What is the status of article marketing?

It depends on if your articles were in the 10% that were left in Google's SERPs or the 90% who were deleted from the SERPs.

Each of the article directories took various levels of damage.

I apologize in the I don't remember all of the numbers, but on EZA I do remember that 90% of their search rankings disappeared from Google.

I think ArticlesBase and Squidoo took a harder hit, while others took less of a hit.

That IS "traditional" article marketing, Dan.

Article directory marketing was a latecomer, which - as others are saying - has more or less been killed off by the dramatic devaluation of the article directories.

However, one of the helpful ways of getting your outstanding content featured in other places, apart from article directories, can be by depositing a copy of your outstanding content in article directories so that webmasters and others in the niche can syndicate it for you. The value of this usage of article directories, as a stepping-stone to elsewhere, remains constant.

That was always, after all, the original purpose and function of article directories, and the still-in-demand need they were invented to serve.

What's "dead" is the practice of using article directories for their own traffic (which was always a silly idea, actually, as explained here, and here, here, here, here, here, here and so on), and for their own backlinks (which were never worth much, anyway). But that was article directory marketing - not article marketing.

In a word: no.

The people you've heard from are likely those who generated their traffic by publishing articles within article directories (and other content sites that accepted user submissions) with the intent of leveraging that site's SEO authority to attain high rankings in the search-engines.

As mentioned in my previous post, above, the authority of many such sites was lowered with Google's recent Panda algorithm update. So yes, for those whose concept of article marketing fits this decription, they may be struggling right now.

But that isn't really article marketing anyway. Call it what you will ... a form of "bum marketing", "SEO piggybacking", or - as many here call it - article directory marketing. Anything but article marketing, because there are many here engaging in that as their primary method of traffic generation whose businesses are absolutely flourishing like a spring meadow.

I think that like most things in life your degree of success is dependent upon your skill and a bit upon how crafty you are. While most people are looking to game the system in some way so they can profit from it, I found that my best stuff comes when I really don't give a crap about keyword density or trying to write the perfect article.

I don't know what the true answer is. I don't think you can say that there is a formula or right or wrong direction to go in. Just look at rosetrees. It could be that she just writes killer stuff that moves people because she's honest. I don't know... there are just too many variables, I think.

Personally, I would head in the direction of guest blog posts or what have you, but I am too damn introverted and unsure of my abilities as a writer. So I throw my stuff out on 8 - 10 article directories, the stuff ranks well, people read it and they click on my links. Then every dirtbag, article spinning monkey comes along and snags it and throws it on his or her site without my link while doing some hoodoo-vodoo on my ripped article so they outrank me. Such is life though, I guess!

Here's my secret formula that's earned me a fortune over the years. Write the way your target market reads, and publish your articles where they look.

Wow, I am quite surprised at all of the great responses here. Thanks everyone!

I will agree, there is a difference between "article directory marketing" and "article marketing". It's just that for so long I have heard the two terms smashed together that I am used to simply saying "Article marketing".

And from the looks of the responses, people continue having different levels of success with both types of article marketing. Personally, for some time now submitting hand written articles (500 words plus) all original, not rehashed garbage to directories but they just don't seem to have the punch they once had.

Now you can never go wrong placing good quality content on your own site. I think the only way you could do that is if you put small, spammy articles one right after another up.

So, if someone wants to continue doing article directory marketing, where would they go and what could they do to push views to it. Not talking keyword packed, minimum word count spun articles... but real, hand written content. I am most familiar with places like EZA, Articlesbase and GoArticles. But the traffic they provide, especially for new content seems to be a bit lacking.

I have read so many threads on this forum the last couple of days concerning article marketing and syndicating that my eyes are about to fall out. But I have learned so much from James, MYOB, and Alexa that really makes sense.

I used to submit a lot of articles on EZA, and got fairly good results as far as traffic, and then recently it declined miserably. One reason I found is that my articles were basically being stolen by one webmaster in particular who has probably hundreds of junk sites that all lead back to one site. These are not just crappy sites, they are ultra-crappy. No contact info. Full of self-serving links, but none of my links. Every article I put up seemed to get this response.

I was really ticked and tried to track him/her down. But now I am kinda glad because it brought me here where I found so much info that really makes sense. It has given me ideas how I can reclaim benefit from some of those articles myself.

I had already began publishing any articles I wrote to my site. But now I realize I can do so much more with them, mostly because of all the info that has been presented about duplicate content and how all the big boys have helped to perpetuate this myth for their own benefit. I have been knocking myself out writing unique articles for each and every submission I made not realizing that I could publish it to my site and then elsewhere as well. After my recent experiences, however, I will make sure that it is indexed on my site first!

And after reading many of the threads I realized that many people had the EZA guilelines all wrong as did I, and I think that all the hype that has been presented across the web had us pre-programmed to misinterpret what it actually says. After reading many posts I brought up another tab and went and read the guidelines again, and it is right there in the first paragraph. It must be an 'original article that you own'. Doesn't say it can't be published elsewhere, just that it can't have been published on EZA before.

Some of the threads on this forum about article marketing/syndication are a couple of years old, but for anybody reading this one I encourage you to look them up, because they still have a lot of great information. Thanks to all the contributors.


Illa