Three Article Distribution Services Tested - 22 Day Results
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.
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Comments
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.
Posted by: Shimon at May 17, 2007 11:23 AM
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.?
Posted by: Pete Prestipino at May 18, 2007 07:23 AM
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.
Posted by: Eric Morgan at May 18, 2007 08:12 AM
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.
Posted by: Pete Prestipino at May 18, 2007 10:47 AM
I enjoyed reading this, and will definitely be checking in for the next installment to see how the experiment progresses.
Posted by: Lisa Price at May 19, 2007 06:27 AM
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).
Posted by: Dave Bascom at May 25, 2007 07:24 AM
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?
Posted by: Mike at June 29, 2007 12:32 PM
Thanks a lot for the informative post. I have used Isnare for a long time and love the results. Keep up the great work.
Posted by: Donald Mckenzie Jr at September 27, 2007 08:25 PM
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.
Posted by: Puripong at December 18, 2007 09:43 AM
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.
Posted by: Africa Vacation at January 20, 2008 05:35 AM
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.
Posted by: Bill Johnson at March 23, 2008 10:04 PM
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 ...
Posted by: creacaig at May 6, 2008 08:32 AM
