Article Marketing is Useless for SEO?

[PixelPerfect]

Do you think article marketing is useless for SEO? My experience is that they are good for traffic, but as for SEO, they don't seem to be worth the time and effort. Some people said Google has devalued all links from article sites, do you think that's true?

[Stephen Root]

In theory they shouldn't be devalued because they are good relevant links. But because people are increasingly using it to manipulate rankings, there could be some devaluation going on because Google wants to provide results that are as natural as possible.

So better use custom built article directories that are not so popular yet.

[Allen Graves]

Sure, they've devalued links from a LOT of article directories. But not all of them.

Do a little research and you'll see which ones are still worth it.

And if you are only using article directories as a means for article marketing, then you should also do a little more research into the topic.

As a start, look for blogs, authority websites, ezines, niche-related websites (and so on) to get your content and links out there.

Allen Graves

[Tom Brite]

Personally for all my article marketing i stick with ezinearticles as naturally they rank higher.

Then all you need to do is get some high PR backlinks and maybe even some .edu and .gov backlinks for a massive boost in rankings.

Tom Brite

[webmatic]

It's not useless at all but yes it is now a days not much effective like it used to be but still i think so i can rely on ezinearticles as they are good for SEO purpose and still playing the same part in article marketing
Thanks
Webmatic

[Jenie0109]

for me article marketing is precious specially when you have an article that is very interesting...and by doing an article submission through various directories... well that helps a lot when it comes to seo purposes...

[kkchoon]

My experience tells me article marketing still great for back links and page rank!

You need a lot of unique, I mean not just spun articles, you need 50~100 unique seed articles, and spin it to over 100+ article directories, creating 5000 back links to your site!

Then you start to see the power...

[xenergy]

In backlinks perspective, quantity speak louder as loud as quality. Means you must have thousands of 'low rank' pages with few high rank pages.
You can boost article marketing by combining them with PR release, which send the articles to thousand of PR release site.

[Bob Monie]

Submitting to Ezinearticles alone is not a good way to build backlinks to a website.

From my research, testing and tracking, I found that 10, 20, 50 links from 1 site dont actually hold that much more weight that 1 or 2 backlinks from the same website.

I presume this is how Google has cracked down and devalued sitewide links. It also makes sense to only count 1 or 2 backlinks from each domain.

Ask yourself the question, What would appear more valuable and natural to Google?

50 backlinks from 1 domain ip
50 backlinks from 50 domain ips

I know which one I would choose.

Not saying dont submit all your articles to ezinesarticles.com, just saying to make sure you post your articles to all the top article directories if you want the most SEO benefit.

Unique articles will definitely work best but most people dont have the time to write that many articles. If you decide to post the same article in all the directories be prepared for Google to filter out around 70% of the articles. They are really cracking down on duplicate content in the index now.

[bluenetworx]

I agree with Bob, I have also found that it is better to spread your article submission out and not only rely on Ezines. Also if you are using web 2.0 sites you might want to link to your articles from them to increase the voting power of the article link itself.

[affiliated survivor]

I also agree. For Seo it´s better to spread your article submissions.
Besides that, article links are not very powerfull links. Not more than logical. Or some quick article writer could build up a PR 10 in no time.
Article backlinks work best for easy, low competiton keywords. For more competitive searchterms you need something stronger.

[gavin6]

do you send the same article to all the different sites or are you saying you spin it for each site.

Gavin

[affiliated survivor]

I´m not active in the US (German language zone). There are no article spinners for german articles. Mass submission of articles is also nearly impossible. Even article directories that aren´t even indexed yet are even strict as EZA and demand unique articles.
So I write each article myself and submit a unique article to each article directory.

You can work yourself up with this. First make websites and use articles, bookmarks and the likes for backlinking. My highest PR website has PR3, all from this kind of backlinks. But now, since I have a PR3 and 2 PR2 and 3 PR1 websites, I can use them to give something else better/stronger backlinks than only article backlinks. If you think that takes too long you have to buy high PR backlinks in order to get a heavier impact on ranking.

[AndyBlackSEO]

I have just ran a little experiment. I was hoping to roll it out more than what I have but due to lack of spare time it was only a small experiment.

I basically chose a product page on one of my sites and found where I was 'solidly' ranked for it in Google. I then created a handful of unique articles and submitted them. I submitted one to ezinearticles, two to goarticles, one to amazines, one to articlerich and one to another directory.

Now the two word keyword phrase I chose isn't particulary comptetive but before the experiment I ranked at no. 22. That was about 3 weeks ago. When I checked today I am ranked no.7.

This is the only link building that has been done regarding this page and keyword phrase so I'm guessing that this is down to the handful of article submissions I made.

I do think that there are more effective backlinks than articles but I think they do work to some degree.

[Allen Graves]

That's pretty cool, Andy. Thanks for sharing that.

Although the evidence is only circumstancial at this point, I would wager that your articles did have a great deal to do with your rise in the rankings.

Great job!

Allen

[__internet__]

Google hasn't devalued the links from article sites. It's just you aren't getting that many links from them because the duplicate content filter is getting in the way. In my experience, article submissions used to help in the past with rankings. Now they don't, and they don't get much traffic either.

[happyguy]

Originally Posted by gavin6

do you send the same article to all the different sites or are you saying you spin it for each site.

Gavin

don't send the same article to every directory. take some tiem to spin it for each site and you will get result. and please stay away from crappy article rewriting software. do it yourself and it will pay off in the long term.

[Jenie0109]

Originally Posted by gavin6

do you send the same article to all the different sites or are you saying you spin it for each site.

Gavin

for me..i send same articles on different sites

[maestero2010]

I don't think there is any consent from Google regarding devaluing of links from article websites. The reason you are thinking this is because you are not getting any update in PR from these links. The theory is simple, you only get increase in PR if you get links from high PR pages. When you even look for this forum page, the PR is 0. How can you expect a gradual change with low quality link?

[kimaroc]

every body seems be ok with article submission, I will use this method, and see results

[eshus]

Yes.. Article Marketing is useless for SEO.. The best thing you can do is post those articles on pages like squidoo, hubpages, wetpaint, vox etc..They are search engine friendly and you will have complete control over your backlinks..

[Amenda Jessera]

I don't think this link building method is dead, but in delima position..... However, I am using EZA, goArticles,Amizne and Article rich + some other PR3+ directories.... Once the articles are published and they are cached, I used to move up on SERP.... Normally, I do submit 3 articles per directory....... That means, 3 different contents.....

[ahefner33]

What I like about article marketing in comparison to SEO is that with my articles they are a fallback in case my site just drops from the SEO ranks.

I have sites that would be completely traffic-less (is that a word?) if it were not from articles. Once ranked well getting traffic, they drop but the articles are still out there getting traffic from wherever they end up.

[kurt naulaerts]

I notice that, when I target long tail keywords, these links almost always get my page on 1st or 2nd page of Google. So, use them!

But also diversify. Especially if you try to rank more competitive keywords.

Kurt

Originally Posted by ahefner33

What I like about article marketing in comparison to SEO is that with my articles they are a fallback in case my site just drops from the SEO ranks.

I have sites that would be completely traffic-less (is that a word?) if it were not from articles. Once ranked well getting traffic, they drop but the articles are still out there getting traffic from wherever they end up.

[mikecorp]

I dont think its completely useless, it might help in the long run.

[maestero2010]

Originally Posted by eshus

Yes.. Article Marketing is useless for SEO.. The best thing you can do is post those articles on pages like squidoo, hubpages, wetpaint, vox etc..They are search engine friendly and you will have complete control over your backlinks..

I saw your signature "Free SEO tips". Anyways, so you mean that only the sites which you named are search engine friendly and what about Ezine, articlebase etc? Are they not good for submitting articles?

[Stephen Root]

Originally Posted by AndyBlackSEO

I basically chose a product page on one of my sites and found where I was 'solidly' ranked for it in Google. I then created a handful of unique articles and submitted them. I submitted one to ezinearticles, two to goarticles, one to amazines, one to articlerich and one to another directory.

Now the two word keyword phrase I chose isn't particulary comptetive but before the experiment I ranked at no. 22. That was about 3 weeks ago. When I checked today I am ranked no.7.

This is the only link building that has been done regarding this page and keyword phrase so I'm guessing that this is down to the handful of article submissions I made.

I do think that there are more effective backlinks than articles but I think they do work to some degree.

Good experiment and it clearly demonstrates that submitting articles isn't certainly worthless. Link value might be less but still there's some.

I would like to see somebody do a big scale test with medium competition term.

It's interesting to see how net will evolve in the future for search engine optimizers because when you think about it, links in articles are exactly what search engines want. They can't separate crappy article from great article by algorithm, that's where Analytics comes in, but they can manually decrease the value of certain site's outbound links.

[Allen Graves]

Originally Posted by Stephen Root

Good experiment and it clearly demonstrates that submitting articles isn't certainly worthless. Link value might be less but still there's some.

I would like to see somebody do a big scale test with medium competition term.

It's interesting to see how net will evolve in the future for search engine optimizers because when you think about it, links in articles are exactly what search engines want. They can't separate crappy article from great article by algorithm, that's where Analytics comes in, but they can manually decrease the value of certain site's outbound links.

I do these large scale tests all the time.

As I said above, and what a lot of folks have disagreed with, many article directory backlinks have been greatly devalued or are now seemingly worthless altogether, but not all of them. There are still many that will get you some good juice.

If you disagree with that, then stop using article marketing, that will leave more for the rest of us.

All due respect,
Allen Graves

[hemux]

I would have to strongly disagree.

Article marketing is one of the best ways to get your website optimized. The more interesting your article is the more users will come in for your website.

It definitely is useful in the long run.

[PixelPerfect]

There are some great replies here. I guess the best way to find this out is to build a new site and then use nothing but articles to build links. And do this with a number of different niches too. Has anyone done any tests like this here? Also, I think it would be interesting to share your views on this - "If you have 20 unique articles now, how would you use them?"

[Webtigerz]

Yeah....I would like to know that information as well...I been joining up with thise article directories...Just dont know how to leverage it

[mark@1to101]

Relatively useless (though there still will be some benefit) if you submit the same few articles (i.e. not spun) to the same few article directories.

Not at all useless if you submit spun articles to a wide range of article directories and blogs.

Based on my experience anyway.

[Frances Norah S]

Originally Posted by PixelPerfect

Do you think article marketing is useless for SEO? My experience is that they are good for traffic, but as for SEO, they don't seem to be worth the time and effort. Some people said Google has devalued all links from article sites, do you think that's true?

If you were to submit your original articles to reputable article directories such as Ezinearticles then your backlinks is definitely valuable and it will help your site rank for that certain anchor text. But if you were to submit those articles to article directories which has very low PR(PR1-PR0), then is more or less useless unless you submit thousands of articles. But then, do you think you have the time to create thousands of articles. Even if you outsource it, how much will it cost.

It is even worse if you submit duplicate articles as most article directories will not approve your submission. As a result, all your efforts will just go to waste.

Bottomline is, article marketing is useful in terms of SEO if your original article is being submitted consistently to the right directories.

[stizzard]

I agree with Frances. Submitting the same article to dozens of directories will get you penalized and your efforts wasted. Much better to "tune up" your articles and submit 10 very similar but different ones to different directories.

[wealthisnow1]

I don't think, it's 100% true. Many user read the articles with great interest and you can also put hyper link on selected keywords. so you should use the article technique very careful and according to guidelines.

[dino_rhino]

not all marketing articles are useless. yeah there are spam but some still has the substance.

[4morereferrals]

But if you were to submit those articles to article directories which has very low PR(PR1-PR0), then is more or less useless unless you submit thousands of articles.

What does the PR have to do with making them useless and why will doing thousands overcome the problem?

Wont the duplicate content still generate a "backlink"

[Allen Graves]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

What does the PR have to do with making them useless and why will doing thousands overcome the problem?

Wont the duplicate content still generate a "backlink"

Yea - what he said.

Everybody is saying that this works and that doesn't.

Where's the beef?

I want to see actual evidence based on solid facts and large scale data before I change anything I am currently doing.

Allen Graves

[4morereferrals]

Not saying I disagree with your advice .. but Im not sure about your reasons why.

What is the penalty? Does it have a name? Who penalizes you .. google - yahoo - bing?

Dont most article directories use a copyscape scheme to keep the content on their directories somewhat - unique?

Biggest risk to DUPE content is it just gets stuffed into a supplemental type index ... but ... does that render the backlinks generated from those articles useless?

What are we really doing .. .ranking articles or $$$ sites? Me, I want my site where the person needs to take action - as in part with their cash ... to rank, not an intermediary step such as a article. Correction ... I want them all to rank and own googles entire first page .... but my preference is the ACTION site or conversion page rank better than my articles

Originally Posted by stizzard

I agree with Frances. Submitting the same article to dozens of directories will get you penalized and your efforts wasted. Much better to "tune up" your articles and submit 10 very similar but different ones to different directories.

[Hafsoh]

If the article directories does not use nofollow attributes then its good for seo. There is no substitute for writing great articles. You need to have great content to build credibility with your visitors.

[nailzer09875]

Originally Posted by PixelPerfect

Do you think article marketing is useless for SEO? My experience is that they are good for traffic, but as for SEO, they don't seem to be worth the time and effort. Some people said Google has devalued all links from article sites, do you think that's true?

Hi PixelPerfect
Who told you that article submission is worthless for SEO? Give me his or her address I will give a lesson.
Obviously it’s a great helpful matter for SEO. SEO article always have 50% keywords in it with different inner link which will let you to many link page of your or other high rank site. It’s also true submitting to Article directories increase rank.
So, write keyword and link rich articles.
Nailzer

[FrankPinch]

Article posting can be very powerful, i tested on a website, only article posting (nothing more) and got PR2 and 800 links in less than 3 months, including first page results in Google! I'd say it's pretty good!

[Colin Evans]

Originally Posted by AndyBlackSEO

Now the two word keyword phrase I chose isn't particulary comptetive but before the experiment I ranked at no. 22. That was about 3 weeks ago. When I checked today I am ranked no.7.

You've highlighted the key to success with any linking method - targeting the correct keywords in the first place.

Just about any linking method will improve rankings on a page targeting keywords which are not competitive.

The problem as I see it is many people try a little bit of back linking for pages targeting highly competitive keywords. When they see no improvement they decide that the linking method doesn't work. They fail to realize that competitive keywords often require hundreds or thousands of back links (from a wide variety of sources) to improve rankings.

[NetVenturer]

Originally Posted by PixelPerfect

There are some great replies here. I guess the best way to find this out is to build a new site and then use nothing but articles to build links. And do this with a number of different niches too. Has anyone done any tests like this here? Also, I think it would be interesting to share your views on this - "If you have 20 unique articles now, how would you use them?"

If I had 20 unique articles right now, I'd post them all on MY site.

[Jon Steel]

I disagree. Articles are powerful because you can create its SERP and this allows you more leverage in the virtual world.

js

[willyboy104]

Article marketing is not useless however I do admit that over time I believe the strength of links from article directories and the amount of traffic from article directories is going to decrease.

This will be due to the amount of new content that is submitted to these directories every single day. Everyone knows that as soon as you publish an article you get a sudden surge of traffic then after a while unless you get some good SERPs your traffic dies.

[Jenie0109]

As the article grow to be more and more admired by readers, they might also build more links out of your Website to their own pages. Therefore, you’ll create the camaraderie. You help them in exchange of the help they can give you in terms of Internet access and traffic.

[josephalford]

I think it depends on *how* you are doing article marketing and for what purpose. If you can embed appropriate links, it won't be useless for SEO. If you can link properly, it will help you but it is a larger time sink than other linking strategies.