Do you remember ranking websites with article directories?

[savitaprasad]

Those who are in SEO game from long time must be remembering how easy it was to rank websites with article directory links in past. But with time all these became useless and all directories failed to exist now.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Man, that was years and years ago.

It was a solid method back in the day, though.

 

[tazarbm]

Man, that was years and years ago.

It was a solid method back in the day, though.

not for backlinks only, I remember that 1 of my MFA sites (in the hair dyeing niche) was getting more traffic from these directories than from google (and my Adsense earnings were way higher as a result of these directories too...)

I was ranking #1-5 for several keywords that in total were bringing me 200-250 visitors a month, but I was getting 1300-1400 visitors a month from EzineArticles, SelfGrowth, GO Articles, and Articlesbase combined. That was around 2010 I believe...

SEO used to be so much fun back then, even rookies like me could do it .... And now that I think better, the reason for which those directories don't exist anymore probably has to do with google again, I think google were getting envious on these directories for giving people such quality traffic for free, so in their insatiable greed for monopolizing the traffic they've somehow destroyed the article directories. I obviously don't know how they did it since I've got no intel on google's internal and legal workings, but I wouldn't put it past them to be responsible for ruining this traffic method too, like they've done with many others...

 

[Starblazer]

It was a thing when strategies like keyword stuffing used to work. I think some of these sites survived until pre-pandemic era. Now SEO game has completely changed.

 

[Charlotte hayes]

Yeah, those days were wild. Article directories used to rank pages fast, but once algorithms got smarter, most lost value. Shows why relying on one tactic never lasts long in SEO.

 

[Feijo]

ez times man. ez articles and squidoo were gold mines back then.

 

[Marko T]

Now, Google is so smart that those old directory tactics would probably get a site flagged instantly

Not sure, many similar sites created with AI content laying around with millions of pages ranking many KWs

 

[aka sam]

those were good days.

Article directories worked because Google was simple and everything indexed easily. Once they turned into mass-spam link farms, they died.The pattern never changed — the format isn’t the problem, abuse is.

 

[SEO JOKER]

If you have been in SEO for years, you probably remember when submitting to article directories was enough to push a site to the top. It was simple and it worked. But as search engines evolved, those tactics lost their impact. Most directories disappeared, and mass produced low quality links no longer carry any real ranking value.

 

[dreamwalker961196]

Right now, these directories are easily filled automatically using GSA. Using links from them directly to your money site is risky. But using them as one of the lower link tiers is still relevant.


I use the following strategy:


My site
← Strong backlink (for example, a guest post)
← 5–10 cheaper outreach links, but still relatively high quality
← For each cheaper outreach link, I place 5–10 links from my own PBN network
← On the pages from my PBN that link out, I add another 10–20 crowd links
← I boost those crowd links using GSA, where I also utilize directories


So essentially, the automated directory links are used only at the deepest level of the link structure.

 

[maxx89]

Those who are in SEO game from long time must be remembering how easy it was to rank websites with article directory links in past. But with time all these became useless and all directories failed to exist now.

Yes right point.

 

[savitaprasad]

not for backlinks only, I remember that 1 of my MFA sites (in the hair dyeing niche) was getting more traffic from these directories than from google (and my Adsense earnings were way higher as a result of these directories too...)

I was ranking #1-5 for several keywords that in total were bringing me 200-250 visitors a month, but I was getting 1300-1400 visitors a month from EzineArticles, SelfGrowth, GO Articles, and Articlesbase combined. That was around 2010 I believe...

SEO used to be so much fun back then, even rookies like me could do it .... And now that I think better, the reason for which those directories don't exist anymore probably has to do with google again, I think google were getting envious on these directories for giving people such quality traffic for free, so in their insatiable greed for monopolizing the traffic they've somehow destroyed the article directories. I obviously don't know how they did it since I've got no intel on google's internal and legal workings, but I wouldn't put it past them to be responsible for ruining this traffic method too, like they've done with many others...

Big companies are brutal with their competitors. You can notice these with local players also but they know their limits.

 

[rankmaster26]

Yes, I remember — back in the day people used article directories to build backlinks and boost rankings.

But today, that strategy isn’t very effective anymore since Google focuses more on high-quality, relevant, and natural backlinks.

 

[Nuwa]

Yeah back in the day people were crushing rankings with article directories like EzineArticles and ArticleBase because you could spin one article blast it everywhere and watch pages jump but after Google rolled out Google Penguin that whole low quality mass directory link strategy basically died overnight and never really came back the same way

 

[TechnoTycoon]

Article directories used to help ranking, but most lost value after search engines started prioritizing quality and authority over mass submission.
now a days , natural links from trusted, relevant websites work better than old directory-style backlink methods.