Understanding Article Marketing for Link Building

[LX10]

I’m new to Internet Marketing and I’ve been reading a lot.
So far, from what I understood, the best strategy for Link Building is Article Marketing.
However I still have some questions:

The questions are:
1. Submitting the same article in different directories.
That is, write an article and submit the "same article” to “different directories” of articles.
These links are indexed by Google?
I heard that Google only penalize the same content, on the same site (URL).
If you have the same article in different directories Google "does not" penalize, and you get the backlinks.
Is that it?

2. Submission articles on directories with a "different language" of the site you're trying to promote?
Write an article in German and submit to a German directory, with a link to an English website.
Does this strategy help the English Website?

3. The contents of the article may be different from the theme/content of the site you're trying to promote?
Write an article on fishing and put a link to a insurance website.
Does this work?

If anyone could help me with this I would appreciate it.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by LX10

1. Submitting the same article in different directories.
That is, write an article and submit the "same article” to “different directories” of articles.
These links are indexed by Google?

Yes, they are.

When you submit identical copies of an article to different article directories, as many professional article marketers do, typically most of the copies are indexed in Google's supplemental index rather than in its main index. This doesn't affect the backlinks at all, which are identical in either case.

Don't listen to anyone telling you that you'll improve the backlinks by changing/amending/editing/spinning the article's content. Many people who don't understand what the words "duplicate content" mean believe this, but it's a complete myth. (There may be other advantages, to some people, from changing/amending/editing/spinning, but they're not "backlink advantages").

Originally Posted by LX10

I heard that Google only penalize the same content, on the same site (URL).

This is nearly right. It's actually a slight exaggeration. Even on the same site, they say they penalise the site for multiple copies of the same content only if their algorithms determine that it's probably been done with the intention of deceiving them for specific SEO purposes.

Originally Posted by LX10

If you have the same article in different directories Google "does not" penalize, and you get the backlinks.
Is that it?

That part is definitely correct; yes.

Originally Posted by LX10

2. Submission articles on directories with a "different language" of the site you're trying to promote?
Write an article in German and submit to a German directory, with a link to an English website.
Does this strategy help the English Website?

In a pretty small way, yes. It's treated as a "non-context-relevant backlink". So, it's still a backlink, but not a very powerful one.

Originally Posted by LX10

3. The contents of the article may be different from the theme/content of the site you're trying to promote?
Write an article on fishing and put a link to a insurance website.
Does this work?

It's the same as above. A backlink is a backlink, but it's of very limited value because the context isn't relevant.

Bear in mind that almost all article directory backlinks are non-context-relevant, very low PR links of small value, and that the apart from a small number of well-known directories, the average lifespan of an article directory is very brief. Typically, they're poor quality, low-expectancy backlinks.

Don't imagine that an article in a "PR-5 directory" gives you a PR-5 backlink. The PR-5 will be attached to the directory's home page, not the page on which your article appears, which will starts its life as PR-0 just like any other web page.

Successful article marketing is all about thinking well beyond article directories.

But arguably the most important thing of all is to put all articles somewhere on your own site first and get them indexed there, before submitting them to any article directories, for all the reasons explained in such detail in this important thread.

[cheekeong.tan]

Hi LX10,

Answer 1 : Submit original to Ezinearticles (Top article directory). Spin that article and then submit to other article directories like :-

articlebase
goarticles
articledashboard
buzzle
and many more

Answer 2 & 3 : It's not about working or not. What you really want is targeted visitors for your site.

Cheers

[Marx Vergel Melencio]

Originally Posted by LX10

1. Submitting the same article in different directories.

A: Yes, you can post the exact same article on your site then submit it to multiple directories, using an account with the same author name. This is content syndication. Only a few "notable" article directories do not accept content already published elsewhere, Buzzle being the only article directory I can think of at the moment which does not accept content published elsewhere. By "notable", of course that means article directories that are actually visited by people and article directories that publish articles actually read by people. "Notable" for SEO purposes on the other hand would mean dofollow high Google PR high domain authority article directories, which most of such article directories already satisfy the "notable" definition earlier. I am defining "notable" because a few people here might put limitations to what a person actually means by "notable article directories", and these people might say that submitting to article directories that are actually read by real people is not something which is considered by people here who talk about article marketing and step by step processes they follow since these currently work for them, based on results they get.

Originally Posted by LX10

2. Submission articles on directories with a "different language" of the site you're trying to promote?

Originally Posted by LX10

Write an article in German and submit to a German directory, with a link to an English website.

A: In terms of SEO benefits, I wouldn't accurately know how search engine companies see this, though my inference is: If I were a search engine company, I'd flag this as an alert because a German article directory, for instance, would provide users with more relevant, timely, popular and useful content if those articles link to German content websites because the target reader group = Germans. You can try it out, and it'd be great if you could update this thread with the results you get.

Originally Posted by LX10

3. The contents of the article may be different from the theme/content of the site you're trying to promote? Write an article on fishing and put a link to a insurance website. Does this work?

A: In terms of SEO, I wouldn't accurately know how search engine companies see this, though my inference is: If I were a search engine company, I'd flag this as an alert because an article on an article directory will provide users with more relevant, timely, popular and useful content if it links to a page offering supplemental relevant content not found in the article. A benefit I see would be, if you submit articles under popular topics and link to pages with slightly irrelevant content, more webmasters will syndicate your content because more popular topics most likely means more webmasters competing for those topics/niches.

[poppa5502]

Sure you can post the same article to as many places you want, and if you want to spin them..then you should...but one thing I don't do is put that same article on my niche site..because I want my site to have unique content...

[Dave Rodman]

I would agree with Alexa in all the ways except...

1) Most duplicates are filtered out, but everything can be overcome with more pagerank on the page. IN other words, if you submit the same article to 12 directories. It's entirely to have 3 indexed and 9 that are filtered as duplicates. It's also possible to throw enough links at a filtered page and get it indexed. I've tested this.

2) A link is a link. It doesn't matter whether it's "relevant". Back in 2006, Google was rumored to be attempting to try "Topic Sensitive Pagerank" to give more weight to links that were from the same topic. But that died, because it's impossible to do. Think about it. Say a guy owns a blog that talks about computers. And you own a site that talks about hammocks. If the blog owner buys one of your hammocks and makes a post on his computer blog that he hung around in his hammock one weekend, how is that not a relevant link?

[matt5409]

from my experience, submitting the same article to 30 different directories focusing on a single keyword WORKS. I did this intentionally for trial purposes and am not on page one for "networking events" (opennetworking.co.uk). this happened within 10 days of submitting the article to around 25 different websites.

I would be dubious about using this tactic when promoting client websites however, so ensure you do it for personal usage only.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

IN other words, if you submit the same article to 12 directories. It's entirely to have 3 indexed and 9 that are filtered as duplicates.

Yup.

It's entirely. That's for sure.

The thing is, those other ones are filtered into something called the "supplemental index", and the backlinks from that index count happen to contribute just the same as the backlinks from the main one.

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

A link is a link. It doesn't matter whether it's "relevant".

A very widespread and equally mistaken belief.

It's very worthwhile to test for yourself rather than taking other people's word for these things.

[Dave Rodman]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Yup.

It's entirely. That's for sure.

The thing is, those other ones are filtered into something called the "supplemental index", and the backlinks from that index count happen to contribute just the same as the backlinks from the main one.

That's definitely not true. The supplemental index links do not count the same as links in the regular index. Google only retrieved pages from the S.I. when there weren't enough results from the main index.

It's safe to say that duplicates default to the S.I. and can only be brought out with enough importance i.e. Pagerank.

A very widespread and equally mistaken belief.

It's very worthwhile to test for yourself rather than taking other people's word for these things.

So are you saying that if you run a website about Badminton and get a link from blogmaverick.com (PR6). Is that not a relevant link and wouldn't count?

[warriorspirit786]

Hi Alexa,
Can i post my article without spinning it to all the main directories and will this actually help my article by getting more views or harms my article by duplicate content.

I just want to make sure which route is better to drive traffic to my new site.

1. Submit same article to multiple directories
2.Spin article and submit to different directories

What are the pros and cons of both options.

cheers
Terry

[Barry Unruh]

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

That's definitely not true. The supplemental index links do not count the same as links in the regular index. Google only retrieved pages from the S.I. when there weren't enough results from the main index.

It's safe to say that duplicates default to the S.I. and can only be brought out with enough importance i.e. Pagerank.

I never saw Alexa say anything about the pages being "retrieved" only that the backlink is counted as relevant by Google, which is true.

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

So are you saying that if you run a website about Badminton and get a link from blogmaverick.com (PR6). Is that not a relevant link and wouldn't count?

lol, Relevance can increase value, but the backlink is always worth something. In other words, if you have a site about badminton which is linked to from the US Olympic websites page on badminton, or a link from blogmaverick and they both had a PR6, which one has more value? Both links could be considered "relevant" but one is likely to have much higher value in both ranking power and traffic.

Barry

[Barry Unruh]

Originally Posted by warriorspirit786

Hi Alexa,
Can i post my article without spinning it to all the main directories and will this actually help my article by getting more views or harms my article by duplicate content.

I just want to make sure which route is better to drive traffic to my new site.

1. Submit same article to multiple directories
2.Spin article and submit to different directories

What are the pros and cons of both options.

cheers
Terry

I might not be Alexa, but I'll bet my answer is a close match to hers.

1. Submit the same article to multiple directories which have the highest potential of getting your article syndicated to other websites and blogs. The article MUST be on your own blog first.

2. If you are simply seeking backlinks, create another article to submit to the article directory "second-tier" group. (I tend to avoid this step most of the time and stick with step 1.)

Barry

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

The supplemental index links do not count the same as links in the regular index. Google only retrieved pages from the S.I. when there weren't enough results from the main index.

It's safe to say that duplicates default to the S.I. and can only be brought out with enough importance i.e. Pagerank.

Nobody's disputing a word of that, Dave. It has nothing to do with what I said.

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

So are you saying that if you run a website about Badminton and get a link from blogmaverick.com (PR6). Is that not a relevant link and wouldn't count?

No; I didn't say that at all (or anything resembling it).

[Dave Rodman]

Originally Posted by Barry Unruh

I never saw Alexa say anything about the pages being "retrieved" only that the backlink is counted as relevant by Google, which is true.

If you've read anything about the supplemental index by Matt Cutts, you would see that the supplemental index holds nowhere near the weight of pages in the regular index.

From Matt Cutts, Google Hell?

"Having urls in the supplemental results doesn’t mean that you have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank. If you used to have pages in our main web index and now they’re in the supplemental results, a good hypothesis is that we might not be counting links to your pages with the same weight as we have in the past. The approach I’d recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit).

lol, Relevance can increase value, but the backlink is always worth something. In other words, if you have a site about badminton which is linked to from the US Olympic websites page on badminton, or a link from blogmaverick and they both had a PR6, which one has more value? Both links could be considered "relevant" but one is likely to have much higher value in both ranking power and traffic.

Google has patented a technology called "BlockRank", which gives more weight to pages depending on where they appear on the page. If the link is in the content, it holds more weight. If it's in the footer, right-side, it holds less weight.

My point is, how can you determine relevance when you're talking about a link? If I have a blog about e-commerce, and when writing, I link to a page about pet food...is that not relevant? I'm writing and linking.

[Alexa Smith]

Hi Terry,

Originally Posted by warriorspirit786

Hi Alexa,
Can i post my article without spinning it to all the main directories and will this actually help my article by getting more views or harms my article by duplicate content.

You can indeed do this.

You'll gain backlinks. Not great backlinks, but backlinks.

It will barely get you any more views, or traffic, at all, in my experience.

The few people who find the additional copies typically won't find them through a search engine (though I don't say that's 100% impossible) but only by searching within the directories concerned, and such people tend not to be customers (they're more likely to be researchers and competitors, and there won't be many of them outside EZA anyway, in my opinion).

It can't harm anything by being "duplicate content" because it isn't "duplicate content" as Google understand the term (which is what matters): it's "syndicated content".

Originally Posted by warriorspirit786

I just want to make sure which route is better to drive traffic to my new site.

It won't help much in the sense of "direct traffic", but can help indirectly in that the backlinks count (for what they count for, which is something but not huge) and to that extent it can elevate your own site in the SERP's. But the benefit from doing it is primarily a backlink benefit, not a "direct traffic" benefit. And the backlinks have the same value whether the additionally syndicated copies are in Google's main index or its supplemental index.

The extra targeted traffic and high-PR backlinks I get come from other webmasters syndicating my articles from directories (almost always from EZA, in my case - I check).

I have articles which I've put myself only on my site and in EZA which have ended up with 50 - 60 additional copies on other people's sites (though the "average" is much lower than that!). Those bring me in a lot of money from gradually increasing targeted traffic, opt-ins and customers for my own sites. And backlinks, too - sometimes pretty decent ones, because they're contextually relevant.

This, rather than the article directory copies themselves, is what makes all the difference to me, and what helps my own sites dominate the SERP's, and is how I'm building a real business through article marketing.

Originally Posted by warriorspirit786

1. Submit same article to multiple directories
2.Spin article and submit to different directories

What are the pros and cons of both options.

Well, a big subject (and a surprisingly contentious one, sometimes). Very briefly ...

Option 1 above:
Advantages: speed, simplicity, some backlinking benefit;
Disadvantages: very little additional traffic.

Option 2 above:
Advantages (over Option 1): for me, none. For some people, apparently, additional traffic (but I question the extent of spinning and care required to achieve this). But clearly no additional backlinking benefit because the backlinks from spun content are absolutely no different from those from syndicated content;
Disadvantages: very time-consuming indeed to do it properly (and I'm putting it mildly) - by "properly" I mean in a way which produces a real traffic benefit. To me, that's time I could be using in ways that produce future income (like writing new articles), unproductive activity of no value to the internet or anyone else at all, can be bad for one's reputation (many people, not altogether unreasonably, regard it as a form of "spamming the internet").

It interests - and sometimes amuses - me that in discussions of this subject, mostly in this forum, with spinning enthusiasts, the argument which they can be relied on to adduce, 90% of the time, isn't actually a traffic-based argument at all - which would, of course, be far more difficult to refute. Ironically enough it's a backlink-based argument! If you ask the average "spinner" why they're doing it, the answer they characteristically give (as you can see here, in many discussions of the subject) is "backlinks". This just doesn't stand up to examination for a moment.

I can get all those identical backlinks (if I wanted them and didn't prefer to get better ones instead) without spinning at all.

We had a related thread a couple of days ago, and I can't add much more to what I said in it - and here it is.

[Dave Rodman]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Nobody's disputing a word of that, Dave. It has nothing to do with what I said.

You said "The thing is, those other ones are filtered into something called the "supplemental index", and the backlinks from that index count happen to contribute just the same as the backlinks from the main one"

And I disputed the fact that links from the S.I. would count as much as links in the main index.

No; I didn't say that at all (or anything resembling it).

In reference to relevance, you said that it's a mistaken belief that a 'link is a link'. I was stating that, all things being equal, a link would count the same from a PR6 blog about business and a PR6 blog about sports. Assuming we're talking about similar placement of the link within the page.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

You said "The thing is, those other ones are filtered into something called the "supplemental index", and the backlinks from that index count happen to contribute just the same as the backlinks from the main one".

I did. And I'm still saying it now, because it's still true.

What you said in that post, of which I quoted a little, (other than your mistaken assertion that the statement above is incorrect) didn't actually detract from or conflict with that at all.

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

In reference to relevance, you said that it's a mistaken belief that a 'link is a link'.

I haven't ever seen anyone assert that all backlinks have equal value. It's clearly an oversimplification to imagine that "a link is a link". There are good links and bad links.

I don't imagine that even you would really dissent from that view, Dave, but even if you do, I'm afraid you'll have to do so without further input from me, anyway.

I'll just add, for the benefit of those following the conversation, that it's always worthwhile (even though not always easy) testing things for yourself rather than relying on second-hand information in forums. The reality is that pretty often you'll get some big surprises, when you do.

[Dave Rodman]

We'll agree to disagree on the weight that the relevancy plays in.

But on the issue of links from S.I. pages counting as much as pages in the main index? Well that's one that, given what Matt Cutts has said about those pages, I am confident you are incorrect about.

[Barry Unruh]

Originally Posted by Dave Rodman

We'll agree to disagree on the weight that the relevancy plays in.

But on the issue of links from S.I. pages counting as much as pages in the main index? Well that's one that, given what Matt Cutts has said about those pages, I am confident you are incorrect about.

Even though Matt Cutts has admitted part of his job in the Spam Department is to mislead people?

Always take what Matt says with a grain of salt. He provides great information which you should use for one thing, to test the theory.

[LX10]

Submitting the same article (with backlinks to my site) to hundreds of article directories?
Will that help me or hurt me (get me penalized)? Is this considered by Google spam?

To submit this question to the Matt Cutts webmaster video questions for December 2010, please go to the Google Moderator page goo.gl/mod/7KBz and vote.

This way we will know for sure how Google treats duplicate article content.

[kposs]

I can confirm from a significant period of testing that it does work for SEO purposes. For getting click-throughs and visitors, not so much. But for backlinking alone, it works great.

3. The contents of the article may be different from the theme/content of the site you're trying to promote?
Write an article on fishing and put a link to a insurance website.
Does this work?