In this section I want to talk about the importance of “link diversity”.
When I talk about “link diversity” I’m referring to generating incoming links from as many different and totally unique websites AND sources as possible.
That means if you’re going to use article marketing as a link building technique (and you should) then you shouldn’t just submit your articles to EzineArticles.com (a popular article directory).
You should also syndicate your articles out to the hundreds of other “less popular” articles directories.
The reasoning here is pretty straight forward.
If all you do is submit your articles to ezinearticles.com then you’re only ever going to get “implied votes” in the form of incoming links from that one source.
Think of that as one websites opinion of yours.
You can submit 100 articles to that directory which will increase that websites opinion of yours however its still just one opinion in the eye’s of Google. Granted it might hold more weight than only having one or two references on that website, but at the end of the day it’s the same opinion.
It’s going to have less positive impact than if there were “more opinions” involved.
If you go ahead and submit articles to 500 other article directories, then you’re getting 500+ “implied votes” (or many positive opinions) for your website from many different totally unique sources.
That is going to have a much bigger impact on positive improvements in search engine rankings.
The same thing applies to website directory submissions. Getting listed in one website directory is good.  Getting listed in 1,000 directories is better.
Here’s why from a more technical point of view…
It’s been well known for a long time that one consideration Google’s algorithm takes into account (in relation to incoming links) are the IP addresses of the websites those links are coming from.
That basically means how many unique domains, hosted on how many different website hosts, those links come from. This “IP factor” is everything to do with Google trying to reduce “link manipulation”.
It’s very easy for a webmaster to go and point 10,000 incoming links to their website from another website with 10,000 pages. All they need to do is get that website to link to theirs from every single page.
This could be done by purchasing “sidewide” text link advertising. It could be done in a strategic “sidewide” linking arrangement with another website. Heck, one webmaster might own and operate a second website with 10,000 pages that they could link out to from.
There are any number of ways of doing it and you could literally do that over night.
In comparison (and just generally speaking) it’s much harder for a webmaster to go and get 10,000 incoming links all from totally different websites.
All “theme relevancy” issues aside, you can see the problem if Google counted those two different types of 10,000 incoming links equally. It would be far too easy for webmasters to manipulate their search engine rankings.

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