Is Article Marketing Still Effective?

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Susan A

Well, it won't be working if all your bullet is that few. You need more "bullet" to shoot the target

With apologies, and with absolutely no hostility at all, Susan, this simply isn't right at all.

I write three articles per niche, per month, and that's more than enough to serve and satisfy all my content needs for a very flourishing and expanding affiliate marketing business.

Article marketing simply isn't about how many articles you have.

It's about who reads them.

Originally Posted by Susan A

especially article directories where the target is very high.

Article directories aren't part of the "target" at all.

They're simply a small, additional stepping-stone to reach some targets you might not otherwise find. For all the reasons explained in so many article marketing threads here, there's nothing to be gained by submitting to multiple article directories anyway. No point in trying to use directories for their own backlinks (think Penguin penalties) and clearly counterproductive, as explained here, to try to use them for their own traffic (we all lose most of that traffic, which we could choose to keep instead by using article marketing instead of article directory marketing).

How do Article Directories work?

Originally Posted by Susan A

I think you should prepare for daily submission

As pointed out above, this is actually a misguided approach, and all the people like John McCabe, Mike Tucker, myself and increasingly many others here who are actually making a living from doing article marketing don't believe that at all.

Originally Posted by Susan A

The result can be seen after several months of doing

If you manage to get your article published in the right places, where your targeted traffic is already looking, you can actually get floods of highly targeted traffic after "several days of doing".

Article marketing isn't about putting large numbers of articles on your site and submitting them to multiple article directories and waiting for search engine traffic to find them there: it's about taking your articles to where the targeted traffic you want to attract is already looking.

[MichelleN]

Wow Alexa! You know so much!!! Thanks for all this information. I think I'll be referring back to this post for a while.

[jtoelle]

Originally Posted by Farish

I did some experiments with article marketing about a year ago. The highest traffic I actually got was submitting my articles to stumble upon. YMMV

Isn't article marketing more about Backlinks, not traffic?

In my niche I see Article marketing being used daily and they're achieving very good rankings in G.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by jtoelle

Isn't article marketing more about Backlinks, not traffic?

No - article marketing isn't an SEO-based method: it's a traffic generation system in its own right, which transcends SEO.

Originally Posted by jtoelle

In my niche I see Article marketing being used daily and they're achieving very good rankings in G.

So am I - getting some huge rankings in Google, as anyone will - eventually - when they get articles (originally published and indexed on their own sites) widely syndicated to relevant sites. That's because linkjuice is primarily determined by the site-relevance of the backlinks. The people you're referring to are not ranking well in Google from article directory backlinks, this is for sure. (They weren't even in 2009/10 before the Panda updates decimated the SEO-potential of article directories!).

The rankings in Google are a mere afterthought to the direct, targeted traffic, though. It's explained in the last paragraph of this post: Your article writing ISN'T working! This is why:

[Anton543]

Think about the logic here. You start a site and post content on that site which then gets indexed. You then republish that content on other sites. If your own site then gets de-indexed for some reason, the content on other sites will be seen as original while you wait to be re-indexed.

It will work to get lot relevant traffic if you get your content published on high traffic and related sites, so I think its potentially a lucrative but also a dangerous move. I remember I was building this dropship ecommerce store and the owner of the store that was taking my orders made it absolutely clear that I had to write my own content for the products. So even though he had his content indexed, still didn't wnat anyone top copy his material, posisbly for the reason that if he ever got de-indexed for some reason, I could possibly outrank him for his own content.

But I can appreciate I maybe reading this completely wrong.

By the way, the reason why this thread was revived is because I did a google search for 'article marketing warrior forum' (or something along those lines) and this thread popped up.

[higherluv]

Probably guest blogging? It's on the agenda for me, hopefully someone can provide a more experienced response about that, although several posts above seem to point it in that direction without directly mentioning it.

If you write 20 quality articles, or even just one, and you manage to get it or them in front of (a) person(s) who has traffic for their site(s) (as in guest blogging), then that is probably the way I would go about it if I were you...

No article directories, though. Only EZA worked back in the day, but even submitting to them is a waste of time now, at least for me.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by higherluv

Probably guest blogging? It's on the agenda for me

Can also be very successful. Dependent (of course, to some extent) on the availability of blogs in your niche. I do plenty. It's only really article marketing under another name. Except it can be a bit better, because you can get an "intro" as well, sometimes, and can sometimes even go back after the post, to "answer readers' questions" and so on.

Originally Posted by higherluv

hopefully someone can provide a more experienced response about that, although several posts about seem to point it in that direction without directly mentioning it.

There are many threads on it ...

It's one of the reasons I still like to do some "blog comments" when I have time, because "today's blog comment might be tomorrow's guest post".

Originally Posted by higherluv

No article directories, though. Only EZA worked back in the day, but even submitting to them is a waste of time now, at least for me.

I still get something extra (indirectly, I mean) from submitting to EZA, myself. I completely hear what you're saying, but the way I look at it is that it takes me only about 30 seconds to paste an article into EZA's submission box, it doesn't cost anything, and "you never know". So I dump a copy of every article in there as my "last step", after everything else I do with them. I do still get some articles syndicated from there, and whatever I get from it is "something extra, for nothing", after all. There's no downside for me.

Originally Posted by Anton543

If your own site then gets de-indexed for some reason, the content on other sites will be seen as original while you wait to be re-indexed.

If you're going to plan and select your business model on the grounds that "your own sites might get de-indexed", then maybe article marketing isn't for you at all, just like list-building apparently isn't either (and clearly nobody should advise you to try article marketing without list-building, anyway - that would be extraordinarily wasteful of just about the best traffic you can get).

[higherluv]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

It's one of the reasons I still like to do some "blog comments" when I have time, because "today's blog comment might be tomorrow's guest post".

Ahh, another thing on my agenda - good to know Ms. Alexa is doing it with success. Time to get at it! LOL

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

I still get something extra (indirectly, I mean) from submitting to EZA, myself. I completely hear what you're saying, but the way I look at it is that it takes me only about 30 seconds to paste an article into EZA's submission box, it doesn't cost anything, and "you never know". So I dump a copy of every article in there as my "last step", after everything else I do with them. I do still get some articles syndicated from there, and whatever I get from it is "something extra, for nothing", after all. There's no downside for me.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt if I do it that way (as an adjunct, right?)... we'll see.

[MikeTucker]

Originally Posted by jtoelle

Isn't article marketing more about Backlinks, not traffic?

In my niche I see Article marketing being used daily and they're achieving very good rankings in G.

Originally Posted by Anton543

Think about the logic here. You start a site and post content on that site which then gets indexed. You then republish that content on other sites. If your own site then gets de-indexed for some reason, the content on other sites will be seen as original while you wait to be re-indexed.

It will work to get lot relevant traffic if you get your content published on high traffic and related sites, so I think its potentially a lucrative but also a dangerous move. I remember I was building this dropship ecommerce store and the owner of the store that was taking my orders made it absolutely clear that I had to write my own content for the products. So even though he had his content indexed, still didn't wnat anyone top copy his material, posisbly for the reason that if he ever got de-indexed for some reason, I could possibly outrank him for his own content.

But I can appreciate I maybe reading this completely wrong.

By the way, the reason why this thread was revived is because I did a google search for 'article marketing warrior forum' (or something along those lines) and this thread popped up.

Yes, I absolutely agree, let's think about the logic here:

1. WHAT would be the point of going through the effort of writing
an article at all, for a mere backlink!? !? Have you never learned
anything from human history?? Good articles have felled tyrants low and risen
nations. They have shaped the hearts and minds of billions of people
for thousands of years. They have gotten Presidents elected and
forced massive and powerful corporations to bow to public demand.
They have created religions and formed the backbone of what we
now know as "Science".

...And you want to take that kind of power and turn it into a mere backlink?????


2. WHY would you build your business around SEO at all, when:
a. search engine traffic is extremely low quality;
b. it is very competitive and full of cheaters;
c. the rules are constantly changing;
d. the work doesn't last and has to be re-done constantly.


I was getting new tires for my car this morning and waiting in the
lobby reading some of their old magazines. One of them was from
1987 and I read an article about getting your oil
changed, and why Fram Oil Filters were superior to the other
ones that were tested.

When the guy came in and asked if I wanted an oil change,
what do you think I said? And which oil filter did I ask for?
That article worked what... 26 or 27 YEARS LATER??

(Hint: I didn't pull out my phone and ask Google)




Now I know that Alexa and some of the other Article Syndication experts
around here are still getting their sites ranked in Google for the extra
traffic, which is fine. I don't even want it at all anymore... Not when I can
write a couple of good articles per week, get them placed
in the right publications, and build better lists with far less work.

What's more, as I develop relationships with publishers based
on mutual respect, mutual benefit, and genuine appreciation
for competency, they happily publish my content with less
hoops for me to jump through.

Over time I'm building larger syndication networks, doing less
work, and building my own lists (where my autoresponder
is able to handle about 80% of the marketing effort for me).


...Now, it's true that I started with a few advantages here.
I already had money, successful marketing experience,
and I actually knew a few publishers. Still, I have been working
on this for less than two years, and most people would start calling
me a liar and demanding the Internet version of "proof" if
I told you the range of income that I am making.

So instead, I want to issue a challenge to all of those people
who are trying to use articles for backlinks, trying to keep
up with Google, or are just lost and trying to figure out how
this whole "make money online" thing can actually work?

Try it. Put in the dedicated, focused, organized work
for 120 days, and then look back at the results of your effort.
I sincerely believe that most people will be surprised.
Personally, I felt like I won the freaking lottery!

[Freedom Media]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

(I strongly recommend Ezine Articles in preference to GoArticles. Especially in your niche, actually.)

Yes, this is correct. Google won't penalize you.

(And it's not "duplicate content"! ).

Like many professional article marketers, I have a very large number of articles in Ezine Articles (and some in GoArticles too, to be honest), all of which had previously been published and indexed on my own site before being submitted there.

But do so understanding what an article directory is and why it exists and what uses you can/can't get out of it: don't try to get customer traffic coming from an article directory to your own site (that's not a good thing!), and don't imagine that the backlink will help you! All explained in this post: How do Article Directories work?

Question - Guest Posting...still post on my own site first?
I understand the indexing my articles on my own blog first before submitting to directories, or my web 2.0 sites.
But what if it's a guest post for another site? Should I still index on my own site first?
Happy to see - you said no spinning ever.
Tried it with UAW, hated the whole process, took my great, original work and turned it to sh*t.

Also I definitely disagree with the poster that said "it's more about quality, than quantity"
Bloggers like Steve Pavlina and Derek Halpern and many other successful writers/bloggers that focus on quality and not quantity have proven that out time and again.
That will reflect in your audience as well.

[JayPeete]

I think that if you are going to use article marketing than you have no choice but to spin articles because it takes so many of them to make a dent nowadays.

I haven't got it personally but I am very impressed with what I see from Spin Rewriter 3.0.

[sparkah]

Google uses the same DUPLICATE CONTENT filter for GMAIL as it does GOOGLE.

So... if you're wondering if Google can smell your spun content... just email both versions to yourself and see if Gmail hides one.

[MikeTucker]

Originally Posted by JayPeete

I think that if you are going to use article marketing than you have no choice but to spin articles because it takes so many of them to make a dent nowadays.

I haven't got it personally but I am very impressed with what I see from Spin Rewriter 3.0.

Originally Posted by sparkah

Google uses the same DUPLICATE CONTENT filter for GMAIL as it does GOOGLE.

So... if you're wondering if Google can smell your spun content... just email both versions to yourself and see if Gmail hides one.

I was going to respond to your posts, but then I realized
you are never going to read it anyway.

[Anton543]

Coming back to this, I don't think any serious site will republish their content elsewhere. People require permission to republish content from any major site and its rarely granted unless used for educational purposes.

I think this whole republishing is usually done by people in the IM market rather than anyone looking to develop a serious website. They will not want others to have their content.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by JayPeete

I think that if you are going to use article marketing than you have no choice but to spin articles because it takes so many of them to make a dent nowadays.

It just doesn't: it takes very few.

Post #51 above explains this point in detail.

Article marketing isn't about how many articles you have: it's about who reads them. Sorry to go on about it, but it strikes me that one really doesn't need to be Einstein to see the logic of this self-evident fact?

Spinning is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. It's a "solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist". A solution of benefit only to people selling spinning software and services.

It's without value. It can damage your business, but it can't help you. Everyone who actually makes a living from article marketing (rather than from supplying spinning software or services) says the same things about spinning. And there are reasons for that. The whole thing is based on a fallacy, and a misunderstanding about what "duplicate content" and "syndicated content" mean and signify.

The value of a backlink doesn't depend on whether the content to which it's attached is "unique" or "previously published": it depends on many other things, but that isn't one of them, and Google says so openly.

For people open-minded enough to read them, the following six items explain much more, at greater length and in greater detail.

• this post explains the benefits of spinning
• the first half (or so) of this thread contains a good discussion of what you can gain from spinning articles
• the advice on this subject given by so many people throughout most of this thread has been really helpful to many people here
• on the meaning and significance of "duplicate content", in this context, this little post from expert article marketer Anne Pottinger includes direct quotations from Google's WebMaster Central Blog on the subject (not easy to find a more authoritative source than that!)
• this little article is also a very useful and accurate explanation of the subject
• this post, and its links, explain in detail the closely related subject of how article directories really work and why they exist

Originally Posted by Anton543

I don't think any serious site will republish their content elsewhere.

And the large and increasing number of us making a living from doing so? We're all collectively confabulating, for some mysterious and unspecified reason, are we?!

And Reuters and Associated Press, they're just imaginary, fictional businesses, are they?

Originally Posted by Anton543

People require permission to republish content from any major site

Not just from any major site. From any site at all. There are copyright laws. However, that has nothing at all to do with what we're talking about, here, and misses the point just as much as all your other trolling nonsense does.

Originally Posted by Anton543

I think this whole republishing is usually done by people in the IM market rather than anyone looking to develop a serious website.

People willing to spend three minutes looking at the reality for themselves will see with no difficulty at all how ludicrous that assertion is. Is that really the best trolling you can come up with?! I have news for you: you're not doing too well, denigrating article marketing (and you're not going to, either, because too many of us earn such good livings from it), so I think you'd better go back to starting off more of your threads to explain to people why you don't think list-building works at all, for internet marketing!

[jvjoe]

Article marketing still works but not very effective as many will
tell, you can get some decent traffic. It also depend if you are
looking for a short or long term traffic.

If you are looking for a short term traffic, don't expect a
surge of traffic overnight, doesn't work out that way but
you can get some decent traffic. Sometimes depends on
the niche you are in.

Article marketing is not dead, but you shouldn't rely it
as your sole source of traffic.

[MikeTucker]

Originally Posted by jvjoe

Article marketing still works but not very effective as many will
tell, you can get some decent traffic. It also depend if you are
looking for a short or long term traffic.

If you are looking for a short term traffic, don't expect a
surge of traffic overnight, doesn't work out that way but
you can get some decent traffic. Sometimes depends on
the niche you are in.

Article marketing is not dead, but you shouldn't rely it
as your sole source of traffic.

Is Article Marketing Still Effective?

[deewaker72]

I don't think that article marketing is effective in nowadays. You have to do lots of work in selling your article and 20 article is very small amount. I am not discouraging you but try to sell any kind of service or product or even better if you want to earn money just promote your referral link and earn money.

[dad2four]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

People willing to spend three minutes looking at the reality for themselves will see with no difficulty at all how ludicrous that assertion is. Is that really the best trolling you can come up with?! I have news for you: you're not doing too well, denigrating article marketing (and you're not going to, either, because too many of us earn such good livings from it), so I think you'd better go back to starting off more of your threads to explain to people why you don't think list-building works at all, for internet marketing!

Alexa Smith ... writes stuff that snaps, crackles, pops and slams.

[ExpertSEOServices]

Yes! Article marketing still works.
I still use it a lot on my sites and they pull in traffic and earnings month after month!

Reviews work well as does informative content mixed with other methods such as videos, images, and curated content

Hope this helps

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by jvjoe

If you are looking for a short term traffic, don't expect a
surge of traffic overnight, doesn't work out that way but
you can get some decent traffic. Sometimes depends on
the niche you are in.

Depending on where an article is republished, I've seen the exact opposite. If you are being republished on a site or blog with active readers, you'll often get a surge of traffic from that site/article in the first couple of days. After that, it will taper off until you get the occasional visitor. If your article ends up in an email newsletter (a broadcast), again, you'll get the majority of your visitors within a couple of days. If there's an online archive, you'll get some visitors for as long as it remains.

This isn't about hitting one out of the park, although it can happen if you get picked up by a major print magazine or something. It's about the steady accumulation of those surges and trickles until even in the slow times you get a fair number of people seeing your offers.

Originally Posted by jvjoe

Article marketing is not dead, but you shouldn't rely it as your sole source of traffic.

This is dead on. Good job...

[nasuryono]

Yes it is, but not as effective as before since the Google Panda and Penguin update.

And quantity matters more than quality when it comes to article marketing. Gotta throw many articles out there to get visitors.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by nasuryono

Yes it is, but not as effective as before since the Google Panda and Penguin update.

Nope ... you must be thinking of article directory marketing - certainly not "article marketing": all those Panda updates and the Penguin update were very helpful to us professional article marketers. Which is why, over the last nearly two years, so many successful article marketers have been making countless posts here explaining exactly that.

The Panda updates, which decimated the SEO potential of article directories, have made it much easier for us to use directories for the purpose for which they were intended. The losers were the people trying to use directories for their own backlinks and/or their own traffic (not what article directories were ever there for, of course): How do Article Directories work?

And the Penguin update has helped us out more, by effectively removing from the SERP's as our competitors all the people who'd been doing "spinning" and "mass/automated submission" to article directories (presumably not understanding how they worked at all).

Originally Posted by nasuryono

And quantity matters more than quality when it comes to article marketing. Gotta throw many articles out there to get visitors.

Nope ... completely wrong. The exact opposite's the case. This is explained in some detail in post #51 (and in post #65) above.

Just a little tip, Nasuryono: sometimes it helps to read the thread (or at least the most recent few posts!) before replying to it.

[roblawrence]

I agree. It has it's place but it's not as powerful as it once was. Duplicate content slap from Google really hurt this method of marketing BIGTIME!

[MikeTucker]

Originally Posted by roblawrence

I agree. It has it's place but it's not as powerful as it once was. Duplicate content slap from Google really hurt this method of marketing BIGTIME!

I concur. It has an address but it lacks the coercive it used to be.
Similar containing hit from Big G harmed this way of selling huge clocks.



(I wanted to agree but don't want the WF to suffer if I write the same thing)

[MattCatania]

Originally Posted by MikeTucker

I concur. It has an address but it lacks the coercive it used to be.
Similar containing hit from Big G harmed this way of selling huge clocks.



(I wanted to agree but don't want the WF to suffer if I write the same thing)

This post will surely rise to #1 in the SERPS - just look at how advanced your spinning is!

[evilsaigon]

Article marketing is definitely effective as ever. Apart from good quality grammar which is pretty much expected, you want to also make sure your articles have some real value to their readers, not just for the sake of seo. It's what google wants.

For instance, if your site is on dog training, it's pretty obivoua majority of your readers are looking for real solutions to train their dogs. You want to provide real tips and strategies for dog training, unlike a blatant seo article that just rambles purely about how dog training is good for you and what kind of dogs are suitable.

Once you establish their trust in you, you can monetize your articles with your affiliate links. Of course, article marketing covers way more than that, this is just one of the core segments.

[MP80]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Nope ... you must be thinking of article directory marketing - certainly not "article marketing": all those Panda updates and the Penguin update were very helpful to us professional article marketers...

Hi Alexa,

So, would you say that there are just as many people wanting to republish your articles on their sites, since Panda and Penguin were rolled out?

I'm wondering if the concern over publishing 'duplicate' content has scared some people away. Have you noticed any decline, at all?

PS - I'm referring to private sites, not article directories (not sure if that was clear.)

[reneesbertrand]

Yes it is good idea if you properly manager your accounts in big article websites.. not the spammy one and try to use different content on each website

[JasonBennet]

It is definitely still working or else the internet as a medium will not be used by people already. Article contain content which can be presented into many different medium like video, pdf, podcast and others.

I doubt it is dead as people are still looking for information online.

[imacyrayy]

Depending on how you intend to use article marketing. I think the best use of article marketing is to write them with the hopes that people will use them in other sites. That
way your links could go viral.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by MP80

Hi Alexa,

So, would you say that there are just as many people wanting to republish your articles on their sites, since Panda and Penguin were rolled out?

I don't think either Panda or Penguin updates were relevant to the number of publishers looking for content for their readers/visitors/subscribers, either way (and don't really see why they would have been?).

I may be wrong, here, but I attribute the slight, across-the-board increase in available syndication outlets over the last couple of years simply to some slight, continued "growth of the web", to be honest?

It's clearly not just the Google updates which have made article marketing gradually more productive and profitable over the period that I've been involved in it myself. It's unquestionably easier and better now than it was when I started, about 4 years ago. I know so many people here who've started it off something like 1-2 years ago, and have had a considerably easier time of it than I had in my first year (though I was making a living after 6 months, which I thought at the time wasn't bad at all - not to mention that it was a huge relief to me!).

Originally Posted by MP80

I'm wondering if the concern over publishing 'duplicate' content has scared some people away. Have you noticed any decline, at all?

No; slightly the opposite, if anything.

The people who syndicate my articles in various niches tend not to share any of the sometimes-seen Warrior delusions about what "duplicate" and "syndicated" content are, and whether or not either could be a "bad thing". Possibly the ones to whom it's ever occurred have got as far as checking with Google and seeing statements like "We will not penalize your site for duplicate content" unambiguously and expressly stated on their official sites/blogs? That might have reassured them, even if they don't understand that "duplicate" and "syndicated" content are two different things? I'm only guessing, here: it's pretty difficult to theorize about how other people feel about something that isn't a "real issue" anyway, especially when they've no reason to imagine that it's an "issue": probably most of them just don't think about it at all (is my guess)?

Yes, thinking more about it, I suspect, to be honest, that this matter never even occurs to most serious webmasters of genuine authority sites at all, and that it's mostly pretty ill-informed beginners (and maybe the occasional graduate of the Urban Myth School of Internet Marketing - though many drop out of that school in frustration and disillusionment, of course, imagining that "internet marketing's all a scam"!) who imagine there's some sort of "issue" there. And the sites of those people perhaps aren't quite such good syndication outlets anyway, overall?

[dad2four]

I built a piece of junk site using nothing but scraped articles almost three years ago. It's a simple wordpress site loaded by a plugin that I purchased. It's an autoblog and there is no spun content. The articles are intact including the authors links in accordance with the TOS at the various article directories that the content was scraped from.

This site gets all of it's traffic from Google, Bing and a couple of other small search engines. The site contains about 500 articles, again, every single article is syndicated content and has steadily increased in traffic over that time period.

The site is unaffected by the updates Google has done over that time period.

It's a small set of data, but it confirms what Alexa an others are saying, syndicated content is still alive and kicking on the Internet.

I hope everyone reading this thread has picked up on the most valuable bit of information Alexa is serving up on a silver platter here.

Using these methods it doesn't matter what the SE's think about your syndicated content. This approach tells the SE's to take a flying leap. This approach puts the SE's in the "gravy" department as far as your traffic goes. And as Mr. Tucker has pointed out prevously, the traffic that comes from your guest posts is far more valuable than what the SE's deliever anyway.

This is good stuff here and I'm beyond excited to partake. I can't wait to decide on a direction and start testing this myself!

[RachelLily]

The answer is YES – article marketing is still effective, but not as a core strategy. It can still be part of a link building and promotional campaign, but it will not have a huge impact by itself.

The best way to do article marketing these days is to produce high quality, 100% original and unique content and submit it manually to ezinearticles.com, which is still the number one article directory online today.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by RachelLily

The answer is YES – article marketing is still effective, but not as a core strategy.

Strange that so many of us are making our livings using it as a core (or even "sole", in some cases) strategy, then?

Originally Posted by RachelLily

It can still be part of a link building and promotional campaign

One thing it isn't is "part of a link-building campaign". Article marketing isn't an SEO-based system: it's a traffic-generation method in its own right, which transcends SEO.

Originally Posted by RachelLily

but it will not have a huge impact by itself.

Nonsense. Just nonsense, sorry.

Originally Posted by RachelLily

The best way to do article marketing these days is to produce high quality, 100% original and unique content and submit it manually to ezinearticles.com

On the contrary - this is completely wrong.

Please excuse the emphasis, but it's already been explained many times in this very thread exactly why that's such a deeply mistaken approach. The people doing that are the ones also starting off all the threads with titles like "Is Article Marketing Dead" (and, for them, it is), and there are reasons for that.

Nobody who understands how article directories work would dream of submitting to them any articles which hadn't already been published and indexed on their own site first, for all the reasons explained in this thread: question about article marketing?

It makes no sense at all to give any article directory the initial indexation rights to previously unpublished content, when you can have those for yourself first. That's helping article directories more than it's helping you.

For all the reasons explained in detail, with examples, in this post, no article marketer would want their potential customer traffic coming to their site from an article directory: we all lose most of that traffic, but can equally easily choose to keep it instead. That isn't who the article directory articles are there for, at all.

When you have time, if you read through this longer thread, in it you'll find a whole succession of experienced, successful article makreters explaining all their shared reasons for never doing what you suggest above: Article on site or EZA first ?

And I'll tell you something else: they're right, too.

Apologies for all the repetition, but when people keep adding on their own repetition of the nonsensical urban myths of internet marketing without having read the thread at all and therefore without having seen that eight or ten or others have previously said exactly the same thing and that this misinformation's already been corrected multiple times by various people who are actually making our livings from article marketing, what else can one do?

[Simon74]

The top 10-15 are still effective!

[JohnMcCabe]

You know, one thing that keeps coming up when people ask me questions on this topic off-forum, is that they keep getting handed the 'no duplicate content' excuse. This reminds me of a story...

A man answered his door and found one of his neighbors standing on his front step. The neighbor asked to borrow his lawn mower.

The man refused. When asked why, he said "because the train is always late."

"What on Earth does that have to do with you lending me your lawn mower?"

"Nothing. But since it's my mower and I don't want to lend it to you, one reason is as good as any other."

People running popular blogs, especially in or around niches popular with typical IMers, get bombarded with would-be syndicators looking to add backlinks. So they offer a reason they figure the wannabe will accept - fear of losing ranking.

Run your syndication campaign as a win-win-win proposition and approach would-be partners with respect and humility, and it may not matter if the train is late or not. The subject will never come up.

[MKCookins]

It is far more effective to write articles for your audience then for article directories. This means submitting your articles to other blogs where they are already getting a ton of traffic.

This will yield in quicker and better results.

[Jay27]

It still works and I am using the occasional ezine / infobarrel article to bump my Squidoo lenses up a little bit.

Thanks to the penguin, you only require a handful of backlinks.

All the external links I send, are either 'read this', 'visit this page', or just http://barenakedlink.com.

Works wonders to get to #1.

[itchydog]

Ezinearticles sends me traffic. Goarticles seems worthless. From my experience I would only submit to the top 10 article directories. A lot of them want unique content. Don't bite my head off for saying that. I have trouble getting articles accepted that have first been published on my website.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by itchydog

I have trouble getting articles accepted that have first been published on my website.

Ok ... not biting your head off at all, but just mentioning that if that's so, then probably either the places to which you're trying to submit them aren't actually article directories (like many of the sites mentioned throughout this thread, which people wrongly imagine are article directories), or you've slightly misunderstood the reason for their being declined. This commonly happens, for example, when people get articles rejected for not being "original", and they don't quite appreciate that that means something completely different from their not being "unique", and as a result they often mistakenly imagine - even after reading the "explanation" - that it was the fact that the articles had previously been published elsewhere that was the cause of their being declined.

There are several threads here in which people report - totally incorrectly - that Ezine Articles rejected their articles because they'd already been published on their own blogs, but when you look at what EZA actually said, of course, it wasn't that at all.

The reality is that EZA would clearly never have meant that, given the lengths to which they go to invite authors to submit as articles their already-published blog-posts.

[myob]

Originally Posted by JayPeete

I am very impressed with what I see from Spin Rewriter 3.0.

"I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."

- James Michener

[Alex Mensah]

put the articles on your site and also submit them to the top 20 articles directories or get someone from fiverr to do this for you on the cheap. Again. not a huge source of traffic
but well worth the effort.

[MikeTucker]

Originally Posted by Alex Mensah

put the articles on your site and also submit them to the top 20 articles directories or get someone from fiverr to do this for you on the cheap. Again. not a huge source of traffic
but well worth the effort.

I agree that the article directory marketing method you describe
here is not a huge traffic source, but the idea that it is worth
the effort is just not true... Even outsourcing the submissions is
a waste of time. Time spent looking for someone to babysit
could have been invested on adding another person to a proper
syndication network, instead.