Article Marketing Now Dead?

Interesting.

It's not about the difference between people's articles, this time. It's about the model of article marketing they're using.

People using what's sometimes referred to as the "rinse and repeat" model (in which you build up other people's sites and depend on them ranking highly) are affected adversely by EZA - and other directories - suffering.

People using a "syndication" model (in which you build up your own websites and don't want article directories to outrank them) are either unaffected or the beneficiaries, if that makes sense. Simplified explanation, of course.

Absolutely. As you say. It isn't in itself about the content, this time. It's about dependency on article directories (and to a lesser extent dependency on search engines), and the relationship between the ranking of article directory copies of one's articles and one's income.

(d) None of the above.

It's about valuing one website over another, not one article over another.

It's bad news for people who were dependent on EZA (and/or other directories) ranking well to produce their customers - though, as mentioned above and in 100 other threads, to be fair that was never much of a business model anyway.

Good point, and one that I have tried to address previously.

Google is completely powerless to detect "quality".

I touched on this point in my blog here.

I suspect that you have touched part of the equation: word count, back links article views. But I think there is more to it.

I suspect they have figured out a better way to track social validation of the content.

For example, a syndicated article that is published only in an article directory probably does not have much value to it. On the flip side, a syndicated article that finds publication in authority websites likely does have value to it.

Another example is social media links. While you and I might have several social media accounts, even several within Twitter for example, if all of our accounts mirror each other, then those accounts have a relationship which identifies them as too similar to be different.

We can orchestrate some social media, but we cannot build social media really deep, beyond the accounts we own.

And the accounts we do have, how much real credibility do we have? If you follow more people than follow you, you may not have much credibility. If you have a number of followers equal to those that follow you, then you are probably using automated systems to create fake popularity. However, if more people follow you than you follow, then Google might read that to suggest that people care about what you have to say.

Within social media, there are many ways to find the real value in the links offered.

Another idea to consider is how many times your link is retweeted or dugg.

However they are doing it exactly, I bet that it has something to do with a number of indicators that will let them to more reliably track social validation of the quality of the content.



p.s. It is not often that I disagree with Alexa, but I do in this case.

This algorithm change did not only affect the article directories, hubs, answer sites, and curation sites specifically. Individual webmasters have been slammed too.

This update was actually an algorithm-wide change and not a vertical-specific change. Joe Blow webmaster is being treated with the same wide paint brush used against the article directories.

And further, while the article directories and such were hit hard, they were not completely wiped off the map. They were seeing their Google footprint to be depreciated by 70% to 95%, which indicates that some of their articles survived the cut.

That indicates to me that the changes affected certain articles, but not specifically certain websites.

The websites hit the hardest were those who contained more of the target articles than anyone else.

This is also true - and an excellent and most welcome point.

Indeed. But I have a sneaking suspicion that this simple and irrefutable logic is going to fall, henceforth, on even stonier ground than it generally did in the past.

With rare exceptions, my articles have always been syndicated mostly directly to ezine publishers and other outlets. IMO, there is no greater implied endorsement or authority than when these publishers send my articles to their subscribers and post them in newsletter archives.

And since the recent google changes, nearly all of my articles have jumped in rank, with commensurate traffic in some very competitive niches. So yea, I'd say that quality trumps quantity. It always has, and now there is dramatic proof of what the most successfull writers have been saying for a very long time.

I was just reading a blog post by a Mr Jonathan Leger:

Google vs. Content Farms « Jonathan Leger

He advises that you:

Shortly after, he talks about using a "Article Spinner" so that we may turn one piece of unique content into many. What a gentleman! He even provides a tool to do this. I know. I too was floored

They show up because the power of the domain I think, the BBC or CNN website has so much domain authority it could steal all your websites content and outrank your/my sites very fast.

What's the purpose for which they exist?