Article marketing snafu?

6 replies
I have been reading another forum where many members have been hit by penguin. Their sites are losing traffic and many are restructuring their sites to be more google-friendly.

Here is part of a post where they are talking about article marketing:

"I have about 30 well written, original articles I put on ezine and a couple other article sites back around 2005 - 2007. They have produced thousands of duplicate content spam pages, hundreds of them with my bio linking back to my site.

Not a single one of these links is worth the electrons it takes to display them on the monitor. They are worse than worthless. They are harmful to my site. I'm convinced they are the root of my Panda/Penguin problem.

I have deleted every article from the articles sites including ezinearticles. I have disavowed (on Bing and Google to follow) hundreds of these crap spam page/links. I will continue to hunt them down and disavow every one I can find.

IMO article distribution is now part of black hat SEO as far as Google is concerned. I will never put another article out on any article site and I recommend that everyone do the same."


My questions: Is this attempt to do article marketing incorrect? Is there any truth to the above post?
#article #marketing #snafu
  • Profile picture of the author MattCatania
    That's probably because they're writing articles solely for the purpose of creating backlinks and not focusing on the impact that those articles will have on real 'targetted' eyeballs - also known in this forum as Article Directory Marketing. This type of marketing has been hit by many google updates and is not the most effective way to market your articles.

    A more efficient way would be to practice Article Syndication - luckily for you there are warriors here who make a living from such a method and have posted their knowledge in many, many, MANY different threads.

    Here's some prescribed reading for your pleasure (read them all very carefully, and follow the links within each thread, too):

    Increase likelyhood of Article Syndication

    Should you spin articles?

    Preselling Averages for Article Syndication

    Questions For Alexa Smith and MYOB

    Generally you'll want to soak up any wisdom that leaves the fingers of the following members:
    - Alexa Smith
    - MYOB (Paul Uhl)
    - Bill Platt (tpw)
    - John McCabe
    - Joe Robinson
    ... and more that I can't think of at this point in time.

    Enjoy
    Signature

    Logic outweighs all.

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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by doclind1 View Post

    My questions: Is this attempt to do article marketing incorrect?
    Whoever wrote that stuff didn't understand what article marketing is. :rolleyes:

    They were talking about article directory marketing - the misguided attempt to use article directories for their own backlinks and/or their own traffic (not what they've ever been there for, of course).

    It's certainly true that the mass automated submission of articles, with or without "spinning" (:rolleyes to large numbers of article directories is without benefits, and may even be penalized by Google's recent algorithm changes - but note, again, that that isn't "article marketing": it's just a misunderstanding. There's been no sense at all in doing that for years, anyway - though, of course, that doesn't stop some people from recommending it.

    But Google does not regard article syndication negatively, in any way. Some of the people selling spamming software and backlinking services would love beginning marketers to believe that, but it's far from true, and Google has actually gone to some lengths to say so openly and clearly.

    This thread explains: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

    Edited to add: sorry, posted at the same time as Matt, above. You have to be quick, around here ...
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  • Profile picture of the author rcnsmith
    Article marketing is not dead, it will never be dead and will continue to be a great way to generate traffic.

    However the quantity over quality approach has been targeted.

    That means that the thousands of people that were purchasing the black hat tools and posting their articles to every article database out there will end up being affected greatly as that will look more like spam rather than quality link.

    From a basic scripters perspective, this is how it seems to me. The googlebot scan's a page in its entirety. It inspects the total content on the site to determine what the site is about. then there is backlinking and all that good stuff. based on the type of site, google determines if your article is appropriate.

    If A site about expecting mothers has your fishing bonanaza article over it then its a problem. It has no place there, so for all intent and purposes its spam. People that blast their articles in that sense will be penalized for it.

    What it is doing is forcing people to be smart about article marketing. If you instead decide to find forums and communities about your niche and then post your article there, there is no reason that it would affect you in any way.

    In this posters opinion the correct way to do article marketing will be to find quality sites that your niche fits with and then somehow tailor your articles to (how an expecting mother can make additional income from home etc if you are in the work from home niche) and get away from the article directory approach.
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    • Profile picture of the author trevstar22
      Frankly, I am not sure if the dreaded Panda and Penguin are really as deadly or efficient as made out to be. I had a site that was like page zillion on google, then frustrated I paid to have a couple thousand links added. I did not WANT to add that many but no one was offering just a few hundred quality links, at least on Fiverr.
      The site is now on page three for weeks now. I think this may apply to articles too. Do the google bots really look at an article and say, well this is about trucking but this is a sports site, looks like spam. I doubt it. Even Jon Leger who is a genius at this stuff says it really does not mattter the article subject, if you are just looking for backlinks. I could be wrong but I just don't think
      google is quite that good. YET!
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  • Profile picture of the author brian19
    Far from being dead, I still find after submitting a few articles they turn up in searches within minutes for terms which aren't too competitive.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Article marketing has been dead for a few years to those who've moved on. It's "hanging in there" for those who've chosen to stick with it. But at this point you are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and should probably start working on your exit strategy real soon.
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