I am currently writing a few articles for my website. I am still working on the articles as well as the template for the article page and a page listing my different articles. I am going to post the articles on my site first. After I do that, should submit my articles to these article sites like ezarticles.com and so on? If so, can anyone recommend which are the good ones to submit to? I do not want to submit to that many.

I do not plan to write that often, I may write 1 new article a month if I am not too busy with work. Should I create an RSS feed for my articles? If so, where should I submit my feed to?

I also want to add a email to a friend and print this article functionality to the site. Where can I find free code to use? Where can i find the little images that people use for these functions? I don't want to steal anything. I just want to use code and images that are free to be used by anyone.

I'm interested in this as well. I just received a challenging assignment which requires me to create and submit a large number of quality articles each month, to as many sites as possible.

Because of the labor-intensive, time-guzzling, and posterior-pain-inducing nature of this assignment, I am interested in finding out more about automated article submission tools. However, I have learned that these tools are pooh-pooed by almost all editors, and may be unsuitable for a number of reasons, namely:

1. Spammers hammer editors with these tools, trying to get crap content posted.

2. Automated article submission means that a bunch of sites will be hosting the same content. Editors prefer to display unique content rather than blindly regurgitating information onto their website(s), especially information that is freely available in identical form elsewhere.

3. Editors everywhere have formed a sinister cabal and are funneling all such inquiries to their affiliates, who just happen to be in the paid article submission business. These folks are naturally reluctant to disclose proprietary "how-to" information to do-it-yourself-ers.

As a company, our current strategy calls for a move away from paid article submission services in favor of using our highly capable in-house resources to accomplish the same tasks, hopefully with better results.

My 2 questions (yes, I did UTFSE beforehand, kindly see #3, above):

What's the best way to submit articles without either going insane or outsourcing this work to an expensive professional who is probably using some sort of dubious automated article submission software but not telling me?

Where should one submit articles and how should it be done?

Also helpful would be a link to a good directory of sites which accept press releases, optimized or otherwise.

Should I create an RSS feed for my articles? If so, where should I submit my feed to?
Yes, definitely consider doing this. It will save you time and ensure your articles get indexed by engines and syndicated quickly. I use Blogger to post my articles on my domain because they are then automatically archived by date and people can comment on them. It saves me time creating a filing system and constantly editing my site to accommodate them.

In terms of submitting your articles, try using YahooGroups. Here are some free article distribution lists where you can send your articles:

article_announce@yahoogroups.com
aabusiness@yahoogroups.com
aainet@yahoogroups.com
aahome@yahoogroups.com
aageneral@yahoogroups.com
netwrite-publish-announce@yahoogroups.com
Free-Reprint-Articles@yahoogroups.com
ReprintArticles-Paradise@yahoogroups.com
reprintedarticles@yahoogroups.com
freezinecontent@yahoogroups.com
Free-Content@yahoogroups.com
publisher_network@egroups.com
PublishInYours@yahoogroups.com
articles4you2use4promotion@yahoogroups.com
articlesubmission@yahoogroups.com
PromoteYourArticle@yahoogroups.com
articles_archives@yahoogroups.com
ArticlePublish@yahoogroups.com
QC_Reprint_Articles@yahoogroups.com
ap-shorts@yahoogroups.com
Article_Depot@topica.com
TheWriteArticles@yahoogroups.com
refdem_Ezine_Publisher@yahoogroups.com

Some of these require that you join the group first.

Sorry to be thick, but I was wondering, what with the growth of the idea of using articles to increase site content and (by syndication) get one way links, how these articles don't trigger the duplication penalty, as they (should) be posted in their original form ....

Again sorry if the wrong thread etc (very new here!!) :confused:

Sorry to be thick, but I was wondering, what with the growth of the idea of using articles to increase site content and (by syndication) get one way links, how these articles don't trigger the duplication penalty, as they (should) be posted in their original form ....

Again sorry if the wrong thread etc (very new here!!) :confused:
This is actually a very good question, because duplicate content generally gives SEOs a severe case of the willies, for good reason.

However I have seen a number of my competitors get good results... using content appropriated almost verbatim from other, older sites in our industry. It is important to get "content links" but if the content itself is flawed from the getgo, conventional SEO wisdom dictates that this could undermine one's efforts.

Despite what I've seen, the consensus has been that time is a factor in determining duplicate content "penalties". When Google must decide which site is legit, it is likely to side with the older of two sites. Even after Jagger, my intuition says that Google will probably continue to evaluate dupe content based on age of site. This may be the most sensible way (from an SEO "outsider" perspective) for a major search engine to fight spammers who scrape RSS feeds to hijack someone else's content.

It looks like we are still figuring out the SEO implications of syndicated feeds, especially where it comes to duplicate content. There were several sessions at the last SES conference in San Jose dealing with blogs, RSS, and the issues surrounding these topics, and several speakers displayed strong opinions on the subject of stealing RSS/blog content. Back then, SEOs were struggling to find out how to best deal with content-stealing spammers, but no clear solution was presented. If someone would like to advance current theories on this topic, I'd love to read it.

A big thank-you to Kal for posting the list of article submission sites - quite valuable in the right hands. :cool:

Many thanks for the info :)

and thanks for taking the time to reply. I wonder if anyone else can shed light on this, cause I've seen some other SEO guru's actually saying the getting good articles syndicated around the web (to relevant sites) for the cost of a backlink is a sure fire way to get higher rankings through the old "popularity" score, and yet this seems at odds with the whole duplicate content idea...

Any thoughts anyone??

And thanks again from the newish boy in town

Sorry to be thick, but I was wondering, what with the growth of the idea of using articles to increase site content and (by syndication) get one way links, how these articles don't trigger the duplication penalty, as they (should) be posted in their original form ....

Again sorry if the wrong thread etc (very new here!!) :confused:

I think you are right. I write quicky articles for other sites or blogs, NOT the same content I have on my site.

Since I do not plan to write that often (I may write 1 new article a month if I am not too busy with work) should I create an RSS feed for my articles? Do you create an RSS feed for each article or for an Article "landing" page? Where should I submit my feed to?

If you have one article a month all you need is one RSS feed. Here is the code to create your RSS feed:

http://www.bestsyndication.com/2005/Dan-WILSON/Whats_NEW/11/110505_how_to_create_rss_feeds.htm

If you write multiple articles on multiple topics you may want to split the feed up.

Dan

So just to confirm, you are saying that each article should have its own rss feed? what if I have a landing page that lists all my articles, should this landing page have a feed as well or instead of each article page having a feed?

So just to confirm, you are saying that each article should have its own rss feed? what if I have a landing page that lists all my articles, should this landing page have a feed as well or instead of each article page having a feed?

I would use one feed if I were you. You do not need a new feed for every article. It would not make sense.