Recently marketing sites such as CommentLuv have been talking about a video from Google’s chief engineer Matt Cutts, in which he expounds on his distaste for article marketing and how these sites are less than ideal places for search engines to find quality content to display on results pages. The site in particular which has been picked on is Ezine Articles, a former powerhouse in the accumulation of articles for further distribution which Google made an example of earlier this year by dramatically lowering their score value in keyword searches. Here is the video that prompted the discussion:
I have thought about article marketing for Flickering Torches, but I have a reputation to maintain as a journalist and editor. Years ago, I actually did article marketing with some of my own pieces for a different venue, and it definitely spread like wildfire. It works the same as publishing press releases, which I have also done, but without the fees normally associated with PR firms. Publishing press releases also results in article placement on sites with generally better reputations than those who use automated methods for finding and publishing articles on niche marketing sites.
The point of article marketing is to create the illusion of being an authority site for a given keyword phrase by getting appropriate backlinks in the author resource box at the bottom of an article from other websites that publish the distributed article.
The distribution effect article marketing sites advertise is tempting, but there are issues with how a lot of people go about it. I got so many backlinks from bad neighborhoods I had to quit, take down the articles, and then beg sites to stop publishing them.
That was a huge headache, but not as bad as being listed in Wikipedia; those people, however valuable some of their content might be, have no concern for the individual. They are like talking to credit bureaus. Once they know who you are and believe you are worth an article, they believe they own your story and it will probably take a lawyer letter to make them stop publishing about me or least remove incorrect data and malicious content, if that’s even possible without a court fight.
Article marketing has similar problems with bad information or badly written information, and most of them are created by whatever individual or company you hire to write the articles used to draw traffic to your site. There is a process called article spinning, or spintaxing, that allows an article marketer to write one article for a website targeting a certain topic and keywords and then create dozens or hundreds of copies, all with slightly different language by using synonyms placed throughout the article in the manner of a mail merge template. As the client, you might never know how bad the damage is if your contract includes the marketer distributing the articles for you, and all you’ve seen is the first one from which variants have been “spun”.
I could never spintax an article, or allow someone to spintax one for me, even under a pseudonym, if the article was going to be associated with Flickering Torches. I believe it would dilute the site’s reputation. Now that article marketing websites are officially in the Google crosshairs, it seems like just another soon to be defunct idea that will probably be proffered for another few years by various marketing firms before enough people get the message that it’s obsolete.
The one piece of advice which remains constant, regardless of marketing of new link distribution models, is that having quality content that people want to read on a site which is periodically updated should always be the centerpiece of any web publishing effort.
Related Reading:
No related posts.
THIS JUST IN: Noble Samurai, makers of Market Samurai software have been on a three day video seminar kick to introduce their new product Article Samurai. It’s main feature? That’s right: article spinning.
I’m a paid user of Market Samurai, but after seeing the Article Samurai videos, I declined to purchase a monthly subscription. The “doors opened” at 10am PST today for subscription sales at $97/mo. They were offering about 500 spots, and within the hour, they were sold out.
Clearly, Noble Samurai’s reputation with Market Samurai is in play here, creating brand loyalty transfer to their new product. I can’t help but think that in light of the Cutts video, and the slash-and-burn of page scores Google is alleged to have done to content farms and select big names in the field like Ezine Articles, this is like trying to throw the sand back into the ocean.
It’s time to seek alternatives.
Michael Breckenridge recently posted..How to be yourself, maintain privacy, and gain traffic to your blog, profile or website