Is Article Syndication Still Viable?

In the early days of Internet marketing, website and blog owners wrote articles and distributed them through article directories. This was a common and acceptable practice. It was actually encouraged by the search engines and rewarded if done correctly. Everyone was a winner.

The website owner who used the article from the article directory was a winner because he got to use fresh and original content that was high quality without having to pay for it. The article writer benefited because every time his article was published he received an inbound link to his website, plus whatever traffic the article generated. The article directory benefited because the owner of the directory could slap AdSense ads on the articles and scrape off a few pennies each day. Some of them actually made a pretty good living.

But then Google Panda arrived early last year and slapped the whole process into the ground.

Many article directories were penalized. Many website owners were penalized when Google no longer recognized their hard earned inbound links. But did it kill article syndication? No, not even close.

Article syndication is still a good way to build links, but it has to be done correctly. Here are 5 principles to be guided by as you write articles and submit them for syndication around the web.

1. Write high quality articles that benefit the publisher
2. Don’t promote yourself or use overly sale-sy language
3. For each article, write a short bio with a link to your website in it (that should be sufficient for your self-promotional efforts
4. Whenever possible, instead of mass submitting to article directories, hand pick the publishers you syndicate your articles to
5. Don’t use a pen name; use your real name, or a name that is recognizable in your circle so that you can reap the reputation management benefits of article syndication