to three recipes and several advertisements. Is this really considered a quality website with original, unique and valuable informational content that contributes something unique to the category's subject?

I am not saying that every editor at DMOZ lets this absolute power cloud their judgment, but we are talking about human nature and it takes all kinds of people to create a large directory such as DMOZ, good and bad. The quality editors will do their best to include websites with high standards and will only be out to benefit the directory as a whole. But, you will also find editors that are out to make a name for themselves, get something in return for including websites or just don’t really care who or what they include.

So, does absolute power corrupt absolutely? I would have to say, yes, in certain individuals that do not have the integrity it takes to be a team player, only consider themselves or their own group of acquaintances, clients, or affiliates, and love the feel of absolute power over others. If world leaders can be corrupt when given power then you must agree that an editor of DMOZ can also be corrupted, absolutely.

DMOZ - Is it still worth the submission time?

DMOZ is well known all over the internet as being the largest open source directory online, but is it really worth your time and effort to try to get your website listed in their directory?

You must remember when submitting your website to DMOZ that this directory is one of the human powered directories, which means that a person must go over your submission, your website, and determine if your website is worthy of being in the directory from their own point of view. All of the editors at DMOZ are volunteers just like you and I that have applied to become editors and reviewers in their own special field of interest.

It does not cost anything to have your site listed in DMOZ, so that is a plus, but they do have certain standards that they expect but once again the volunteers are just people and they must also stick to these high standards to ensure that DMOZ keeps its high regard for submissions.

DMOZ wants to achieve a high quality, content rich resource in which the general public will consider useful and indispensable. DMOZ expects their editors and reviewers to keep this high standard and only allow websites with original, unique and valuable informational content that contributes something unique to the category's subject. So, before you submit your website go over this check list to ensure you have the type of website they include and then remember the rest is up to the editors and reviewers.

1. Do not submit websites that have identical content but have different URL’s.
2. Do not submit websites that have similar content to another website you already have listed in DMOZ.
3. Do not submit your URL with each page as a separate submission.
4. Do not submit websites that have pages that are not working properly, are under construction, have broken graphics, or broken links, or are redirecting to another website.
5. Do not submit websites with illegal content such as child pornography, libel, fraud, or violence.
6. Do not submit websites that are just a bunch of links to affiliate programs.

None of this will ensure your inclusion into the DMOZ directory but it will help. The wait to get into DMOZ can be a very long wait if indeed you are ever included.

I would not submit to DMOZ and then wait around for something magical to happen. DMOZ is not the only directory out there. I would submit and then forget about it. Submit to all the directories you can and do not worry if DMOZ does not include your website. I believe having your website listed in the major search engines is much more important than a link back from DMOZ. It would be nice to find your website in the DMOZ directory, but you are relying on the integrity of the volunteer editors and reviewers which have their own opinions as to what makes up a quality website. If your website meets the criteria of DMOZ and you do in fact get an editor that agrees with these standards then you will be lucky enough to have your website included.

Why should you submit your articles?

If you want to rank high in search engines, have more visitors, and increase your sales then you should start submitting articles to the multitude of websites that have been compiled for your convenience.

When you submit articles to websites you will receive a box at the bottom of the page with the info that you would like for your reading audience to have. The most important item should be your website address. Try to use keywords from your website in the article you write and when possible include a link to your website in the body of the article as well. When you add this link to the bottom of the article or in the body you will be receiving links back to your website.

This is the best cost free way of promoting your website. There are literally thousands of people searching for content for their own websites and they are seeking out websites with “free articles”. If you have written a few quality articles pertaining to the content on your website or articles with useful information that is interesting and can provide other websites with enjoyable reading, they will download your free article with your website link and place your article on their website. Now, you have a link from the free article website along with each person that desires to use your article. There are hundreds of websites that offer free article submissions that you will soon realize once you check out www.info-sales.co.uk/article.htm. With all of these websites that are using your article you will be able to have a great number of “backlinks” all pointing to your website. You will be able to achieve a higher ranking in the major search engines.

Now, you have the websites at your fingertips, but what should you write about? Well, it is always best to try to write about what is on your own website. You want surfers to click the link in your article and visit your site. Make each article as interesting as possible and write something that is not all over the internet. If you have a food website that you are wishing to promote, write an article on a recipe that is your favorite. If you can not think of anything to write use things you know, like your hobbies, raising children, how to build a website or anything else. If it does not pertain to your website you will still have a link at the bottom stating the author and the author’s website. Therefore, you will still be getting traffic.

No matter, what reason you built your website in the beginning you want it seen. If you do nothing to promote your site, you will not have visitors, you will be buried way back on page 27 in all the searches, and you will be losing money if you are selling products. You may think that since you are trying to sell products on the net that you do not have any reason to write articles. But, you still can promote your site with articles even though all you have on your website is a shopping cart. Think about it, what products are you selling? If you are selling gift items, you could write a simple article about giving some of these items to friends and family members for birthdays and other Holidays. The main reason to get your articles on as many article submission sites as you can is to get your website noticed.

Submitting articles is the best free advertising on the internet today that will supply the webmaster with quality content while providing you exposure for your own website as well.

Ecommerce, by T0PS30

Johan Terpstra, known to many as T0PS3O, moderator at Digital Point, is the Head of IT for JustBuyOnline Ltd, a UK based professional e-commerce business.

Below are his answers to questions we put to him on June 11th, 2005.


Johan, could you please give us a brief history of your ecommerce site, www.justbuyonline.co.uk
The Just Buy Online site is our company's corporate site. It links through to our current online shops. We've been involved in e-commerce for about 20 months now and it's time the corparate site gets an update to reflect the current status of the company.


JustBuyOnline.co.uk acts as a portal to 4 other sites, www.buy-a-mattress.co.uk, www.justnaturalstuff.co.uk, www.actiongear.co.uk and www.theaquariumshop.co.uk. Does this mean you only actively promote the one site?
(Now 5 actually, just launched a new shop!)

No, not at all. We have approximately 1400 products for sale right now across the 5 shops and we promote pretty much each and every page. Both in terms of SEO as well as SEM.

The corporate, non-ecommerce enabled site is actually the only that isn't heavily promoted (yet) apart from a few ranking experiments such as KW misspellings.


You fulfill some orders yourselves, but the bulk of them are handled by utilising dropshipping. What are the key advantages and disadvantages of using this system?
That's correct. Key advantage is we don't have to stock the (bulky) items. The importer/supplier already has good warehouse facilities so why should we move the stock and store it ourselves if we don't have to? It also means 'we' can have more stock so actually at any point in time, virtually our entire range is in stock.

Disadvantages are few. Generally, buying stock yourself is cheaper per unit than dropshipping individual items, though we skip on the cost of warehousing so it probably cancels each other out.


As head of IT, what is your main (online) method of promoting your business?
We get the majority of our traffic from search engines. SEO is our main way of getting quality traffic at low cost. Partly thanks to DigitalPoint we enjoy excellent rankings.

Besides SEO we spend enough of AdWords to get the Christmas present sent DHL straight from California. We also run PPC campaigns through Overture.

We're also present on the free shopping comparison engines like Froogle.

Since almost all online sales start with a search, search engine traffic will remain our focus.

We have done TV shows and radio interviews as well and are always interested in other efficient means of marketing. Online advertising remains my personal favourite though due to its instant nature and trackability of ROI.


In a time of stagnation in the UK retail market, how do you view the future of your ecommerce sites?
High street retail may be slow right now but e-tailing is growing steadily and the peak isn't even in sight yet. In April, conventional retailing fell 1.3% year-on-year whilst online sales soared with 30% growth acceleration. Online sales is now 7% of total retail sales and I am convinced this will grow considerably especially over the next 2 years. We're getting to the stage where 100% of the nation can get affordable broadband so even more people will start buying from feature rich online catalogues.

So based on these industry facts, I am sure there's no reason to take things slowly.



When running an online business, such as yours, what are the main hurdles to growth?
Staffing is relatively expensive here in the UK / London area so that's a bit of a cash flow balance. Ideally you'll want to earn first, then spend it. That can be tricky and slow things down at times. Technically there are no limitations as far as I'm aware. There are limits to how much traffic you can possibly get for certain niches so to breach such a traffic plateau we might have to look into alternative traffic sources.


In any type of market there is nearly always competition. As the company's SEO and Marketing expert, how do you ensure that you rise above your competitors?
By understanding what is required to rank well. For TheAquariumShop.co.uk for instance, because of our efforts and the fact it's a nice, themed niche, we can brag about owning over 120 top 10 rankings on Google UK of which over 40 #1's. How I got them, I'll leave as a question for you and my competition.



For the type of business you run, what area of SEO do you consider to be the most important to get right?
There are tons of these spammy 'lets-list-search-results' type of sites out there or review sites etc. that we have to compete with in the rankings. So one of my areas of focus is to make sure we create the impression we actually sell the item they are looking for. In terms of SEO this means the correct use of titles and meta description, because the snippets that show in the SE's are really important to get the attention of those looking to buy.



In your opinion, what are the key attributes required to gain success in ecommerce?
First you need something to sell. A product that isn't already slashed to death. Then you need a functional website that can be easily found. The buying process should be effortless. Pre/After sales enquiries and customer services should not be thought of lightly. It's annoying having millions of people selling on eBay for peanuts, but at least we can outperform bedroom auctioneers with quality assistance.

A mix of those and some secret ingredient should get you going.



Finally, many of the products you sell are available offline, ie fish tanks from www.theaquariumshop.co.uk . Why should a potential customer choose to buy such an item online from your company instead?
Because we deliver them. We often tell them we're sorry they can't come and look at them but refer the customer to a local stockist, even whilst we know it's basically a competitor. Not many people have a car that suits picking up a 5 foot fish tank for instance so they go ask the question in their LFS (local fish store) then go home and order from us. They get to choose a day that suits them and we deliver the aquarium on a pallet right to their door. It works out fantastic and our customers love that service.

A lot of aquarists also own multiple tanks and most of the brands we do are well known so there's little for them to find out about. They know what to expect when ordering their second tanks. We deliver from Penzance to Inverness as fast as next working day and I can assure you we're the only ones right now that can offer that.


See just what Johan has achieved by visiting JustBuyOnline now.

yfs1 : uncovered

yfs1 is an experienced webmaster and prolific forum poster who has recently started a new article submission site, ArticleDepot. Within just a few weeks he is receiving hundreds of new articles and also many hundreds of visitors each day.

Below are his answers to questions we put to him on June 3rd, 2005.

What is the philosophy of your organisation?
The main goal for Article Depot is to provide a two-pronged resource for webmasters. The first is a place where they can distribute their articles and gain the SEO benefit of the links contained within. The second is to provide them with related and useful content to supplement their site and gain greater exposure. We combine these two things with a "Keep It Simple" philosophy. There are no confusing signups or new code to learn. Most article submissions take less than 20 seconds from start to finish.

What are the organisation's plans and goals?
Our goal is to become a leading article distribution site by constantly adding new features that benefit the people that make Article Depot what it is, the webmasters.

What do you consider to your site's strengths and weaknesses?
Our strength is our ability to adapt. We always have features in development. Our biggest one right now is to have an RSS feed which webmasters can put on their site and display articles in their chosen category as they are submitted. This would mean they could have fresh content and wouldn't even have to come to the site. Our weakness may be our passion for this type of site. We are always trying to see things through webmasters eyes which can be difficult when you have the level of involvement with a site that we do.

What made you decide to run an article site?
I am a webmaster myself and I saw a need for a certain kind of article site. I struggled to find it so at first decided to build one to meet my own needs. It has now taken off with over 2,000 submissions every two weeks and unique visitors increasing 10% a day. I believe in it and feel it's the future of SEO. Content will always be important and can often help protect you from Algo shifts.

As the owner of ArticleDepot, what do you find to be some of your biggest challenges?
By far the biggest challenge we face is SPAM. With any distribution site, most times you are judged on the value of your site by the quality of the articles. This is why each article is viewed by a human reviewer before being added. This ensures the quality of our database and ensures you are getting the quality you expect when you come to Article Depot.

Do you think that content is still king?
I still believe in Content as King in an overall sense. Most SEO's these days have taken to the phrase “Links are King, Content Is Queen” but I would disagree. I don't disagree for a moment that links are essential and important, especially with Google. What I would argue is that if content is used correctly it can excel in places links can't. The sandbox is a prime example. No matter how many links you manage to get, it is unlikely you will be able to escape the sandbox. However, by using content during this time, you can actually rank for 1000's of less competitive keywords that aren't held by the sandbox. Many times those 1000's together bring in significantly more traffic than the one competitive keyword.

How do you ensure that the quality of your content remains high?
The only way possible which is human intervention. Each article is read and reviewed to be sure it has the quality we expect at Article Depot. Most webmasters have a lot of pride for what is being distributed in their name so for the most part the majority of articles are approved within two hours.

Of all the articles that have been submitted to ArticleDepot, which one sticks out as your favourite?
In general some of my favourite articles are those where people show a passion. Recently we had an article where someone basically meant to vent out their frustration with returning something in a store. What followed was one of the funniest and well written pieces I have seen in a long time. If that person applied that passion to all of their writing, they would probably be quite successful.

What are your tips for writing a good article?
Write on what you know or have a passion for. This comes out in the article and gives it a quality you just can't fake. An authoritative article is better than a rehash every time.

Are backlinks from your site SEO friendly?
Absolutely. This was a major issue I saw with other articles sites. Most of them either limit the location of the links to areas that do not make sense or pass them through their own site in an effort to stop any benefit going to the webmaster. This goes against the ideals of a world wide web and at Article Depot we are very sensitive about the importance of links from both a SEO perspective and a visitor one.

Why should someone submit their article to your site first?
They should submit an article to us first because of the quickness in which our articles are spidered (Currently between 2-5 days), the SEO friendliness of our outbound links which are all static, and the fact that we have more and more webmasters coming to Article Depot to get content for their sites.

Most people submit articles to gain links to their sites. What, if any, other benefits do you see from posting articles to your site?
Its also about exposure. Many times in peoples' rush to just get links they forget about the benefit of having control over the content that surrounds those links. Most of our submitters see a signifigant rise in conversions (whether that's a sale or a signup) because people are more likely to click on a link when it is surrounded by content they are interested in. Footer links will never go away but the real power has always been in above the fold natural links.


Why not submit your article to ArticleDepot today.