What Makes An Article Directory A Great Place To Submit?

Seems like every where you turn, someone is creating yet another article directory begging you to submit your articles to them. The only person you are helping by submitting your content to newbie article directories are the article directory owners themselves - because they are too new to have any traffic yet to give back to you in exchange for your valuable time.

Here's a checklist to help you determine if an article directory is worth your time to submit to or not:

[ ] Have they been in business for more than a year? Bonus points for those that have been in business for 5 or more years. Directories that are less than 6 months old are often still in the sandbox yet, meaning they don't have any traffic traction.

[ ] Can you figure out within 10 seconds of surfing their site who actually owns or is in charge of the site? Article directory owners that hide themselves from the public should be a sign that they don't want to be found.

[ ] Do they respond within 24-48 hours of your email requests? Did your email to them bounce back undeliverable?

[ ] Does the article directory have more than 1,000-5,000 authors listed? Sites with less than 1,000 authors are still cutting their teeth on being a directory owner.

[ ] Does it appear that the article directory was built with article bot scraped content? You can easily tell by looking for the unconverted MS word smartquotes within articles that are listed on the site. There is no honor in having your articles side by side of scraped content.

[ ] Is the article directory human powered vs. fully automated? Any article directory that is fully automated is usually a sign that the owner doesn't intend to police the quality of the content.

[ ] Do they provide RSS feeds, email alerts, forward to a friend function and other strategies to increase the distribution of your articles? Do they have thousands of members of their own double opt-in mailing lists to promote your articles?

[ ] Are they responsible with the advertising clients they have on their site? ie: No popups, no exit pops, no