Why HTML-Friendly Directories?

1. Optimized Anchor Text: The best part of submitting an article, as opposed to links exchanges or directory submissions, is that you have total control over anchor text. As we all know, anchor text is a key factor in Google’s Ranking Algorithm; so submitting articles to sites that allow for this method of optimization is a wise move.
2. Web-Friendly Copy: The goal of article submissions is to get published in a major ezine for traffic and quality backlinks. Any ezine publisher worth his or her salt knows good web copy when they see it. Copy that is easily scannable and broken down into easy-to-read chunks and bulleted lists is going to have the edge when it comes to being published in a respected ezine.
   
   Furthermore, if you can make a page scannable, you can hold the end-reader’s attention longer. This will result in more traffic. Creating web friendly copy is impossible without HTML.
3. Speed of Submissions: When submitting articles, I use the Firefox Web Browser and, with it, a free custom form submitter called Fireform. Fireform allows me to submit my articles to every site on this list in an hour.
   
   A great deal of time and effort have gone into customizing this tool, and one of the reasons why I chose not to include non-HTML-friendly directories is because they slow down my submission time. Non-HTML-friendly article directories seem to be altogether less compatible with this software.
4. Quality of Article Directories: Article directories that do not accept HTML, I find, are often poorly organized for the search engines, have no logins, no clear site structure or means to edit articles. Not to say that every link in the table above is a gem, but in general, that is what I find.

Why I Chose These Column Headings

1. The number of pages indexed in Google of an article directory site that hosts, presumably, hundreds if not thousands of articles is a good indicator of how optimized the site structure is, where more is better. Unfortunately, this number won’t convey much information about sites without many articles. I wish I knew how many articles were contained within each site, so that I could compare that number to how many have been indexed. (If anyone wants to find that information for me, I’ll be happy to drop you a link.)
2. Secondly, the higher the index number, the more likely your article is to be published, giving you higher probability of receiving a link.