How to submit articles without search engine penalties?

[sankarapandian]

Even after reading so many reports I am still confused about the article submission strategy. Recently I read a report but got no clear idea and they are also promoting an article submission software which submits articles to thousands of directories with a single click.

Now I am submitting articles to only 20 directories/day as I had read a report that getting so many back links in a short period would attract search engine penalty and asked to submit to not more than 20 directories/day. But many suggest to submit 3 articles/week. I have a list of 1000 directories and I am using a half automated article submission software to appear as a manual submission. If I submit 3 articles even for a month I could easily get 3000 links in a month. I don't know which way to follow.

Another point is, submitting the same article to thousands of directories. How this will be treated by the search engines? Even if we change the first and last paragraph for every few hundred submissions and use 3 or 4 signatures with different anchor texts we can easily submit to thousands of directories in a short period. In short I have three questions to be answered.
Whether the same article can be submitted to thousands or hundreds of directories? Will the search engines ban our site for duplication?

Whether we can use different signatures with different anchor texts for the same article submissions, say using one signature for every few hundred submissions?

Whether getting so many back links in a shorter period attract penalties from major search engines?

sankarapandian

[americanwahm]

[DebGallardo]

[KansasDragon]

It almost sounds like you're trying to use the "directories" for your biggest benefit, and incoming links. It's true, you want those incoming links from highly ranked article directories, but...

Your greatest benefit will be if you can write some really high quality articles that other web site owners will be using on their sites. Getting links into your site from a wide range of sites, and a wide range of eyeballs.

[DebGallardo]

[Lynn Terry]

Just to clarify the point I made that Deb shared above, regarding publishing articles on your own site FIRST... that was advice given to people who wanted to publish the same articles on their own website and also use them for article marketing. If you do that - use the same content - it needs to be indexed on your domain before you submit it elsewhere. But ideally you will use unique content on your site, and submit separate articles to article directories.

That said, you dont want to over-complicate this whole Article Marketing thing. Kelly gave good advice in the first reply - that's how I approach it as well.

You need a variety of inbound links. Not just links to your main page. And not just links from article directories. See:

After you read that article, check out for ideas on even more places to get inbound links.