The internet can be a great to place to share information, whether it is for academic or professional use. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can help spread this information around the web, placing the information in different places and including it in different search engines so that people around the web can find it easier. Although, this can be good for some content and not others…in this case, articles.

As the idea of SEO started to develop where people saw the popularity of having their websites included in different link directories and search engines, the idea arose where people thought “Along with submitting websites to different directories to gain popularity, will article content work the same way?” With this in mind, article directories started to emerge, and various submission sites started to include them within their services.

As article directory submission became more mainstream, the idea of “duplicate content” became more apparent with the reasons listed below. A big reason for this is a canonical issue where some search engines may view the same article over and over with different URLs. However, people still perform article directory submissions, because many people still think that they are an effective and quick way to get their publications noticed, and many submission services still offer article directory submissions in their services, such as:

What are your thoughts on article directory submissions? Are they good for content, even though they may burn in search engine indexes? It would be great to see what other people’s reactions are on this topic. Please feel free to leave your feedback in the comments section below.