Article submission to the directories has become an effective way of online marketing and a large number of marketers create articles and submit to popular directories on regular basis as an integral part of their online marketing plan.

You can read posts and books on marketing and everywhere you will find strong suggestions to utilize this useful technique to promote websites, blogs, brands and products.

All of those who understand the importance of these directories, always look for new ones where they can submit their content for getting powerful leads. If you have your own article directory, read below, how it can benefit your brands and business.

Advantages of Having Your Own Article Directory

Influential Website Owners

A large number of influential website owners are always looking for the informative content on internet to use it for their own websites and blogs and because the content on article directories is free, they love to get benefited with them.

Authors, Marketers & Affiliates

On the other hand, thousands of other authors, resellers, marketers and affiliates are also in search of directories where they can submit their work. It simply means millions of people are desperately searching for directories and one of which might be yours.

Earning AdSense Revenue

You can have AdSense or other ads on your website and in this way you can create a huge source of earning money. You can also build a list of customers by putting registration for posting on your site and people do this happily when they know they will get back leads in retune.

Earning Potential Commission

If you go for the creation of specific niche directory for highly targeted niche, you might also be able to put affiliate products on the sites for enhancing your earning potential.

Selling Your Own Products

Similarly, if you have your own product, it can also be promoted directly from your directory. However, you should avoid doing this when you site is relatively newer and still looking for visitors.

Create & Sell Directories

Another possibility of earning potential is to create your own directories and do the business of selling them and it is not very difficult when you have a correct type of script to do this. In fact, one very simple directory can help you in earning hundreds of dollars without making lots of efforts.

How to Create WordPress Powered Article Directory?

Do Manual Installation

Automate script installation might leave footprints which can be exploited and you must keep in mind that every website on internet is always at the potential risk for the hackers and therefore, the more visible you will keep your site, the higher chances of attacks from hackers will be.

Article Directory

Using Article directory plugin along with some necessary modification and customization to the theme will transform your regular site into an article directory and when you have it in your site, the other users of the sites will be able to get registered with you as contributor and author and will play their vital role to promote your blog. This plugin does not let the dashboard reveal to the contributors and authors and it will also figure out the minimum article length for submission. This can also help you define if the article should be published instantly or it should be sent in a submission and approval process.

Choose Popular Niche

You have to choose your directory niche but it significantly depends upon the principal niche of your site. If your main business is muscle building, you would definitely love to create the directory into this particular niche rather than in something else because backlines which you get form this particular directory will have more potential to bring you more backlinks, visitors and customers.

Domain & Hosting

Normally search engines given more value to the links which are coming from some different IPS. When you place directory on same hosting account, it will not ease out the work but will actually increase the burden and you will have to work even much harder than the usual.

Suitable Extension

To get the rank higher, you better use .com .orgor.net and make sure not to show any monetization techniques at least in the initial months.

Dealing Security Concerns

WordPress normally takes the security issues very seriously and therefore, whenever you have new updates, try them as they come with fixes and the use of few plugins from third parties can also increase the security of your blog. Always make sure to keep plugins as well as the scripts fully up to data as this will enable you to increase the security.

Using Admin Names

When you do the manual installation and give the information that might be different than the others. Rather than using a plan admin name or nickname, you better use something that can’t’ be easily captured. Using general names may give the hackers the traces and they are figure out who is behind the site.

Recommended Plugins for WordPress Article Directory

Advertising Manager

Integrating advertising manager in your site will also help you to add PayPal Buttons, Videos, CAP offers and other scripts for monetization to the posts without getting messed up with the theme. A tag can be placed in the post wherever you need to insert the data this plugin will allow you to do it without breaking codes.

Add Sig

Adding this plugin will make sure that a signature is added to each post folder. With the plugin you can add something like asking for the reads to post their comments etc. and this will inevitably be added at each post end.

AdRotate

This is a great plugin for monetization as it will create advertising banner in group and each group will be added to different areas of the site such as header, above or below the post etc.

Akismet

This is a spam catcher and is usually included in the WP core files however, you need to get WP API Keys from the WP site but this will cost you nothing.

All in One SEO Pack

This is really an important plugin which is used by the experienced and advanced users who understand the importance of targeted audience through search engines.

Broken Link Checker

When your site has broken links, this can be penalized by search engines and therefore, it is really important to resolve the issues and this plugin will scan your entire set every 72 hours to check out the broken links.

Exec-PHP

With the help of this plugin you can have PHP in your posts, text widgets and pages and therefore, it is really important for the themes which you customize to be used as the article directly and if you are really good at PHD CODE editing, this can be a helpful tool for you.

Google Analyticator

This is really important tool and you must harness google analytics power to check out the visitors’ stats. Use of Google Analyticatoris considered to be a timesaver as it helps you avoid getting to other websites for checking out the summary of your site.

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML creates a XML sitemap and whenever you add posts to the sties, it pings google which allows you to make changes. This tool has real attraction for the search spiders which are always looking for new and updated content. You can also use the same plugin to ping Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Maintenance Mode

With the help of this plugin, you can work on your directory while your visitors are still using the blog without any problem at all. You can make changes and edit pages without any interruption.

Link Library

Whatever is inserted in the blogroll is taken by the Link Library which inserts a link in categories. Those who want to get reciprocal links find link library really helpful for them.

SEO Friendly Images

Those pages or posts which do not have attributes, this particular tool will add ALT & TITLE Attributes automatically in all of them.

Secure WordPress

This can add a security layer to WordPress Installation which is quite important as the security of the site can’t be ignored at any cost.

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

This is one more step towards security of the site as it helps in preventing hackers’ attacks and spam comments. It requires users to enter CAPTCHA image.

Sociable

When you have this plugin on your site, it allows the visitors to add their favorite page or post on social bookmarking sites.

Subscribe to Comments

Some people want to get notified when comments are posted on a certain site and with the help of this tool, they can get notification via email.

WordPress Database Backup

Databases may get corrupted due to some technical issues or hacker attacks and adding this plugin will allow you to have a schedule backup which can store data on server or on your email accounts.

WP Minify

WP Minify improves page loading speed by combination JavaScript and cascade style sheet. If you are a webmaster, you know how important it is to have an increased page loading speed.

How Can You Promote Your Article Directory?

If you are wondering how you can market your directory so the people can come to know about it, well, you don’t really need to worry about it because people love to be part of directories as most know its importance. Here are some very useful technique which can be used to promote your site.

Article Directory Themes

When it comes to choosing the best theme for article directory, you have to choose it wisely because the look and feel of directory is really important. Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search engines have nothing to do with the look but the visitors really care about it. There are many great themes from WordPress which can be used to make both search engines and visitors happy with the look and feel of your site.

Participating in Forums

There must be a large number of relevant forums to your niche and you can participate in them to promote your directory.

Using Email Signature

Also include the detail of your directory in signature as this is considered to be a really great way to get great user exposure.

Personal Contacts

You might have some significant personalities in your circle and niche and by contracting them, you can tell about your article directory.

Other Directories

Look for other article directories where you can submit yours and in this way you can receive thousands of visitors on your site.

Forums, Blogs and Communities

If you have your own resources such as forums, blogs, community list etc., you can use them to information the people about your directory.

Conclusion

Creating an Article Directory is really a time taking process and you must put a lot of efforts to make it successful, however, once it starts getting visitors, you will be able to harness its power for the promotion of your own business, brands, products and services. Therefore, if you have never thought about this unique marketing strategy before, this is the right time for you to think about it. As it requires time and efforts, many marketers don’t prefer to for it and in this situation if you go for it, you will have lower competition but higher chances of success.