Back in 2008, I built a tool that ranked article directories based on their Google PageRank and Alexa scores. At the time, submitting articles to directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, and hundreds of smaller sites was a core internet marketing strategy. You would write an article with a link back to your site in the author bio, submit it to as many directories as possible, and collect backlinks that boosted your search rankings.
That entire ecosystem is gone. Article directories collapsed after Google's Panda update in 2011 hammered sites built on thin, duplicate content. My directory ranking tool went offline, and the strategy itself became not just ineffective but potentially harmful to your search rankings.
Why Article Directories Died
The article directory model had a fundamental flaw: it incentivized quantity over quality. Writers would spin the same article into dozens of variations and submit them across hundreds of directories. The directories accepted nearly everything because they needed content volume to generate advertising revenue. The result was millions of pages of barely readable content that provided no real value to readers.
Google eventually caught up. When Panda rolled out, article directories lost massive amounts of search traffic overnight. Most shut down. The few that survived dramatically tightened their editorial standards, but by then the damage was done. Marketers had already moved on.
What Replaced Article Directories
The underlying goal of article submission was always about two things: getting backlinks and reaching new audiences. Both goals are still valid. The methods for achieving them have evolved significantly.
Guest posting on quality blogs. Instead of submitting articles to directories, write original content for established blogs in your niche. A single guest post on a relevant, authoritative site is worth more than a thousand directory submissions ever were. Focus on sites whose audiences overlap with yours.
Content partnerships and collaborations. Co-create content with complementary creators. Podcast interviews, joint webinars, co-authored articles, and cross-promotions put your work in front of new audiences while building genuine relationships.
Medium and Substack. These platforms function like modern, curated content directories. Publishing on Medium exposes your writing to the platform's built-in audience. Substack lets you build a newsletter audience. Both can drive traffic back to your main site when used strategically.
HARO and journalist outreach. Help A Reporter Out (now part of Connectively) and similar services connect experts with journalists looking for sources. Getting quoted in a major publication provides a high-quality backlink and significant credibility.
Original research and data. Create content that other sites want to link to because it contains unique data, original research, or comprehensive resources. A well-researched guide or industry survey naturally attracts backlinks without any submission process.
The Principle That Never Changes
The death of article directories taught an important lesson. Any marketing strategy built on gaming an algorithm rather than serving real people has an expiration date. Google got smarter, and tactics built on low-quality volume stopped working.
The strategies that replaced article directories all share one thing in common: they require creating genuinely valuable content. That takes more effort per piece of content, but the results are more durable and more valuable. One excellent guest post or original resource can drive traffic and build authority for years.
Focus on quality. Create content worth linking to. Build real relationships with other creators in your space. That approach has no expiration date.
Hi Mark,
Wow this looks really cool. Sorry for the short comment, as I am on my mobile at the moment. I do have a question for you. Is there a way to know when one of these directories publishes fresh articles? Perhaps you already mentioned that. I was pretty quick to scan the post.
One thing that concerns me about posting articles is the dup content factor. New articles if you can grab them before anyone else does would be great. Landing the first copy index in Google would be even better.
Now thas a really good resource. The best article directories change over time so I am always checkuing to see which ones are the best when I go to submit articles. That’s something I won’t have to anymore as I’ll just bookmark your directory ranking resource and whola I will be able to see which ones are on the up and which ones are on the down…cool
Sorry I sped read thru that… this is for people that want to submit content into, rather than look for content to use on their sites.
@Garry — well, my purpose for this directory is to help people find the best directories to post articles. The more popular the directory, the stronger the backlinks, the more chance for your article to be syndicated, and the more click-through traffic to your site.
I do not believe that there is a “duplicate content penality” as such, but I am sure that google takes duplicate content into consideration is some ways. Having said that, I never post my blog content to article directorie — I always post new content with the hopes that it will be popular, rank well, syndicated, and will generate traffic and backlinks back to my site.
@Web Business — thanks! Very interested in hearing features that you would like to see.
@Garry — no problem. The post is pretty short, and you were on your BlackBerry. LOL
Hey Mark,
I was about to sign-up at Buzzle but it says the following:
“We do not accept duplicate content i.e. you should not submit any article that already exists on some other website. If you intend to submit original and unique articles, please fill out the form below to become a member.”
If this is true…..then it probably true for all of the sites….??? Am I reading it wrong?
Please help!
@Ray — Buzzle has been full of attitude lately. This is definitely not true of most all other article directories. Note that if you submit to Buzzel first, or spin your article slightly to make it “unique”, you will meet their TOC.
@ Ray – Running an article directory, a quality one anyway, is stressful business! I’ve ran several in my time and ended up selling every one because it’s really a full-time job. You’re constantly getting people who submit crap and it gets annoying.
With all of the article directories I ran in the past, I denied more articles than I accepted and I was somewhat lenient with my guidelines.
My guess is they’re mad at the Internet Marketing community as a whole, although we’re not all spammers.
I would never limit my submissions to one article directory and they’re foolish to think anyone would choose them over EzineArticles.
Just submit to them before you submit elsewhere you should be good to go. If they start declining them never submit to them again. If they want to crap on their authors (who got them where they are) then we can crap right back on them 🙂
Great idea and service Mark! Thanks. I think this could be big for you.
Okay, that is super cool. And good also good to know that for the most part, I’ve been posting to the higher quality ones. BTW, I’ve been using Article Post Rebot and have been very happy with it.
Add My Article Directory to Your List
Approved Article in 24 Hours
@Kent — Thank you very much. Lots of traffic so far.
@Top CD — Thanks. Glad you like APR. It’s not perfect, but it is the best software that I have been able to find.
@FreeBacklinkDir — Added. Thanks!
plz sent new article directory on my e-mail id.
thanks
Prem
Please visit my health article directory
According to your weekly ranked list, seems nothing comes close to ezinearticles. That’s the only one I have been submitting to. Do you think I’m missing out by not submitting to the others? Submitting to ezinearticles ONLY seems to be working quite well for me.
Yes. I think you should submit to more than just eZineArticles. This is a numbers game. If you are getting 100 people from eZineArticles and you can get another 100 people by submitting to the next 5 on the list, I would do that. It has the additional advantage of giving you additional backlinks (for SEO).
Now, some have argued that submitting to hundreds of article directories is not good. I am testing this now…and I will let you know.
Regards,
Mark
Please consider our Article Directory, Article Niche Directory [htt://article-niche.com], for inclusion. We have taken the technology of the major article directories and have brought it to the Web 2.0 level. We submit our articles to the social sites through feeds and APIs. Additionally we syndicate articles to REUTERS, Online Ezines, News portals etc.
What a great list! There were some directories i was not even aware of. It would be nice if you have the minimum word requirements for each article directory! That would be a lot of work though!
I use an article marketing service and I have played around with the duplicate content thing a little.
What I do is write a completely unique article about “widgets,” (fictional example) then I grab a PLR article that I know has been spread all over the place already.
I have noticed that my unique articles get accepted by about 65% of the sites, whereas my PLR crap only gets accepted by about 40%. (they are both submitted to same list or sites)
So I now have choice to make: Spend the time writing unique content or just post PLR and post 10x as many.
I tend to do a little of both.
I personally don’t give a rat’s behind about traffic coming from article marketing. I do it purely for anchored links and deep links as I can get away with 2 anchored links in the author box.
AL
I am surprised that your PLR articles get accepted at all. I have heard of eZineArticles banning people who submit PLR (it is against their TOS).
There are a couple of people that I know that are making a living based on traffic from articles. They build sites that have a 25% CTR and pay $1-$2 per click. They successfully average $5/day.
For your site, I agree. Backlinks are the key….
I Mark – love the list of sites! A question: I can see the importance of Page Rank and Alexa in prioritising where to post, but you sort by ‘Score’ without saying what that is. Could you elucidate please?
kind regards
Chris.
I describe score in another post — which is not easy to find. Sorry about that.
The ranking algorithm takes the log of the Google Page Rank +2 and multiplies it times 10,000 over the Alexa score, then adds an offset. This results in a number that ranges from about zero to around 100.
Regards,
Mark
Just what I was looking for. Thanks
please email a latest list of directories…http://www.actualprint.com
Please check myfreearticle.com,
it’s new free article directory based on the powerfull wordpress
thanks…! 🙂
I personally stick with few article directories, because they get me good backlinks and traffic. I mostly use following article directories
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.sooperarticles.com
http://www.buzzle.com
Again just post to few directories than lots…. analyze which one is giving you the quality backlinks and traffic. You can do this by using some online seo tools and google analytics.
Hope this help
Dina
Hey Dina — if that is working for you, that is awesome!
Hi, Mark!
I was doing a thorough inspection of my website analytics and discovered 10 referrals to my article directory from your site. THANKS, DUDE!
Naturally, I followed the link and found your article directory list. My only concern is that you haven’t updated it since last December (at least that’s what it says at the bottom of the list). QualityArticles.com’s PR AND Alexa rating have both gone up since then.
Any chance of an update soon? 😀
Awesome list, Mark, thanks for sharing. I appreciate the traffic!
~cj
How do you get included in the directory list? I couldn’t find http://www.articlefinders.com.
/Andreas
I am with CJ. Its a really good list of article directories though would like to see an updated version if possible because I guess things have changes since last December.
Or is there another reason why this list has not been updated such as a newer, better way of evaluating article directories.
The script that updates the list needs to be updated — it broke. I will try to get to that some time in the next few weeks.
I had a few favorite so I really hadn’t looked at your list. I was glad to see many of my favorites on it. I came over here to see if http://www.searchwarp.com was and it is. They have been the most responsive of all the directories I have worked with. So a little plug for them.
Keep it up Mark.
cd :O)
Me again.
I was checking out some of the other sites. ArticleBase indicates that links are nofollowed. I checked a few articles and the links didn’t have the attribute. Is the change new so that older articles wouldn’t have it?
I love the link to your Article Submission sites list. What a great tool.
Thanks!
Hi..
Thanks for share..It definitely helps so many people by having such a great list..I would love to see my directory in your list…
Can you please list my http://www.tonarticles.com directory in to your list..
Thanks
Very nice resource. I wonder if you could include these 2 sites to the list.
ArticleSelect
ArticlesRepository
Thanks.
Hi there. Can you please add http://www.globetales.com to your list? It is a niche travel article directory that allows authors to leave up to 2 backlinks to their own sites, and also offers Adsense revenue sharing ranging from 50-100% depending on the number of articles an author has submitted.
Thanks
great list you have there…
can you please add my article directory to your list… its a health related niche… http://www.medarch.net/
This would be hard, if not impossible to factor into your scoring method, but I consider the time to approve the article and the time for Google to index it to be important factors in picking quality article sites.
I submitted an article to 15 sites yesterday at 5 p.m. Less than 24 hours later, these three sites have already approved my article and I’ve been notified from Google alerts that it has been indexed on all three.
In terms of Alexa and PR, these sites are no where near the top, but the results I got today are typical of these three sites. In my mind, if Google is indexing these sites that fast and that often, it’s a good sign the backlinks in those articles do count.
article-bank.com
articlefeeder.com
1articleworld.com
Brent
hi. can you add these two article directories to your list.
http://www.financebusinessarticles.com
thanks
* URL*: http://www.financebusinessarticles.com
* Type*: finance / business
* Cost*: Free
Hi, thanks for the list.
Please add my PR4 free article directory with adsense revenue sharing program.
Regards,
Jamie
Fantastic list we would be ever so grateful if you would consider articlepinch.com for your next list, we are small but growing!
That’s a great list. Here is another Australian Article Directory.
Great list of directories. Here’s a PR5 article directory I generally use: http://www.Outofstress.com
Thanks for the great list. Kindly also add Evoire.com , a revenue-sharing article directory.
Can you please add: http://www.articlesxpert.com to your article directory list. Its PR2 with a decent alexa rank.
Thanks!
Could you please add three article directories to the list when you get a chance?
ArticlesAboutCalifornia
ArticlesAboutNewYork
ArticlesAboutTexas
Thank you.
Jennifer – Webmaster
Hi ,
Thank you for the list of article directory and the information.
I would appreciate if you add my website
4BN.co.uk – Free Article Directory. Submit your articles.
4BN.co.uk is Articles directory that allows free article submission.
Would like to add another best article directory Letsbefamous ( http://www.letsbefamous.com ). Having PR5, this website only publishes quality articles, posts or whitepapers,
Check this out http://www.ivoryprint.com