Article distribution is one method of gaining links to your website. Although it is not near as effective as it was in the past it can still be worth the time. One of the most difficult aspects of using articles for SEO is getting the articles distributed on the right websites. We tested 3 different services, you can see the results after the first 22 days in this post.
Background
We used three different articles for the same website and distributed them using three different article distribution services. Although the articles were different all-in-all this should be a good indicator as to which service performed better. To analyze the results we took 5 different unique sentences in the article and searched for that specific phrase in Google and Yahoo. Different sentences bring back different results; that is why there is a range of pages indexed.
#1 Article Marketer
Service Level – Free
Date Article Distributed for SEO: April 25th, 2007
Google – pages with the article indexed: 0
Yahoo – pages with the article indexed: 0
Overall – What can I say more? This one is out of the question. I doubt even their paid service is much better.
#2 iSnare
Service Level – Paid $10 (for 5 articles)
Date Article Distributed for SEO: April 25th, 2007
Google – pages with the article indexed: 120-217
Yahoo – pages with the article indexed: 38-70
Overall – iSnare seems to be pretty good, and it is extremely inexpensive. The articles did get distributed to many pages in just 30 days, although some of the pages were extremely low quality they are just as good as the competition.
#3 The Phantom Writers
Service Level – Paid $35
Date Article Distributed for SEO: April 30th, 2007
Google – pages with the article indexed: 1-3
Yahoo – pages with the article indexed: 3
Overall – This service distributes the article on Yahoo message forums. There were only a few pages that picked it up so far and they were not of the best quality. It seems to be ok, but I think there are better options out there. We will have to wait another month and re-analyze the results to see if it is worth it or not.
SEO Article Distribution Test – Whats Next???
If there is enough interest in these results we will run another analysis after another month. We will check again how many webpages the articles are picked up by and at that time we should be able to analyze backlinks to the website the article was written for. If you want to see these results post a comment so we know there is interest.
Although I think I’ll start to use the second service listed here before you’ll make a new report, I am interested in new one.
Interesting post and a good guide on how to test article marketing. Question – how did you select those three sites? I would have recommended some others. Also, do you think 22 days is long enough to generate enough response in terms of traffic, etc.?
Pete,
We just selected the sites randomly. If you have others you would like tested feel free to post them and we can look into it. 22 days is not enough to gather final results, that is why we said we will analyze again in about another month. However I would say after 3 months you can pretty much know if its worth it or not.
I would reccomend ezinearticles.com, ideamarketers.com and GoArticles.com – I created a post on May 8th about ten article submission and content sites (just follow the link from my name) and showed these sites Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and Ranking.com ratings/site data. Might make a nice addition to your existing research. Again, a great test though. Well done.
I enjoyed reading this, and will definitely be checking in for the next installment to see how the experiment progresses.
I think you may have done something wrong with Article Marketer. I’ve tried it out before and gotten results more in line with what you’re seeing with iSnare in terms of distribution/links. I haven’t done the free version, but I assume you’d get at least some kind of traction with it rather than zero results. They have a semi-automated review process for each article, so you should make sure the article isn’t sitting in their queue waiting to be edited.
I’m not a fanboy for article marketer, believe me they’ve got some problems–their site is not very user friendly, and I would like to see a lot more flexibility in which sites it submits to, but overall it actually does what it claims to do (submit the articles).
Article marketing is great for gathering back links and traffic, but my question is what if these articles which are being indexed in Google fall into supplemental results; will this hurt the quality of the back link?
Thanks a lot for the informative post. I have used Isnare for a long time and love the results. Keep up the great work.
Yeah I have the same question regarding to supplement results by submitted same articles to many article sites/directories/blogs. How Google count links from those articles?
However, this is a good test even I though 22 days is too minimal and cannot justify there services and I see no update after a month passed yet.
You know what from my experience isnare is still the best service out there. I’ve tried phantom writers and the results were as explained. If you want proof type “Gerald Wanga” (put the quotation marks) on your google search and you will see my articles that i submitted using phantom writers. however when you search for “Jerry wanga” (again put quotation marks) you will see the results i have been able to achieve with isnare considering that i have submitted less than 10 articles on africa vacation and safari as at the time of writing this post.
Article Marketers is horrible. ISnare is still the best. Article Marketer would not even approve articles that had been submitted through isnare.
I have seen where isnare results will fall away, but the links to my website have risen and replaced the isnare articles pages.
You need to give it at least 3 months before you can really see the results. I have lots of pages that are linked from articles and these pages are top ten on major search terms in Google SERPs.
Isnare is really worth the money and gives tremendous results.
Yea. had a bad experience with Article Marketer too. Their system is unreliable. A few times, it crashes & I’ve to resubmit my articles all over again … : \ Their support takes forever to reply. I’ll go with other service even if I’ve to pay a little more, at least i know my articles are distributed …
Nice work guys, been trying to get my head around this SEO biz for a few months. Article marketer is a head wrecker. Ezine articles seems very user friendly and my published articles indexed quckly on google. Isnare too seems to be quiet good. Phantom writers again, are expensive. Overall however we are moving up the rankings and this article writing seems to be working. Will let you know in a few months how we are doing.
Thanks for the review. Although it would be better if you told us how much traffic you got. Compared to traffic, the search engine ranking is secondary. We’re doing this to get traffic anyways, right?
I have a number of articles on Ezine and after looking into Isnare, I think might be the way to go. Can anyone tell me if it will be wise to use some of the articles already published on Ezine for distibution by Isnare? The Ezine Author Area gives me a good idea of which of the articles are popular.
I’ve used iSnare in the past and they are pretty good. However, as an internet marketer I must ask, do you have any vested interest in the results? I mean considering there is no mention of the article title, any urls, etc? There is no way for me to verify which article was submitted?
Very interesting. I’m just starting out with iSnare and am a little frustrated by how long it takes for them to review and approve articles. They also sometimes reject them for no apparent reason. I think they should have some of their criteria built into their system, so if you put too many links, the system won’t let you submit in the first place. It would save us all time.
Will you be repeating this test?
Hi All,
Have been using articlemarketer for a while but since they have merged into two companies (distributeyourarticles and contentcrooner I believe) they do seem to have gone downhill. Do these sites all use different sites to post on ? Im wondering whether to try isnare and keep articlemarketer?
I just canceled my isnare subscription, because I haven’t heard from them in over two weeks after sending them several inquiries regarding my articles. I don’t know what’s going on with them.
to lucy:
i hope isnare will wake up again. my article marketing effort relying on isnare, ezinearticles and articlesbase. that should be enough
To Green Eco Directly Ireland
Just to give you an update – I canceled my membership with iSnare. They haven’t responded yet to several messages I sent them before the holidays, my articles have not yet been approved… Not worth the monthly fee. Ezine articles are great! The publish my stuff right away.
I hope your experience with them is better. I’m still open to going back, if this is some temporary trouble they are having, but I don’t want to throw money away.
That is a very big difference. Although from the above comments, I better make sure that isnare is back from vacation.
Was just doing some research on iSnare. Your post helped me make the decision. Thanks!
I am also noticing how that it is taking longer to get Isnare to approve and publish articles lately. It is very frustrating, since most of my material is based on seasonal events, trends, etc. I also have not received responses from them when making inquiries. However, the one time one of my articles was rejected, they did tell me why and I was able to make the corrections and get it distributed.
Isnare never distributed my articles and never refunded my money. And they never replied back to my emails.
Interesting. I appreciate the resource, I was looking for a place to distribute my articles.
Yesterday I open my isnare account, like you said seems to be very good, I paid for the distribution, the article is still pending marked for distribution, so lets see if this gets better, so far i seems to be good, hopefully they will do the distribution as soon as possible, i dont want to wait a month for this
Gus
If i have published an article on Ezine Articles can I list the same article on iSnare? Ezine is great published my article quickly. I am interested in hearing the updates from those who submitted to iSnare.
Thanks for the information. I have never heard of iSnare before. It seems like a good deal for only $10.