Article marketing is one of the most effective (and not to mention most cheapest) way to generate traffic to a website. The reason it is effective because a single article posted at a high volume traffic website will redirect visitors to the author’s own website every time. A single one-time effort with an included backlink will allow searchers looking for a particular subject to continuously be able to find you.

If the article posted is of high quality and evergreen value, it will generate a lot of response and new visitors as long as it remains online. There are various article directories (some of the more established ones include EzineArticles, ArticleCity and ArticleDashboard) that remains as good sources of targeted traffic. With the right article title and tags plus submission to directories with a high enough PageRank - your article becomes well-optimized to be shown in search engine results.

I have stumbled upon (literally, a contact on StumbleUpon passed me the link) BloggersBase which on first glance looked like an article directory with a niche focusing on bloggers. But upon reading the articles posted there, I found out these articles were rated for their content based on 4 criteria (Agreement, Presentation, Professionalism, Value) by readers. It was remarkably different.

Not only that, you could embed pictures, videos and links within the articles. It resulted in far richer multimedia value than the usual text only articles found in more “traditional” article directories. Some of their efforts in attracting more writers include rewarding the top writers within each category with cash prizes as well rewarding affiliates who refer top writers to add in valuable content to within the website.

Currently the PageRank of BloggersBase is 4 - which is pretty decent growth since I think they’ve been around for only less than a year. As long as traffic continues to grow I’m sure BloggersBase will become an established authority website for new bloggers to get discovered.

I really love the fact that articles written in BloggersBase can be chosen to be published immediately (which is unheard of in other article directories) and that your quality of your article will determine whether your article gets posted to the front page.

It is all above board and clear with a points system and that top writers are featured alongside in the sidebar. If your article is of the “spammy” quality, it will be rated lowly and your article will remain near bottom of the page. A pure merit-based system just like the Singapore system! Haha.

What’s great is also both Readers and Writers also get points! Readers who regularly pick articles that are of value are recognized as “Influential Readers” and have the power to determine how high the article rises in BloggersBase.

Currently the win-win system of BloggersBase of rewarding writers and helping them get discovered (and the win for BloggerBase is more users and more link authority) is good enough for me to start promoting them on my sidebar. I won’t get rewarded unless you submit articles that of a high quality enough! LOL.

Submit a few articles of decent quality to BloggersBase, get a backlink and sit back. The title of your article will determine how easily searchers can find them on Google and ensure you continue get new inflow of traffic.

One last thing I would improve for BloggersBase: SEO-wise I think it can be improved - especially the URL of the specific articles. The URLs of articles in other directories usually follow the title tags carefully. I don’t think some parts are necesssary especially the addition of the categories within the URL.