What is the difference between a Traffic Portal and an Article Directory?

A traffic portal (TP) is a website designed for authors or blog / website owners to go through and either get new unique articles for their websites and blogs or for an author to chose where their article is to be published. An article directory is a storage facility for articles similar to a library.

All articles are written under subject titles; enhanced to entice a reader to read their articles and for other ezine publishers to re-publish their article on a blog or in a website. The article directories have all been set-up under different category headings dealing with the various subjects. Then from these categories you as an author, publisher or reader need to drill down to find the topics that are of most interest to you.

If you are an Ezine publisher, you can freely use these articles as content for your blog or website providing that you give a link back to the author and article directory. Some article directories have a yearly set limit on the number of articles you can publish from their directories and others have no limitations. Unscrupulous Ezine and blog publishers who are not concerned about giving originality to their readers, often scrape these sites, remove the authors bio or resource box and automatically add these articles to their website as content. Thankfully, Google doesn't like duplicate content in their index so these type of sites may not last too long.

Others, and there are many who do, take content from article directories, run them through an article re-writer, pass them through a programme like copyscape to see if they pass for an 'original article' and then use them as content for their websites or blogs. By the law of averages, sooner or later, if you turn something around and around, there is a reasonable chance of coming back to the original? Or perhaps it's just my hopeful Maths? I'm a word person, not a numerical type.

A Traffic Portal (TP) is a gateway to a variety of wordpress blogs listed under all the categories and topics who are looking for new unique content on a regular basis. Authors add their articles into these portals under their chosen keywords and are then offered a variety of blogs in which they would like to have their articles published. Very much like a “Guest Blogger” but you as an author don't have to write to any blog owner and ask if you can publish an article on their site.

If you are the blog owner looking for new and unique content, you can add your blog to the Portal site for authors to choose in which to have their article published.

As a blog owner, you can accept or reject articles. As an author you get to choose where your article gets published.

The basic difference between an article directory and a traffic Portal is that you as an author get more say over where your article gets published; and you as a publisher have free and unique articles in your field find your blog and become guest bloggers.