Are you still using Ezine Articles????

I haven't been posting there for sometimes, but as a general rule of thumb:

If the domain was punished by the recent update - put your content someplace else.

I still use Ezines, but I would have to agree with the above poster. With huge drops in traffic like that, you are better off finding another spot for your content....That said, Ill continue posting there, because in my situation, it certainly cant hurt matters lol

Someone should start an alternative to Ezine.

Thanks guys. This is actually scary stuff.

I relied so much on ezinearticles and am sure so many others have as well. It was the number one article directory.

I am wondering what other good alternatives there are in light of the google changes?

Very few businesses, either online or off, could survive a 40% decrease in their gross revenue.

Since 95% of EZA's revenue is driven from Google advertising earnings, and their overall pageview traffic is down 35-40%, you can take from that what you will.

Personally I've been driving clients to utilize their content outside of the major article sites for nearly a year now, just too easy to develop/rank/boost your own authority blog using dozens of different traffic and backlinking methods outside of those provided by article directories.

At the end of the day, any property you don't control personally means you're leaving your success or failure to the hand of fate.

EZA, or any other site you don't own, could be gone tomorrow...the cliche "eggs in one basket" is certainly applicable here.

no im not........

No need to stop using Ezine. It does not have to be the Google algorithm changes, it could be just more competition. (Remember to let it get ranked by Google with Ezine, before you use it anyway else). It just calls for better keyword research, longer interesting articles and using the article for other things to get all the juice out of them.

For instance convert them to video's, then use a service like Tube Mogul. Take out the soundtrack and convert it to mp3 (you can use free open source software like "Audacity") then submit it to pod cast directories. Keep all your articles focused and tight in groups of about a dozen around one subject. Then later you can combine them into a report to give away as "opt-in" bait or spread it virally through a service like butterfly.com.

Article writing is still a good strategy but if you are going to do all that work, make sure you get the most out of your labours.

I use Ezine Articles, Goarticles and Articlebase. I found those the best ,)

The drop in traffic you mentioned is a lot. Personnaly, I have been trying to do without Ezine without thinking about a possible algorithm change. I think that I preferred to have articles approved fast on places like articlebase for example.

Just out of interest where did you read this?

You know just because of the changes to the googles algorithm does not mean your articles are not getting the exposure they once got. For I only every posted my articles to my site then to the article directories like eza. And low and behold these changes made a huge difference in both my site and the traffic I am getting to these articles from the article directories.

You just need to make sure that you are only posting your original to your site and one other article directory. Then with your next article post it to your site and a different article directory. This way you are still increasing your exposure to your site and article but also minimizing the the effect these changes have on duplicate content pasted at several sites.

Google did not mind when people where posting there content to other places. They actually encourage it. But where the problem came in was when individuals where plastering the same article to thousands of different locations thus glogging up the search engines with the same exact content.

So I do still post to eza but I do it as I mentioned. I only post the article to my site and then to eza after it gets indexed. Then when I create another article I will post it to another article directory instead of posting the same article to several hundred or thousand locations. If others want to pick them up and use them great for me. It gives me backlinks. However the scrappers who steal your content will no longer be able to out rank you for stealing your articles and in most cases google will not index the content they submitted.

So you can thank this change to the auto bloggers out there who are basically stealing your content day after day and removing your resource information. These are the sites that are affected the most and not so much eza. But keep in mind if eza is losing traffic because of the g changes then the other article directories are going to be losing traffic also. It is not just eza but all article directories as a whole. So I agree with craigrc you need to start focusing on creating your own network of sites and not rely on other sites as eza or article directories. Besides that with the changes to g algo eza came out and made changes as well. I have now been waiting for 6 days for a single article to get past stage three of their approval status. And to top it off this is a article I am only posting to eza and not my sites.

Not even part of my plans anymore.

I submit to EZA almost every day, and like many professional article marketers here am actually pleased with recent developments (sorry, Chris! ).

As an article marketer, when someone uses one of my keywords as their search-terms on Google, I obviously want them to find the copy of the article on my own site. The one thing I don't want to happen is for that potential customer to find the EZA copy instead. That gives me big chances of losing them before they ever get to my website.

So, if this helps EZA copies of article to rank lower on Google, I'm all in favour of it - that's a no-brainer.

I see that people "using EZA for traffic" may think matters have taken a turn for the worse, but their business model of article marketing (which was probably only "article directory marketing", not really "article marketing" at all, if they only knew it) was never a very viable one even before this recent Google algorithm change. That's why so few really succeed at article marketing, and so many people start off threads here saying "Article Marketing Is Dead": for their sort of "article marketing", it quite possibly is - and was even before this.

I'll continue to use EZA for exactly the same reason I've always used it: it's where the Webmasters of all those context-relevant, higher-PR sites go to look for content to syndicate for their sites. That's what article directories are there for. That's why they exist. That's why they're called "directories". And that's what I'm using them for.

If it doesn't, no article directory will. It's been established for a decade in a field in which the average life expectancy's about 3 months.

They'll cope with this, and bounce back stronger than ever (though not necessarily in their Google rankings, I hope, for my own purposes!).

Just my perspective.

Well, actually, no ... to be honest, it isn't "just my perspective" at all: it's really a pretty representative perspective of successful, pro-article marketers who are building their own businesses and their own websites. As you can see from all the other threads here in which so many of us are saying exactly what I've said here.

Alexa is right (as she almost always is, BTW).

Google's new algo is nothing to fear. Keep doing what you do (assuming you care about quality content).

There's no reason to avoid EZA.

I see through Statcounter that many of my EZA articles are still sending a lot of traffic to my websites, even though in the past I had more links from EZA. Now my websites are getting more traffic from Google.

I’m a regular content producer and I will keep submitting at least one article per day to EZA, after posting it to my blog. I also submit my articles to a few websites related to my topic that accept contributions from readers.

I’m sure that EZA will survive and get back its ranking, after making the necessary changes. Right now they are still lost and trying to fix all problems, but in a while they’ll manage to recuperate their balance. EZA’s team is very well organized and powerful.

Bill and Alexa's posts are dead on...

...IF you're a great writer, who brings great content, and gets 90% or more of your articles accepted after the first submission.

Do you match that profile? If yes, great, knock yourself out and keep rolling on the EZA train.

If, on the other hand, you've been submitting since Chris changed things and finding that your articles aren't being accepted as frequently, perhaps only 50%, then EZA is a colossal waste of time, money, and effort, that you could be putting elsewhere.

People tend to see things only from their own perspectives. Great writers assume everyone can simply step their game up and achieve their same success.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The bottom line is that if you're a solid writer turning out fantastic quality content that a human reviewer would love, then you're fine.

If English is a second language, you've been using EZA for backlinks with second-tier quality articles, you're stuck at Basic Plus, OR, you're seeing your submissions need frequent editing in order to be approved, you may need to move on from a value point of view.

That's a more precise answer in my opinion than "this is the best thing since sliced bread, more views for my articles, I love it, yippee" which might cause a sub-standard author to foolishly waste time by throwing themselves into the review tree-chipper.

I definitely am.

I will continue to use Ezine Articles for as long as it remains an effective and authoritative directory. However, I do not consider it (nor have I ever considered it) to be my "end all source" of income, backlinks, or exposure.

As other warriors have mentioned, it's important to concentrate your main efforts in your own sites. EZA is a part of my method- but it's not the entire method itself.

Additionally, Ezine Articles is still infinitely more powerful- even at a supposed 40% loss in traffic- than the majority of other article directories online that are struggling to keep their heads above water.

I will still use them to generate backlinks. But I don't count on them to generate my traffic for me

I use the articles to backlink to my website and I have not noticed a drop but if you want to increase back links to your articles.
(I know lots of you are doing this but just in case there are any newbies reading this....)

At the top of your eza account profile page is a RSS feed box. Copy the link and submit it to RSS feed directories. Every time you publish an article it will show up. That is a backlink to your articles from every Directory you submit to.

I am still using EZA and will still submit content to them. I am still getting clicks from the articles I have posted there, even if it has slowed a bit. For me, the changes aren't a problem. But, with that, EZA is just one part of my program. It's not everything that I do.

I have never used Ezine Articles...
I wish registration at these sites was easier and their policies laid out more clearly...

As I have read on many other internet marketing forums, Ezines pagerank, and visitors has dropped and that means the validity of the backlinks you are posting there are becoming more and more useless everyday. On the other hand sites like Squidoo and Hubpages are still valuable content backlinks that can be useful to your website.

A lot of the "experts" must not have really been using EZA to its full potential if they think the de-ranking of EZA is good for Internet marketers. If they truly were only using it for its backlinks and the chance for syndication to other blogs, well, let's just say you guys missed out on A LOT of money.

Example: We wrote an article and had it approved within 24 hrs (platinum obv). Then we used a secret sauce backlinking strategy that got this article ranked on page 1 for a 250,000/mo EXACT MATCH term 1 day later. This was not a fluke. We did it with almost every article we wrote, and always within 2-3 days it would be on page 1 and drive thousands of visitors to our sites.

I don't care how awesome your content is on your own sites, you _cannot_ rank on page 1 in 48 hours for 200,000+/mo terms unless your site is called Amazon.com. That was the power of EZA. I'm obviously willing to spill the beans now because it no longer works without a mountain of linkjuice now, and it's not nearly the "shooting fish in a barrel" strategy it was a few weeks ago.

I guess some of the article gurus never learned that trick though, which is why you get rather wildly varying opinions about how terrible (or not) the EZA de-ranking was

I never used EZ but I think its not bad to submit articles there!

I have used EZA in the past and I will continue for the foreseeable future. My main goal through EZA was to get people to republish my articles on their sites. This is still happening. I think if the recent adjustments mean there will be less junk posted there, then I see this side of EZA improving too. People going there to look for content to use on their own site or blog won't have to sift through as much garbage to find something usable.

While the majority of what I've submitted in the past has always been at least 400 and most often at least 500 words minimum, I'm doing a test right now and submitting only 1000+ word articles for a week to ten days to see what happens.

EZA are quality sites even give nofollow links, I still believe that and still use it.

EZA is still a great place to generate traffic.

The recent changes are good for the internet community as a whole. The generation of mindless spun articles was/is ruining the English language and created a low standard for article content.

Having said that, I'm not totally against spinning, as long as it's properly edited and cleaned up before posting. Of course, that's going to be part of the process from now on anyway--which I think is vital and an essential change for the better.

seomoz said ezine's traffic dropped more like 90% not 40%

I am still submitting articles to them but Ezine has never been my only source of traffic. I'll continue submitting to them as long as they remain an authority site....

I suppose it's the old, "I know the wheel is crooked but it's the only game in town." It's so huge, I will definitely continue to submit articles but have lost a lot of respect for ezinearticles, mostly due to the rubbish I've found there. There is a new category called Diamond Members that may help as you need to at least pass certain criteria to qualify. But worst case, it's at least a way to get a few backlinks.

I'm still using Ezine. That said, Ezine was never my *only* or *main* article marketing source.

Also, there have been discussions about the validity of the backlinks and the general consensus is that the backlinks will still count, so why would you have to stop using Ezine just because they are getting less traffic?

EAs are still great article directory and it is definitely worth staying in IMs portfolio.

I agree with all of those that have the opinion that if you are creating *good* content for article directories, sure, you should expect a little bit of traffic from those sites, but more importantly, you're increasing your site's authority - and ezine or other article directories should be one of many methods used to increase your authority.

With all of Google's changes, I think it's so important to have diverse strategies so you don't get completely slapped down when they change their algorithm!

I've been telling my clients to use directories sparingly and focus more on putting their articles on topic specific sites. You'll get more targeted traffic so numbers won't matter so much.

Bonnie

Yes. Ezine won't go away anytime soon.

I am pretty much a noob at AM, and I only have a handfull of articles on eZine, but I am wondering if Google "slapped" them because of duplicate content. In my main category on eZine, the top author has over 1500 articles on that subject. But if you actually dig into them a little, it becomes obvious that those 1500 articles are basically the same 15 articles spun over 100 times each. I can only assume that this is the case with alot of authors and categories on eZine, but if it is, and Google has discovered that, maybe they discredited the value of those articles. I would if I were Google!

For every article and backlink we drive to EZA, we are only padding up their reserves and have them rank better.

Why do that? I think it is best for each and everyone of us to build up our own sites, drive backlinks back to our OWN sites and provide content for OUR readers.

Warmly,
Edwin

Nope. I like hub pages a lot more.

I don't see as much bang for my buck with article submission as I used to.

I haven't submitted to Ezine in about a month. Their response to Google's algorithm change is kind of insulting. Yes, their site has become inundated with spammy cr@p, but they are the one's who allowed this. I suspect that their choice to assault their visitors with thousands of Adsense ads just might have contributed to them being associated with low-end content farms as well.

I've been looking for alternatives myself. On the surface, it appears that Articlebase and Goarticles just might be the next best thing. I know they aren't classified as article directories, but Hubpages and Ehow get a lot of readership. I guess it depends on what you are looking to get out of your article marketing efforts. Referral Traffic or do-follow backlinks or both. I noticed a lot of StreetArticles.com articles hitting #1 page Google results lately. Not that that is required to be successful in article marketing.

I have a question for anyone that can help me.

Sorry I am a newbie and using Ezine and Articlebase. Never had anything refused by Articlebase. Have about 40 articles accepted by Ezine but having trouble lately. Made me platinum, then knocked me back to basic and now today 6 articles that were previously accepted that I just changed the wording in the resource box (because it was wrong) they now tell me that they are not accepted.

Can somebody tell me what is going on!!!!!!

Really confused.





This is how I make money online Review Blog Formula

I never used them, I never did bum marketing... to much work for my taste.

But with the google algo change I would write somewhere else..

Yes, still using it, though review times have slowed a lot (I'm just basic plus and fairly new to it). I use a submission service and also some manual submissions as my submission service doesn't do sports betting categories. Other directories get me on google page 1 too for some of my keywords. I'll continue using ezine articles - if your content is original and interesting then I'm sure it will still work.

Another poster mentioned eggs/baskets - I think that not only applies to Ezinearticles but to article marketing. IMHO AM should be just one of the techniques in a holsitic IM strategy.

I put all of my best content on my own website and a decent re-write on an article directory.

I quit using them about a year ago, after a disagreement with their editors on subject matter. I also did not like that adsense surrounded articles on three sides with competing products. Nevertheless, I may rethink my position after reading these posts especially Alexa's.

C.A. Perez

I am hearing a lot of put your articles first on your site than on ezine articles and other article directories to generate backlinks?

Just wanted to clarify something. The article you put up on your OWN site first should be different from the one you post to EZINE or other article directories? At least should it be spun? Or can it be the same article?

I'm still using Ezine as one of the sources for backlinks. I don't expect any traffic from them.