If you've been keeping up with legal marketing news, you've almost definitely heard of article submission websites—they were the most commonly used SEO tool for many law firms for several years in the mid-'00s.  An article submission website works by letting you submit any content you like, then builds links to your websits based on your article and inserts the article's content into several websites all over the internet.  But is this still a good idea in 2012?  Today, we'll take a look at whether the humble article submission website is still a great marketing bet, or whether it has been eclipsed in favor of newer methods.

Inbound Linking and Article Submission Websites

The purpose of an article submission website is simple.  Search engine rankings depend more on inbound links than on any other single factor.  This puts many different websites into competition for who can get the most inbound “link juice,” which helps Google decide how much authority your website has when you talk about particular topics.

Article submission websites can give you anywhere from one to hundreds of inbound links, and depending on which article submission website you choose, you can automate some or all of the process.  In order to have the best chance of your links working well, you'll also want to make sure that the content you produce is worth clicking on.  The more people that link to the page with your inbound link on it, the more authority that link will have.

How Article Submission Websites Work

Typically, to use an article submission website, you'll need to have your content ready to go.  After registering for an account, you'll be able to upload your content, including links with anchor text, to the website.

After you upload to an article submission website, the site begins to spawn copies of your article on other websites owned by the same company or which allow for public access and posting.  Because you've included a link with anchor text in the articles you submit with article submission websites, that article is placed in many places all over the web.

Problems with Article Submission Websites

Problems can arise if you're using an article submission website, because Google doesn't particularly like when people try to game search rankings.  If you wanted to be on Page 1, Google would much prefer for you to do it by paying them for a sponsored link rather than doing it for free or nearly free through article submission websites.

Because of this, Google has started doing things to identify when someone is using an article submission website.  An algorithm update called Panda started devaluing links that were made directly from publicly accessible article submission websites in late 2011.  In 2012, another algorithm update called Penguin started being used.  This update made it so that websites that were getting too many links with the same anchor text were penalized for over optimization.

What this meant for many article submission websites was disaster.  Not all of them survived the changes, and many webmasters who thought they had done a good job with search engine optimization suddenly found themselves the not so proud owners of websites with terrible SERPs.

Article Submission Websites in the Panda/Penguin Era

For any article submission website to make it after Panda and Penguin, they had to be savvy and adapt to the changing times.  Today, article submission websites are more likely to post your content to contextually relevant sites, to vary anchor text, and to insert your links on high PageRank sites instead of low value ones.

Now that Penguin and Panda have been used for some time, the best way to make sure that any article submission website you're using still works is to just ask them for their data.  They should be able to show you that they have had measurable post-Penguin success, and if not, you should probably find other article submission websites with a more data driven approach.

While in the “old days” of 2007 or 2008, you could pick just about any article submission website, today you're going to need to be more picky.  You should also make sure that you're diversifying your link creation strategy: while article submission websites can certainly help, you will also need to have several other strategies in case a new algorithm update renders your links useless.

Should We Still Use Article Submission Websites?

Even with the potential problems of using an article submission website, they can still be a really good strategy for building inbound links.  Just make sure that you're going through quality article submission websites with good results, and the risk/reward ratio is good enough that many marketers think it's worth doing.

No one can make the decision for you about whether to use an article submission website, but perhaps some of your decision should be based on how much you have to lose.  An older, established law firm with a big web presence should probably use more conservative strategies and may not want to use article submission websites.  On the other hand, for a brand new firm, using an article submission website presents a whole lot of opportunities for reward and is very unlikely to damage your reputation overall.

Alternatives to Article Submission Websites

If using an article submission website makes you a bit wary, there are other ways that you can build your links without taking the same risks.  Consider using an advertising agency to help you draft press releases, and make contacts in the journalism industry so that your press releases are more likely to be picked up by local newspapers, radio stations, and television channels.

You can also create inbound links using directory submissions, social media, or blogging.  These methods are now time tested, and you should be incorporating them as part of your inbound link building strategy whether or not you use article submission websites.  Any article submission website you use will be more useful when you're also maintaining a diverse variety of links on other types of sites.

It can be really hard to get a straight answer today about what works and what doesn't work in search engine marketing.  So many different companies have a piece of software to sell that reliable information about link exchange, inbound linking, and reciprocal linking is incredibly difficult to come by.  Let's say you're considering using reciprocal link exchange services.  You can't ask a reciprocal link exchange service whether reciprocal links are still a good strategy—their business model depends on telling you “yes.”  This guide will give you unbiased, up to date information about whether it's a good idea to use reciprocal link exchange services in 2012 and 2013.

What is a Reciprocal Link Exchange Service?

Reciprocal linking refers to the “you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours” notion of trading links for mutual search engine optimization benefit.  Reciprocal link exchange services were some of the hottest properties for people wanting to do search engine marketing in 2005 to 2007.  However, they have recently declined in popularity, for reasons we'll get to in just a few minutes.

A reciprocal link exchange service works by automating some of the process to automate links.  Generally, the way that reciprocal link exchange services work is by having you put a small piece of code into the HTML of your website.  When that piece of code is used, it gives other people a way to automatically generate a reciprocal link to you.  A reciprocal link exchange service can sometimes be a way to generate dozens or hundreds of inbound links in a very short amount of time, which is why these services became so well loved by search engine marketing professionals.

How Do Lawyers Use a Reciprocal Link Exchange Service?

Some attorneys used reciprocal link exchange services a bit differently.  Instead of just using a reciprocal link exchange service that allowed for any links to be exchanged, some lawyers chose to do link exchanges only with other lawyers.  However, this still allowed links to be made that were automated and with low quality control.

The reason that attorneys used this strategy was to make their rankings rise higher.  With a higher number of inbound links, especially from contextually related websites, Google tends to assume that a site is trustworthy and should be included among the top results for a search string.

When lawyers were using reciprocal link exchange services, they were trading quality SEO for quantities of inbound links.  A reciprocal link exchange service could never generate the same level of link quality that you would get from carefully building links organically, but until a few years ago, there was just no reason to care.

Why Reciprocal Link Exchange Changed

In recent years, Google has gotten better at determining the quality level of an inbound link.  Now, the number of links you have from reciprocal link exchange services can actually sometimes harm your site.  That's because Google recognizes an excessive use of a reciprocal link exchange service is usually an indication of a low quality, high quantity link building strategy of a type that it likes to discourage.

Today, the amount of link juice that you'll get from additional reciprocal links dwindles to zero if you receive a high percentage of links from reciprocal link exchange services.  This means that using a reciprocal link exchange service went from being useful to being very nearly useless overnight.

What Do We Do Now?

If you were using reciprocal link exchange services before, you need to have a new strategy now.  Instead of a reciprocal link exchange service, you should be working to build effective, engaging one way links that will be of interest to real people.

Avoid any excessive automation in creating your one way links.  Placing identical links in a large number of websites will trip Google's over optimization detectors just as fast or faster than using reciprocal link exchange services.  You should strive for link diversity, which will serve you much better through any future search updates and changes.

Avoiding Penalties For Using Reciprocal Link Exchange Services

If you've already been using a reciprocal link exchange service, this article may be making you very nervous.  If you've been penalized or are worried about penalties to your search rankings from using reciprocal link exchange services, you need to take action now.  Run a backlinks checker online that can detect where your inbound links are coming from.  Then, when you find the backlinks that were generated by a reciprocal link exchange service, make a note of the URL and start emailing webmasters to have your links taken down.

Most webmasters today will be very understanding—after all, they were clearly using reciprocal link exchange services too, and may like you be learning just now about their disadvantages.  However, if a webmaster is reluctant to take down the link put up by a reciprocal link building service, the solution is easy: just take the link down from your website, and you now have a perfectly serviceable one way link.

The Future of Reciprocal Link Exchange Services

Of course, no reciprocal link exchange service wants to go down without a fight.  When reciprocal link exchange services were first made irrelevant to search engine optimization, many of them tried various tactics to stay in business.  A few are still functional today, but the truth is that the reciprocal link exchange service appears to be, for the most part, a dying breed.

What's more, it seems very unlikely that reciprocal link exchange services will make a comeback.  Reciprocal linking is just too easy to abuse for Google to ever encourage it again.  Changing your law firm's search engine marketing focus is absolutely necessary if you've been using a reciprocal link exchange service.  You can't hope that the new fads will go away and that reciprocal linking will come back—it's so unlikely to happen that it's not even worth planning for.

An online reputation manager is a person whose job description didn't even exist ten years ago.  In just a few short years, reputation management online has become a multimillion dollar industry with competitors popping up all over the United States and around the world.  Whether you're using online reputation management software to help you do the job yourself, or have hired an online reputation manager, this guide will make sure you know the biggest do's and don'ts for the next year.

DO Take Down Libelous Content

There's no reason that you should have to put up with defamation.  Online reputation management often includes sending takedown notices to websites that are hosting content that is libelous.  If you're not sending takedown notices to these websites, you won't be able to have the information removed and it may be one of the first things that potential clients see when they search for your website.

It's very common today for unscrupulous competitors to try to sabotage your reputation management online by posting negative reviews or otherwise defaming your company.  An online reputation manager can identify these negative posts immediately and will ask you whether they are true or not.  If they're not true, best practices for online reputation management call for an immediate takedown notice.  Obviously, truth is a defense to libel, so if your online reputation manager discovers that the negative review is true, they will have to use different tactics for your reputation management online.

DON'T Issue Takedowns For Honest Critique

Even though you may feel sensitive to negative things that people are saying about your company online, it's a huge mistake for your online reputation manager to issue a takedown notice if you don't really have legal grounds to.  If you're not really being libeled and send out a takedown notice as part of your online reputation management strategy, you could be ridiculed—even publicly—as a result.

If you see honest critiques or things that just involve people expressing a disgruntled opinion, sometimes the best response for your reputation management online is just to ignore them and work on building more positive links for yourself.  An online reputation manager who tries to make these go away with takedowns is attempting censorship, rather than real online reputation management.

DO Create a Positive Social Media Vibe

Using social media is a good tool for your online reputation manager.  By doing online reputation management through Facebook or Twitter, you can put your best foot forward and force any negative links about you to lower ranked search result pages, where they'll only be seen by the most dedicated researchers.

Having an upbeat, interesting personality on social media websites can help your online reputation management significantly.  It's important for your reputation management online that you make your social networking content engaging and easy for people to talk about.  This can lead to people sharing links, and your online reputation management posts becoming a virally shared source of new links.

DON'T Sound Fake or “Corporate”

Just because you come to the office in a suit doesn't mean that your Twitter and Facebook accounts need to be dull and ponderous.  Online reputation management is easiest when you sound like a real person.  Try to avoid sounding either too formal or too self-consciously casual for your reputation management online.  Either of these extremes is likely to come off as fake to your friends and followers, and you want to portray yourself as honest and trustworthy.

DO Improve Your Directory Listings

Your online reputation manager can do a lot of the heavy lifting for this one.  Online reputation management is significantly easier when you've created the listing for your website on directories.  Directory listings often remain largely blank until someone fills them out, and you could be missing out on a big tool for reputation management online if you're not using them.

Your directory listings can often include not only a text blurb about your firm and its mission, but also graphics that help you extend your brand awareness.  Since directories are often prominent in searches, this form of online reputation management also helps you to keep negative results off the front page.

DON'T Make Fake Websites or Reviews

One of the first thoughts many law firms have about online reputation management is: “if there's a negative review that's fake, why can't I make a ton of positive reviews that are just as fake but will drive new clients to my business?”  While this is indeed a strategy that is used by some online reputation manager types, there are several reasons that it should not be among your strategies for reputation management online.

First of all, do you really think you'll be able to keep the secret forever?  Many review websites are very sensitive to fake reviews for reputation management online, and will pull your reviews if they detect several from the same IP address.  Your online reputation manager will be in big trouble if you're caught out lying for reviews.  You could even run into ethics problems with your local or state bar association if you're not careful.  It's not worth risking your license to practice law over—use different techniques for your reputation management online.

DO Create Conversation with Critics

Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean you should be silent and just let them talk.  If you're willing to engage in open, honest communication with your critics, you'll be seen as reasonable and assertive.  If someone says something negative about your law firm in a blog, for example, you can make a comment on the blog that engages with their point of view but disagrees with it.

DON'T Shut Down All Negative Reviews

In some cases, a negative review can actually help your reputation management online.  How?  If your online reputation manager is taking down all or almost all negative reviews, people may start to suspect that you are somehow gaming the system.  By keeping at least some negative reviews—perhaps the ones with the most positive overall outlook on your firm—your online reputation manager can help you to present a more appealing and honest public face.

A single negative review online can cost 9% of your revenues if it's prominently placed, according to studies.  The internet's memory is forever.  If someone says something bad about your law firm even once and posts it online, it can appear in people's search results about your law firm for weeks, months, or even years.  Managing your online reputation is the key to avoiding having any unwanted links on the first several pages of search results.  In this guide, we'll discuss several online reputation management tools that are specifically designed to help you keep yourself looking great to the public.  You'll learn several tips for managing your online reputation, and how to take down some of the worst links about your company.

Are the Best Online Reputation Management Tools Free?

While it's true that there are free online reputation management tools available from several different companies, managing your online reputation isn't always cheap.  The price range is very wide: some of the best tools actually cost several hundred dollars for a year's license, while others have free trials or low basic rates.

When you use free online reputation management tools to manage your online reputation, you probably won't get much in the way of advanced features.  You may be able to see what links are mentioning you, but not whether the links portray you in a positive, neutral, or negative light.  Free online reputation management tools almost never offer you the option to repair your reputation through the creation of new content.

Keep in mind that managing your online reputation is extremely important.  If a few clients see a bad review or libelous content about your law firm, you could lose their business before they ever make a call, costing you thousands of dollars.  It can definitely be worth it for people in high-competition businesses, like law firms, to shell out money for great online reputation management tools.

Google: Making the Best Free Online Reputation Management Tools

Google is the undisputed king of giving away useful tools for webmasters and marketing professionals.  There are several different ways that you can start managing your online reputation with Google.  For example, you can set up Google Alerts that will notify you whenever your company is mentioned in a site that Google indexes.

Of course, in order to start managing your online reputation using Google Alerts, you'll need to know exactly what phrases and words you're looking for.  It can be tedious to use the alert system, especially if the search strings you're using also bring up results about other law firms or other people.

Monitor What People Say About Your Site: Trackur

Claiming to be “social media monitoring tools made easy,” Trackur offers a streamlined but still robust user interface while allowing you to monitor news mentions and even track the reputation of your competitors.  Trackur says that it can give you results for new mentions of your website even when the mentions are less than half an hour old—perfect for handling public relations problems or touchy legal situations.

While Trackur may be among the most comprehensive online reputation management tools in the world, it doesn't come cheap.  After a ten day free trial, the most basic package is $18 a month but doesn't let you use many of Trackur's advanced features.  The best packages cost nearly $400 per month.  Is it worth it?  That depends on how badly you want to make sure your reputation stays good, and how serious you are about really managing your online reputation.

The Snapshot: Reputation.Com

Reputation.com is another of the online reputation management tools that gives you the most information.  You can find out what new reviews about your firm say.  Unlike Trackur, this service doesn't yet support social network alerts, although the company claims that this service will be coming soon for their clients.

Reputation.com also tells you right away, with a snapshot view, whether the reviews you're receiving are positive, neutral, or negative.  Managing your online reputation is much easier when you can use this kind of birds'-eye view.

What's more, Reputation.com is one of the few online reputation management tools that will actually help you change the search rankings of negative reviews and bad publicity.  It works by managing your online reputation with tiered, high quality links to the pages you want, which push the negative pages to the bottom of searches.

Monitor Phrases Being Said About You: BrandsEye

Brandseye distinguishes itself from other online reputation management tools by using crowdsourcing to change alerts into real insights about how your business is being perceived online.  BrandsEye bases its pricing on how many distinct phrases you want to monitor.  BrandsEye is known by search engine optimization marketing professionals as one of the better designed online reputation management tools.  If you're looking for a tool that can automate a great deal of the day to day management of your online reputation, BrandsEye may be just the ticket.

The Twitter Specialist: TweetBeep

If you are only interested in managing your online reputation with a single social network, you might want to make it Twitter, which is very influential in search results.  TweetBeep gives you very specific functionalities for managing your online reputation on Twitter, but keep in mind that if you want more social media monitoring, you'll need to use another tool.  For most attorneys, TweetBeep won't be the best of these management tools, but a practice with a very popular Twitter feed might like the features.

Managing Your Online Reputation: Changing the Buzz Manually

Of course, you don't necessarily need to use any online reputation management tools to manage your online reputation.  The best cure for bad publicity is good publicity, and one of the best ways to manage your online reputation is to create positive buzz about your company.  Whether it's by asking your loyal clients for positive reviews or creating new press releases, you can often turn around the effects of negative reviews by simply posting more content of your own.

“How can I protect my reputation online?” is one of the biggest questions many businesses have today.  You've worked hard to build a good reputation in your community and on the internet.  But a single failure to protect the online reputation of your firm can hurt your total revenue by almost 10 percent—even if it was a negative review posted by your rivals in an attempt to drive you out of business.  It's important to protect the online reputation of your law firm, and to do that, you'll need a primer.  In this guide, you'll learn how to protect your online reputation with simple, easy to use tips.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Avoid Unnatural Links

Being a spammer is one of the worst online reputations that you can have.  To protect the online reputation of your law firm, you need to project an image of an authoritative, professional business with quality content.  If you've used any kind of unnatural link building in the past, you should check those links in order to protect your online reputation.

If you find links that look spammy, you need to ask to have them removed to protect the online reputation of your firm.  “How does that protect my reputation online?” you may ask.  The answer is simple: if people searching for your website find that site first—or at all—they may not feel like you're a trustworthy enough law firm to do business with.

Unnatural links are being cracked down upon by Google anyhow, so you'll not only protect your online reputation when you do this—you'll also protect your search engine rankings.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Use Social Networks

If you want to protect the online reputation of a law firm in 2012 or 2013, one of the first things you need to do is get social networking accounts on every major social network.  How does that protect my reputation online?  Because if you don't do this, it will be much harder to protect your online reputation on these sites, or even see if people are talking about you.

Social networks can also be a great way to protect your online reputation by getting out the call to people you know and trust.  If you're a small law firm and your competition has recently launched a black hat campaign to give you bad reviews, you can put a call out on Facebook and Twitter: “Help me protect my reputation online—give me a good review if you've had a good experience.”  This can net you big numbers of reviews from your best clients.

Because social networking links tend to be displayed relatively early in search results, you can also create content on social networks to protect the online reputation of your law firm.  This content can protect your online reputation by pushing the content you don't want people to see off the front page and into the rankings nobody reads.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Monitor What People Say

To protect your online reputation, you may want to enlist help.  There are many different online tools that help to protect the online reputation of businesses.  Some of these reputation management software packages are totally free—like the alert system offered by Google—but those with more advanced functions, like automation of changes to your search rankings, can cost thousands of dollars every year you use them to protect your online reputation.

Whether you choose to start with a more streamlined free tool or a more comprehensive paid tool to protect the online reputation of your law firm, you should monitor your online reputation at least once every week.  This helps you get a feel for the trends affecting your reputation, as well as manage a new negative review quickly before it's been able to get much traction with other users online.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Build Links Slowly

Your reputation online isn't just being measured by individual people.  Search engines like Google are also keeping track of your link presence, and in some cases you'll need to be careful to protect the online reputation of your law firm.  If Google decides that your website has been optimized too much for search engine performance, there's a chance that you'll see a major rankings penalty.

“But how can I protect my online reputation while building links?” may be your next question.  Protect your online reputation by knowing what natural links look like.  The biggest sign that a website is building its link popularity artificially is that links appear by the thousands on some days, while on other days no new links are made to your site.  That's not the pattern that websites building their link presence naturally have—they build links much more steadily, with smaller spikes when new content is created or shared.  You can protect the

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Avoid Security Breaches

This may sound like it goes without saying, but you can't protect the online reputation of your firm if you're not protecting your own website.  Using insecure passwords and outdated software on your website could leave you vulnerable to hacking attempts and denial of service attacks, and these can compromise your online reputation for months or years to come if you're not careful.  

What's more, if you keep private client information connected to your website in any way, hacking attempts could breach your security and steal that client information—any lawyer's worst nightmare.  If you're not sure how secure you really are, you may want to consult with an IT security professional to make sure that your website is safe and protect your online reputation.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Don't Astroturf

To protect the online reputation of your law firm, you can't astroturf, making fake reviews or websites to defame a client or promote yourself.  You may think this is a way to protect your online reputation, but it's almost always too obvious and discovered very quickly.  Protect the online reputation you've built with natural methods, not by pretending to be someone you're not.  If you try to protect your online reputation with astroturfing, your state bar association may be very unhappy—and trying to excuse it by saying “I was just trying to protect my reputation online” won't cut it.

Millions of websites today are working on building an artificial link presence that isn't really based on quality content and fair play.  Instead, they're gaming the system and creating an artificial link structure designed explicitly to rocket them to the top of the search rankings.  However, every time you create an artificial link, you're leaving a trail that search engines may be able to detect.  In this guide, we'll take a look at how Google detects when law firms are using an artificial link structure.  You can use this information either to make an artificial link that looks natural, or—hopefully—to make a decision not to use artificial links as part of your search engine optimization strategy.

What's the Difference Between Natural and Artificial Links?

Natural links come about because of natural processes.  Anyone who links to your website because they know you in person, saw your link on a social media site, or just loved one of your blog entries is creating a natural link.

An artificial link is very different.  Artificial links are designed with search engine optimization as their biggest—and often sole—priority.  People tend to build these links by using automated link creation programs.  These link creation programs make for a very detectable artificial link structure, and Google and other search engine companies monitor the development of artificial link creation software heavily.  If you are believed to be engaged in creating artificial links, Google reserves the right to penalize your website by making it appear much later in search rankings.

If you're caught buying links, you can expect to be penalized for this method of artificial link building.  If you're caught selling them, though, expect your future to be even bleaker: Google is known to completely de-list websites caught creating artificial link structure for other sites.

Signs of an Artificial Link Structure: Bursts of Activity

One of the easiest ways to make sure that any artificial link creation you do remains undetected by Google is to make links relatively slowly.  Unless a website becomes a real viral sensation overnight, complete with traffic patterns that reflect virality, it's very unlikely that it will get one huge burst of links and then have barely any inbound links created for a month.

The only time that kind of pattern occurs is when an artificial link structure is being built.  This is a top sign of artificial link creation and remains the most common way that Google identifies websites using black hat techniques for search engine optimization.

Signs of an Artificial Link Structure: Identical Anchor Text

Because exact keyword match anchor text can make a bigger difference to your search rankings, some people make every artificial link they build have the same exact keyword anchor text.  But think about it: do websites that are creating links naturally use this kind of linking often?  Natural links might have anchor text like “over here” or “this” or “my favorite law firm,” rather than a specific keyword match that you designed for maximum search engine optimization.

Anyone trying to make an artificial link structure while avoiding detection needs to be careful to vary their anchor text substantially from link to link.  Yes, this will take longer—but it will also prevent your artificial link building from being noticed by Google.

Signs of an Artificial Link Structure: Links from the Same IP

When artificial link building programs put your links on many different websites, some of these programs can make a huge mistake.  If Google detects that too many of your links come from the same IP address, there's only one reasonable explanation: your artificial link building program is hosting your links on many websites that are all hosted on the same servers.

You should run an inbound link checker periodically to look for this sign of an artificial link structure, especially if you are using any kind of automated link building program.  If you see many, many links that all come from wildly different URLs but the same IP address, you need to talk to the people building your links about having some of them removed or changed.

Signs of an Artificial Link Structure: Too Many Reciprocal Links

Automated link exchange schemes were one of the biggest ways to create an artificial link presence on the web in the mid '00s.  Today, though, if you have too many reciprocal links, Google will assume that you're building them artificially, and can penalize you with its new detection algorithm, Google Penguin.

Instead, you should focus on building one way links for the most part.  Having a number of reciprocal links isn't necessarily bad, as long as they're built naturally and don't reflect your entire link presence online.  Just try to keep them a fairly small percentage of your overall links, and you should be fine.

Signs of an Artificial Link Structure: Poor Quality Links

If your links all come from blogs with bizarre, garbled entries and no comment moderation, it's very unlikely that Google is going to consider these links helpful to your search rankings.  You should try to build links from websites that have a relatively high Google PageRank, indicating that they have attained a level of high popularity and authority with Google users.

Signs of an Artificial Link Structure: Content Spinner Sites

One of the easiest ways for lawyers to build an artificial link presence a few years ago was to use so-called “article spinners” that posted the same article content in many different places all over the web.  However, these websites were easy to identify: they accepted any press release or article submission, and explicitly worked to create inbound links on other sites.

If you used one of these websites, an update called Google Panda likely negated the value of all of your link building there.  Google identified the top offenders and made their links worthless, so that now it's a very bad idea to waste your time with the same kinds of content spinner websites.  Get your content to spread naturally and virally, not artificially with automated programs.