Today I am going to review an old article directory I used to use a lot: Street Articles. I assume if you’re reading this article, then odds are you’re wondering if this directory still works and if it’s worth trying to get traffic from as well as making money online from.
To answer that, I will share my personal experiences as to what happened during the period that I was using it and if in 2018, if it’s still worth it.
Very quickly though…
What is Street Articles (SA)?
I believe this place came out in 2010 or 2011, but it was and still is a big directory where anyone can become an author and write content on any subject they so choose.
To this day, even in 2019, 2020 and so on, people are still writing articles and getting visits to them.
While at the time of it’s creation, these directories in general were not as popular as they used to be, this place upped the standards by making sure every single author who wished to post on it to provide solid, quality content.
As a result, this place did, at the time provide people with good SEO results and many, including myself leveraged it’s authority to drive traffic to their website/s.
I’ve personally had numerous pieces of content I wrote reach very high positions and attain in some cases 10,000’s in views and visits, all of which was free traffic.
However, several years later, are these results still happening?
Can you still rely on this website for success?
The unfortunate change up that occurred with this directory:
As much as I loved using Streetarticles.com and of the many benefits I got out of it, eventually, this directory also became as relevant as it’s predecessors such as Ezinearticles.com in the sense that it had it’s golden period and it passed, with no chances of it coming back. This is the same story with places like Hub Pages which is technically like SA too.
You see, at one stage, even before SA came around, there was a period of several years where these kinds of directories were the express highway to high rankings in search engines.
Write a several 100 word piece of content on them and you could be on Google’s first page within 24 hours in many cases.
Naturally, this easy way to rankings method attracted a lot of people, myself included, and unfortunately a lot of bad/spam like writers. In the process, what was once a great place to get high rankings became swamped (and I mean quite literally a swamp) with bad content, bad writers and what would eventually be the undoing of the article directory itself.
When I say undoing, I mean Google took notice and took away the high ranking privileges. I have written about this subject in-depth before, but I am saying this because…
As these directories started to lose their momentum and privileges was around the same time SA came out. They tried to restore the good name directories had by putting into place more restrictions and qualifications which I mentioned earlier.
This did in fact make the site have it’s writers produce better quality content, which in fact, Google did seek and for a period, it worked. Unfortunately as time went by, SA started to suffer from several issues:
1) It had bad writers pulling down the overall site and it’s SEO privileges with Google by producing bad content.
2) Eventually, this directory did lose a lot of those SEO privileges, the same way it’s predecessors did.
I personally no longer write there.
Why is Street Articles so special to me? I mean it’s just another directory right? No…
While I did go through MANY different directories over my years in online business, this particular one was close to me because I knew and still know the owners of it. They are 2 dudes who I still do business with. In fact, part of my MAIN business today is still a partnership like relationship with those 2 guys.
Their names are Kyle and Carson and while SA was one of their biggest projects, their main one which existed prior to that directory and the main one they still focus on today is the alternative program I would suggest you go with if you were someone who wanted to write on article directories. That place is called Wealthy Affiliate.
The great thing about Kyle and Carson is that despite the setback that occurred with SA, they were able to move away from it and recommend to their followers to do the same and to focus on their own, individual blogs as the new way to generate traffic.
Once they recommended this course of action, I turned away from Street Articles and followed their advice.
My final thoughts and an important piece of info:
If you’re still considering writing for SA or any other directory, know that in the case of SEO, it is not a good idea. You can still get views, but rankings and traffic from that is another story, and making money online in that context is tougher now.
Any content you write now or in the future should focus on a personal blog/website to build up your own individual authority. Learn how to do that with Wealthy Affiliate.
But what I also want to add is how awesome it was that despite that set back that Kyle and Carson decided to move away from it and tell their members to do the same, how much money they left on the table as a result of this move, but how important it was to maintain the future of their main business as well as the businesses of their members.
They had to ax SA in a manner of speaking to make sure their members saw prolonged success with Google and I have to say, by following their advice in this regard, I was able to truly experience great success with my own individual website/s.
It’s one of the many reasons I still follow the advice these guys give. So I’m going to say it again:
If you’re doing SEO or struggling with it, I again, want to mention Kyle and Carson’s main program, Wealthy Affiliate.
It is in my opinion the best way to learn SEO and ensure you see consistent traffic coming to your website. Now I want to point out that WA is itself sort of an article directory where you can post personal blogs, but even Kyle and Carson themselves suggest you make a personal website and do that content posting there, because that is the future.
Quite an interesting story of how Street Article fell, what’s more interesting to know was that Kyle and Carson used to work there. It’s a shame such as a site did not work out in the end because of bad content writers. It does seem like an ideal place to write for fun though, not to say writing in WA isn’t fun.
Kyle and Carson made the site and it wasn’t so much bad writers who made it fall, it was Google showing signs that it was moving away from article directories and favoring personal blogs more so. As a result, Kyle and Carson made the correct moves, cut off Streetarticles and focused on growing Wealthy Affiliate and helping their members continue to see success.
Hey Vitaliy, really interesting post that you did here. I have never heard about street articles. What a shame that I find out about it now. I would have loved it :). I think if anybody would make something like this again they would need a good AI that only allowed good content. So the SEO privileges won’t go down because of some idiots abusing the system.
Hi Aaron, it’s just simply not possible to have sites like Street Articles do well anymore. They are considered content farms by Google and no matter what complex system they have in place to judge good content, in the end, it is far better to have your own, individual website and let that create it’s own authority in Google. Trust me, you entered into the SEO game at a good time, and if you use the strategies inside Wealthy Affiliate, I’m sure you’re going to get some crazy traffic.