High Page Rank Article Directories – My Traffic Experiment And Insightful Results

Looking for article directories traffic, backlinks and page rank juice? Article writing is an efficient method of getting all. However, all article directories are not born equal, even high rank article directories. Read my traffic experiment with high page rank article directories and discover the one that sent me more traffic than from over 10 article directories combined. You’ll also discover the particular high PR article directory that sends me backlinks on auto-pilot, every day.

In Search Of Web Traffic and Backlinks – My Experiment With High Page Rank Article Directories

As you know, traffic is what a blog needs in order to get a lot of readers’ eyeballs on its contents while backllinks are what it needs to climb its way up the search engines pages; and when the links are DoFollow, you’ve got icing on the cake – that means the DoFollow high Page Rank (PR) Article site would also pass some of it’s page rank juice to your blog. Getting little drops of page rank juice from here and there flowing in to your blog, will in turn help increase your blog’s page rank over time.

Note: While this post examines less than 10 article directories, on another post, I have a complete list of top 70 Article Submission Sites, with Page Rank (PR) and Alexa Rank.

Just a few months after the birth of this blog, I embarked on article submission on some high page rank and low (good) Alexa ranked article submission sites for building initial backlinks and generating traffic on this blog.   The purpose of the experiment was to get an idea of the REAL traffic potentials of each of the  high page rank article directories I submitted to. I wanted to know which article sites to pay more attention to, in the future, with regards to traffic generation and backlink building.

Although, I have now written more articles in the listed high page rank article directories, I have also experimented with some other high page rank article directories (not listed here), I will update this post and keep you informed about more article directories worth mentioning.

generate article from article syndication

All Article Sites Are Not Born The Same…

This post is an analysis of my article marketing experiment (with my own hand-written articles) and you’ll get to know that particular high page rank article directory where I got lots of article views within 2 days. That was much more than I got from all the other over 10 high page rank directories I also submitted articles to.

Because I wanted to have an idea of the true traffic generation potential of those article sites, I did not do any form of promotion for traffic; no social bookmarking; no backlinking.

List Of Some of The Article Directories Used In The Traffic Generation Experiment

Below are SOME (not all) of the high page rank (PR) article directories I experimented with. Again as I said, I’ll keep updating this page as I get new findings.  I am presenting you with ONLY the high PR article directories that gave me interesting traffic results in a short while.

  1. ArticlesBase (PR 6, Alexa 292)
  2. Selfgrowth (PR 6, Alexa 2,667)
  3. Buzzle (PR 6, Alexa 517)
  4. GoArticles (PR 3, Alexa 2,255)
  5. ArticleBiz (PR 5, Alexa 9081)
  6. EzineArticles (PR 6, Alexa 99)
  7. Gather (PR 6, Alexa 1,675)
  8. BetterNetworker (PR 5, Alexa 4,440)
  9. HubPages (PR 6, Alexa 44 )
  10. Squidoo (PR 7, Alexa 209 )
  11. BetterNetworker.Com (PR 5; Alexa  4,705)

*Note that both PR and Alexa ranks are not static – those were the ranks as at writing this post. You can always check VreToolbar.Com for an updated list of  top 50 high page rank article directory submission sites, with their (traffic) alexa ranks and page ranks.

My High Page Rank Article Directories Experiment Results Plus An Article Site That Sent Me More Traffic Than All the Others Sites Combined


1. ArticlesBase

ArticlesBase puts NoFollow on outgoing links, that means it’d still be a backlink but you won’t get a flow of the Page Rankturn worrds into cash - article marketing traffic profit (PR) to your blog.

Getting accepted as a writer is easy. All you need is to simply signup and they will send you an approval via email.

Article approval timeline is very fast – 24 hours maximum is my experience here.

Backlinks Potentials: I love this this article directory because, of all the high page rank article directories I have tried so far, I get the most of backlinks from this one.  That is because a couple of my articles on articlesbase are getting picked up and republished by other website owners, and as a result, I get new backlinks. Since I discovered this I made ArticlesBase my number one hands-free backlink generator.

NoFollow: Although articlesbase applies NoFollow to the links on articles you submit, I don’t mind because one article there can mean tons of backlinks on auto. Guess what? From the frequent trackbacks I get whenever my articles were being republished, I decided to tweak the other articles titles to attract more re-publishers. I also made sure to have two links in my resource section (author bio area).

That worked.

Number of Links Allowed: Another reason why I love ArticlesBase is that you can add links to your content body in addition to the resource box. That means each time an article is republished, you’ll get up to 4 new backlinks PLUS traffic from the host site.

SEO Ranking Potential: Another reason I like ArticlesBase is that the articles here tend to do well on search engine rankings.

Volume of Traffic Per Article: When looking at volume of traffic and article views on these high page rank article directories, I tend to want to measure how an article directory is working for me, on per article basis.  However, some bloggers say they combine the total views of all their articles on a directory.

How long it takes to get a good volume of traffic is important, especially if you want to compare different article directories side by side. Although some get massive traffic from ArticlesBase, I am not satisfied with the number of article views I got in one from this site.

Tracking: ArticlesBase has a dashboard where you can easily see the number of views you have for each article. However, they do not have other metrics such as for tracking number of publishers that have republished your article, like eZine articles does.

2. SelfGrowth

Getting accepted in selfgrowth involves you signing up and sending them a sample of one or more articles or posts you had written (before) – they’ll only accept you if they assess your work and find it satisfactorily within the standards they are looking for.

Article Approval Timeline: Relatively fast. I have got approvals from 1 to 3 days, an average of 3 days though.

Tracking Article Views: I have still not being able to find out how to check my article views on this article directory. Please let me know if you know how I can check the number of views in my selfgwrowth.com admin area.

3. Buzzle.Com

Getting Accepted: Buzzle also has a similar method like Selfgrowth, for accepting writers.

Article Approval: Buzzle is operates a very strict article approval policy. In fact they delete any article they they do not accept without notice. You just have to write a tightly unique article if you want an article to be approved. However, once Buzzle editors approve your article they’d gladly send you tons of traffic that will make you smile – and your hard work worthwhile.

Article Approval Timeline is very slow at Buzzle – 1 to 2 weeks.

Traffic Potentials: This article directory kind of surprised me, in a good way though. Imagine checking my dashboard on Buzzle and seeing over 600 article views within 2 days! That is more article views than I got from all the articles I have written in over 10 directories combined – without promotion. 

At that time, I had about 2 articles in eZine articles and 2 also on articlesbase – and less than 50 views from both articlesbase and eznearticles combined.

High PR article sites with highest traffic

*This was in 2 months (initial 2 days was about 600) – not one promotion from my end.

4. GoArticles

I love this article directory because of its speedy article approval – instant approval is what happens at GoArticles.  They also get indexed by Google, almost instantly.

Getting accepted at GoArticles is extremely fast. One snag here – I have not found a way to track my article views at GoArticles and so not sure what the figures are. However, I noticed that my articles there rank pretty well when supported with backlinking but on the first day, they kind of swim to page 1 of Google.

5. ArticleBiz

Getting Accepted as an author on ArticleBiz is easy and fast.

Article Approval Timeline: Very Slow. I did not even get any email about article approval. I only found out it was approved when I got a link-back notice on my blog’s dashboard – that was from someone who republished the article.

6. EZineArticles.Com

Although ezinearticles is mentioned as the monster of all high page rank article directories, the traffic I got during my traffic experiment (within the experiment timeline) is not as much as I expected (going with the buzz about it).

Getting accepted at eZineArticles is easy and fast

Article approval Timeline: EzineArticles is not fast at approving articles. I have had my articles approved between 1 – 2 weeks, usually within 7 days.

Tracking Views: This is where ezinearticles beats all other high page rank article directories in my traffic experiment, hands down.  They have a very detailed analytics and traffic dashboard where you can easily see how many people read your articles and how many publishers republished it. However, trackback I receive indicate that I have more articles republished at articlesbase than at ezinearticles.

7. Gather.Com

At first I thought that Gather was just like any other social bookmarking site but then I found out I was mistaken – when I decided to play around with the blog feature. Hmm, I wrote a very simple mini-article (that was on Kim Roach’s Traffic Dashboard review) and to my surprise Gather gathered its way to the top of the search engines (around page 2 or so, not sure again) for the keyword I optmized that article for.

best article spinner rewriter software - the best spinnerLooking at the top featured articles on Gather, they seem to feature more of entertainment and lifestyle articles on their front page.  However, since it ranks good on search engines, it has a use in my article marketing plan.

Article approval Timeline: Instant publishing because Gather.Com is a Web 2.0 property merged with social bookmarking where you use the free blog to write articles, while you can also post your status updates on Gather. Thus your articles do not go through any approval process – it’s published the instant you hit “publish” button.

8. BetterNetworker.Com

This not your typical article directory, rather it is a social network to connect and share ideas with other internet and network marketers. BetterNetworker.Com is a very active online knowledge and learning centre owned by Mike Dilard and a lot of top internet and network marketers publish quality contents on this network.  Members can post contents in BetterNetworker articles, blogs, forums and classified ads section.

Getting accepted at BetterNetworker is easy – it’s a social network and so all you need to do is simply signup for BetterNetworker membership.

Article approval Timeline: Instant.

Articles Traffic: BetterNetworker.Com gets a pretty good traffic from members of the community; recent articles and articles received the highest number of views are featured on the home page – that way every new article gets exposure and gets read.

If you are lucky to have top member votes on your article, you can get featured in the Better Networker e-Magazine and that could land you thousands of views in a single day.

My articles on BetterNetworker.Com have done pretty well in the first few days after publishing, getting an average of over 100 views, not anywhere close to my sweet Buzzle traffic in a few days.

Search Engine Ranking: Google seems to love BetterNetworker. Articles here rank well on search engines, even the ones posted in the classified section.

Tracking Traffic: You can easily view the number of reads each of your article gets.

9. HubPages

Although this is a web 2.0 property where you can create your own free blog and publish whatever you like, I have included it here because of the results I got there. The traffic spike was cool – lots more than most other traffic sites in a few days, next to reader views I get from BetterNetworker.

Another thing I observed at Hubpages is it’s community of very likable people. They are very happy to welcome and reach out to each other – commenting on your contents and adding you as a connection.  They are simply voracious readers of any subject at all.

Hubpages internal traffic (from its readers) is very good. Apart from the traffic I got, my content at HubPages ranked well for its keywords and kind of sticks/ sits at a good place on the search engines, without much assistance (backlinks or social bookmarking promotions).

Given that HubPages shares revenues with its writers, I think it offers triple benefit to its writers – traffic, backlinks and making (more)money.

10. Squidoo

squidoo traffic blueprint
Grab this FREE Squidoo Report

Like Hubpages, Squidoo tends to stick well on the search engines and gets good rankings if you do some bit of SEO and backlinking.  I also like that Squidoo allows you to display your blog feed, and that brings me a few traffic from time to time.  However I got better traffic from Hubpages, and HubPages community are voracious readers – Hubpages will send you good traffic and comments from every single article you write.

The Squidoo community has a lot of SEO-loving writers and you see lots of articles about Squidoo SEO. On a certain day, I decided to take a go on the strategies written in one of those Squidoo lenses – just to test whether they actually work. I did a few tweaks to my existing Squidoo lens which was on Squidoo rank #150,000+.  Lo and behold, when I refreshed after 5 minutes of publishing, I freaked out – now ranking number #40,000.

Moment of good feelings that was. Eureka! Squidoo SEO works, now I learnt some new trick to apply on future Squidoo lenses. Overall, Squidoo is good for getting your contents ranked good and for backlinks too.

11. Press Release Sites

Although press releases are not article directories but I thought to just slip it in here for you to see what other places worked for me (and would work for your too), and perhaps try them too. I tried a few press release sites and these ones ranked top for my keywords and so I used them again.

a. Free-press-release.com – This press release site dis pretty well at ranking for the keyword of my test contents and it also sticks well on the search engines, without any assistance (backlinking or sending traffic to it).

b. Indiepropub.com – This press release site, owned by Jon Griffin, got one of my releases on Google News within a blink of an eye. Hahaha, just kidding – that release (was on Kim Roach’s Traffic Dashboard) made it to Google News in less than 10 minutes to be precise. I’m happy that the other release has also maintained its position on Google for its keyword.

Just from that alone, I got over 70 retweets in a few hours. That was such a sweet moment for me, and a motivation to do more of this thing that works and here where it works.

*Both Free-Press-Release.Com and IndieProPub.Com get approved relatively fast, in less than 48 hours.

Conclusion

Thanks for your time and took away something from reading this High Page Rank Article Submission Sites- My Traffic Experiment And Results.  If you are looking to get more traffic from a few article sites, you may want to try the combination of these high page rank (PR) article directories.

Share Your Own Article Directories Traffic Story…

From your experience, which article sites generates the most article views for you or sends you the most traffic or backlinks? I’d love to hear your own story.

Don’t forget to help me share this post, if you enjoyed reading; the one-click share button is down  below.

 

Yours in Writing Articles for Traffic ,

 

Stella

 Photo by wonderlane

37 replies on “High Page Rank Article Directories – My Traffic Experiment And Insightful Results”

You’re welcome, Moon. I’m glad you liked this post.

That’s correct – articlesbase.com starts rewarding authors with Dofollow after 10 posts.

I think this list was made up of some the most popular article directories. These can really help you if you submit good articles to them., It can help with gaining quality back links which will of course make your blog to rank better.

Stella,

That’s another awesome post.

What I CAN say about ezinearticles.com is that
the articles keep pulling clicks for a long
time.

I have 85 articles an outsourcer outsourced
that just keep pulling clicks every month
a year later. I quote the specifics in
Traffic Dashbaord. But the clicks just keep
coming in every month.

Views: 14,344
URL Clicks: 3,218
Click Rate: 22.43%

I spent $4-$5 per article plus my outsourcer’s
time to outsource them. In this case the purpose
was seo. But if it had been opt ins, I would have
gotten opt ins for .20 to .40 each if I did my
math right.

I wonder how Buzzle clicks will hold up
month after month?

Sure sounds very appealing in the shorter time
frames.

Marlon

Hi Marlon:

Thanks again for your time here, and comments, and especially for sharing your live case study with “ezinearticles.com” with us.

Your point “…the articles keep pulling clicks for a long time” is where ezinearticles.com beats the other article sites, and you’re right – Buzzle clicks drop after a while. You just gave me another thought to take a case study of my ezinearticles.com articles over time versus articles on the other article sites. I like that you documented your ezinearticles case study – I’ll start paying more attention to ezinearticles that I’ve been doing.

Again, thanks so much for visiting and taking the time to read my posts, in spite of your busy schedules. Enjoy the best of this weekend!

Hi Wayne:

EzineArticles.com has been around, and survived, a long while. Marlon Sanders has done a lot of tests that proved that it is the most sticky of all the article directories, with the ability to keep sending traffic months and years after the article was submitted.

Great list of artcle directories Stella, it will help me to get some extra traffic, thank you for sharing this helpful list of article directories, greetings.

You’re welcome, Kasia. I’m happy that you found the list useful for your traffic generation drive.

I look forward to seeing you around gain.

I just went to your blog – great contents. Loved your blog design. Had to use Google translate so I could read a post – good stuff you have there:)

Thanks Abagail, Glad you liked it.

Just checked – you have really good, well written, newsy posts on your blog. Good job!

Wow again Stella.

I don’t know how all this unbelievably high value content you’ve been putting out has passed under my radar until now. I’m very impressed.

I love the systematic way you’ve approached this, working out exactly what benefits and results you can expect from different directories along with all the pros and cons. You truly area a strategic entrepreneur.

I look forward to reading more soon…

Hi Stella,
Although 2 months late I’m very happy to have found your post. It is very clear and generous in content.
I’m in the early days of using article directories and finding it difficult to write good and unique content. Putting best efforts into those you have identified as the most productive will save a lot of frustration and overwhelm. Thanks. Julia

Hi Julia:
Thanks for reading and for your kind comment. I’m glad this post was a timely one for you. You’re right about focusing on a few article directories that can produce the most results for one, especially for a busy person. Talking about ‘finding it difficult to write good and unique contents’, have you thought about getting good quality Private Label Rights (PLR) contents to use as a base/ research material to create your own unique contents? Even the Gurus use them – all you need to do is to rewrite the sentences to sound like you. It’s a productive strategy busy people use. If you want more information, let me know.

You may also want to save a big list of top article directories I compiled: list of top 70 article submission sites

Since you’re starting out, these 2 are part of my free article marketing toolkit (both free): Article rewriter (CreWriter.com) and semi-auto article submitter (articlesubmissionhelper DOT com). Let me know if you ever need any guide along the way with article writing:) Hope to see you around again.

Just read your post “Corporate Team Building Movies” – that’s a fun idea to get team mates to bond. Letf you a comment.

Hi Stella,
Thanks again for offering more help – and for visiting our blog. You have inspired me. I will go through your two Article writing posts in detail and keep coming back for more.
Re PLR – for an alternative energy blog, I used Elance recently and was disappointed in the quality – but then worked with the author for good re-writes. By that time I realised if you want them to sound like you then use them as a framework and re-write in your own style. So that’s where I’m up to now. Is Elance what you refer to as PLR?
The Swanbourne blog you visited is different – the individual businesses let me interview them or they provide the background. It’s fun to learn about them. thanks again. Julia

Hey Julia, good to see you around again – makes my day on a Sunday morning:)

1.) Yes, you’re right about using outsourced articles (at eLance or a similar place) as a framework to create your own original articles. Just like you found a writer that worked with you to create rewrites that you are okay with, that’s a great way to sift through the masses until you find a few freelance writers you can rely on.

2.) PLRs are ready-made works written by ghost writers and sold “as is”. You can buy them on various topics that you want and rewrite them yourself or give to a freelance writer to make them unique, to sound “like you”. They come in single articles, eBooks and even videos and audios. There are various providers and sources of getting PLRs of various topics and quality. Some top marketers and Gurus even sell some of their membership site contents as PLRs when they are creating new ones. Overall, most top marketers use PLRs because they are more like cheaper than one-on-one purchase or freelance writing jobs. To find PLRs on any topic, you can search Google with any of these: “PLR + YOUR-TOPIC/KEYWORD” or “Private Label Rights + + YOUR-TOPIC/KEYWORD” etc or ask people for popular creators good PLRs. If it’s something you want to look at, let me know and I can email you a list of some yoy can look at.

3.) Wow. So that’s what the swanbourne blog is about. But I liked the contents and style. So, is your own blog up yet?

4.) Since you’re using eLance to outsource your articles, you may want to look at my post on guide for marketers on getting the best-fit freelance virtual assistant. You can pick a thing or two.

Thanks once again for commenting. Do enjoy the best of today!

Hy Stella,
Thanks for a fantastic article full of great ideas. I must get back into article marketing, used to do it for an old sbi site I had and it worked well for me then. Off to do some writing I go! Could you give the link to crewriter, tried to find it but just got a bet page,
Eleanor

Hi Eleanor:
CreWriter’s URL is “CreWriter.com”. I just checked now and it’s still there. Be sure to also add “Article Submission Helper” to your arsenal, also free (.articlesubmissionhelper DOT com).

I’m glad you like the article marketing ideas. From my experiment, I discovered that if one is busy, it’s best to maximize productivity by focusing on a few of those high PR and high Alexa ranking article sites that bring high traffic, and some of the most popular big article sites are simply over-hyped based on their past glory.

Thanks for visiting, reading and commenting. I appreciate it big time. Hope to see you around some more – I’ve got a lot of great contents you’ll like.

Just checked your blog and discovered from your Facebook Page, that most people I know already LIKED your page – so I joined:) Great site with great contents.

I absolutely adore reading your blog posts, the variety of writing is smashing.This blog as usual was educational, I have had to bookmark your site and subscribe to your feed in ifeed. Your theme looks lovely.Thanks for sharing.

thanks stella, sorry I am still adding content to my site, will implement comment box. Thats great that nofollow does’nt penalyze you thanks again.

thanks a lot stella, I definitely will sign up with at least 5 of the article directories you’ve listed. I am signed up with a few. Also thanks for the tips on nofollow, didn’t know that you still are able to get links from nofollow directories. thanks

You’re welcome Marcus. I’m glad you liked the post. Thanks for reading.

You know it was from Ryan Deiss that I first learnt that NoFollow still matters. From my own tests, they show up as links and I try to capitalize on them for ranking especially on articles (such as my product reviews articles/ posts) I post at Directories and Web 2.0s, even on my blog. Since they are understood to not pass PR juice (the only drawback) they still influence rankings, and as you know backlinks are one of the main determinants of top ranking, once your on-page SEo is fairly good.

Truly I do not bother to search for DoFollow links when I need backlinks to rank. But in the efforts to increase my blog PR, I do a mix of DoFollow.

I just read your post on finding a niche and really loved the points you raised. The points on entering a niche you have passion, existing knowledge and see big enough demain are essential. Great stuff at your blog but you didn’t have a comment box so I could not comment on that post:)

WOOOOWWW is all I can say! VERY detailed post and you’ve now made me into an article marketing person. At first I wasn’t because I thought it would be too much work and with everything I already have going on, it seems like it would take me forever! 🙂

Here’s a question though: do the articles you submit to these directories need to be unique? *I hope I didn’t miss the answer above*

I ask because it’s enough for me already to get good content on my blog but to then turn around and have to create all new posts for these article directories and such will be a beast for me…Unless I can pay you to do it for me 😉 – I’m not kidding unless you don’t do it! LOL

THANK YOU, Kesha. I am blushing right now, Lol. I’m really glad you liked this post.

1.) I think you should give it a try – at least to find out if it’s your thing but be sure to start with the high Alexa ones so that you’ll be sure they’ll do more than send trickles of traffic. That’s why I did that test, just to know where best to spend my time. It was actually Kim Roach who talks much about article traffic, so I gave it a shot.

What I did not mention in my case study post is that I used this articles heavily (in linkwheel style)to bump up my ranking on 2 highly competitive product promotions – and you could almost see my stuff on every page from page 1 to 10. I was only testing what I learnt and did not know the effect would be like that. Now, I’d just replicate because it works.

2.) Buzzle (and Suite 101) and a few others accepts only unique contents; ezinearticles and some others did not mind (as long as you’re the original author)but with this new Google farmer update, they are. Even at that, I’ll repurpose my buzzle article to a blog post later.

3.) What I do is rewrite some sentences in an old blog post (heading and body) to make it unique – you can use crewriter.com, a free article rewriter. More like re-purposing an old blog post.

Another thing is that I write articles for particular purposes (usually to drive rankings of a keyword, for a product review) but I do them in how to styles.

4.) I don’t do article writing (at the moment) as I’m working at the tasks in my business plan. Lol. If you really don’t want to re-purpose old posts, perhaps you could consider high quality PLRs. If you want I can send you the list of top providers Kim Roach recommended.

I know what you mean – it’s hard enough to write one good post especially if you put your heart out at giving your best. Costs time – and I have seen the top notch contents you have there. Well,as I say use article writing for a purpose and don’t sweat the small stuff – re-pupose old posts (productivity counts, LOL).

*Hey, Kesha, I really value yur time at my blog. You rock!

Yea, CreWriter rocks! (Did you see that exclamation? Lol). I’m glad you liked it.

Same thing the guy (I got to know about this tool from) says – better than most paid. You may want to add ‘Article Submission Helper (ASH)’ – it’s free too and for creating accounts at the article sites and submitting -on semi-auto.

*You have this amazingly simplified way of keeping social networking simple and short – talking about your ‘find your social media focus’ post and the social networking guide. Cool read – those 2 together can make a good free report.

You’re welcome, girl. I hope you like that as well.

Your social media productivity posts are awesome and add extreme value to conquer ‘social media overwhelm’ – I spent quite some time reading them. Good idea that you’re going to create an expanded paid version.

Hey Brenda – good to see you around, and thanks for commenting.

Yes, you should try Buzzle; it sends ‘truck loads’ of traffic – last time I checked I had over 800 views from a single article – over 12 times what I got from each of the other high PR article sites, and equivalent to what I got from about 14 article sites combined – comparing within the same time frame, and without any social bookmarking or promotions from me.

Squidoo is a lovely community – I’d love to hear your own results whenever you do try all three sites.

I was over at your Yola site and all I could say was ‘wow’ – it’s got a beautiful look and feel. I like the idea you had behind that – a platform for putting all your other website links together. Cool, I may want to try that out sometime.

Thanks for dropping by, Amuda, and thanks for your kind words.

I’m glad you liked my blog posts.

Comments are closed.